[tor-project] OONI Team status report May 2017

[Arturo Filastò]

# OONI Monthly Report: May 2017

The OONI team made steady progress in May 2017.

We released the beta version of our probe orchestration and, in
collaboration
with Sinar Project, we published a new research report on "The State of
Internet Censorship in Indonesia". We also updated test lists in
collaboration
with our partners, and we started organizing OONI's upcoming Partner
Gathering.

## Beta release of probe orchestration

We made two beta releases of the probe orchestration backend:
https://github.com/TheTorProject/proteus/releases/tag/v0.1.0-beta.2.

The probe orchestration client code is being integrated inside of v0.7.0 of
measurement-kit here:
https://github.com/measurement-kit/measurement-kit/pull/1250.

This beta version of the backend is currently deployed
(https://github.com/TheTorProject/ooni-sysadmin/pull/112) on staging
machines
and we are in the process of testing it in preparation of including a
subset of
orchestration inside of the next version of ooniprobe-mobile.

The feature-set included in the current beta of the probe orchestration
is the
following:

* Support for clients to register for receiving orchestration messages
with a password

* Authentication for orchestration clients and administrators

* Support for updating metadata of probes via authentication

* Support for sending push notifications to iOS (Apple Push
Notifications) and Android (Firebase Cloud Messagging) devices

* A web interface for administrators that allows them to:
    - View the currently registered clients
  - View the currently scheduled jobs
  - Add new recurrent measurements based on the target probe

In the first integration in ooniprobe-mobile we plan to only support probe
registration and metadata update. This will allow us to send visibile push
notification to send useful information messages to users, but without
the full
orchestration workflow.

## Research and improvements to reducing fingerprintability of ooniprobe

We did a bit of research documenting what we are currently doing to
reduce the
fingerprintability of ooniprobe and what we could do better.

As a result of this research we also added support for randomising the
order in
which URLs are tested (in ooniprobe desktop) to further reduce the
fingerprint
an ooniprobe scan has as well as improve the accuracy of measurement:
https://github.com/TheTorProject/ooni-probe/pull/758.

## Publication of research report

In collaboration with Sinar Project, we published a new research report
titled:
"The State of Internet Censorship in Indonesia".

The full report can be found here:
https://ooni.torproject.org/post/indonesia-internet-censorship/

We also published a summary of the report on the Tor blog:
https://blog.torproject.org/blog/state-internet-censorship-indonesia

## Updated test lists

In May 2017 we added URLs and updated the following test lists in
collaboration
with partners:

* Iran test list: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/161

* Cuba test list: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/170

* Venezuela test list:
https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/162,
https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/158

* Egypt test list: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/164

## Organizing upcoming OONI Partner Gathering

We worked on logistics pertaining to the organization of OONI's first
Partner
Gathering, which will take place on 10th & 11th July 2017 in Toronto.

## Outreach and community engagement

### Events

We presented OONI at the following events:

CryptoRave (5th & 6th May 2017)

We presented OONI and co-facilitated a workshop on test lists ("Listathona")
with Coding Rights at CryptoRave. More information can be found here:
https://ooni.torproject.org/post/ooni-cryptorave-2017/.

Tor Meeting at the Hacker Club Garoa (11th May 2017)

Our team member in Brazil also facilitated an OONI session at the Hacker
Club
Garoa in Sao Paolo
(https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/CommunityTeam/Projects/GlobalSouth).

Open Source Conference Albania/OSCAL (13th & 14th May 2017)

We presented OONI through a 1-hour talk titled: "Free & Open Source Software
for a Free & Open Internet". More information can be found here:
https://eventyay.com/e/ecc2001a/schedule/

ISC Project Global Workshop (25th & 26th May)

We facilitated the following sessions at the ISC Project Global Workshop
in Washington D.C:

* 90-minute OONI demo

* Contributing to test lists & using data from OONI Explorer

* Measuring internet blackouts

### Community meeting

We hosted our monthly community meeting on
https://slack.openobservatory.org/
on 23rd May 2017. As part of the meeting, we discussed filtering
techniques for
OONI Explorer, as well as methods for tracking internet shutdowns on mobile
networks.

### Article

We wrote and published an article about ooniprobe for Coding Rights'
Antivigilancia newsletter:
https://antivigilancia.org/es/2017/05/ooni-descubriendo-la-censura-en-internet/

## Press coverage

An article about OONI was published on Motherboard:
https://motherboard.vice.com/it/article/come-tracciare-la-censura-di-internet-con-una-app?utm_source=mbfbit

## Userbase

In May 2017 ooniprobe was run 70,218 times from 1,905 different vantage
points across 162 countries around the world.

This information can also be found through our stats here:
https://measurements.ooni.torproject.org/stats

~ The OONI team.