[tor-project] OONI Monthly Report: April 2018

[Maria Xynou]

Hello Tor,

The OONI team published a report on network disruptions in Sierra Leone
and established a new partnership with a local human rights organization
in South Sudan. We also updated more test lists based on research, and
we continued to make progress on probe orchestration, the development of
the Windows app, and on the revamping of our mobile apps. We
experimented with creating and publishing our first short documentary,
and we continued to collaborate with community members on tracking
censorship events worldwide.

# Established new partnership

We are excited to have formally established a new partnership with South
Sudan's The Advocates for Human Rights and Democracy (TAHURID).

As part of our new partnership, we aim to collaborate on the study of
internet censorship in South Sudan through the collection and analysis
of OONI Probe network measurements.

Social media
announcement: https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/988695263274586112

# Updated test lists

We carried out research
(https://ooni.torproject.org/get-involved/contribute-test-lists/#test-list-research)
<https://ooni.torproject.org/get-involved/contribute-test-lists/#test-list-research%29> to
identify more URLs to test for censorship in Zimbabwe and Venezuela.
Based on this research, we updated the following test lists:
    
* Zimbabwe: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/327

* Venezuela: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/329

Overall, based on research, we have updated the following 5 test lists
over the last months:

* Zimbabwe: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/327

* Venezuela: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/329

* Sierra Leone: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/320

* Egypt: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/336
    
* Mali: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/304

During April 2018, we also updated the following test lists based on
URLs provided by community members:

* Kazakhstan: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/330

* Ethiopia: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/326

* Venezuela: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/333

* Uganda: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/334

# Report on network disruptions in Sierra Leone

We collaborated with Sierra Leone's Campaign for Human Rights and
Development International (CHRDI) to monitor censorship events
during the country's election period. 

OONI data collected and analyzed from Sierra Leone did not show any
significant signs of internet censorship. Even though WhatsApp and
Facebook Messenger were accessible, their testing presented high
execution time, indicating some form of performance degradation on the
network.

Amid Sierra Leone's runoff elections, two network disruptions occurred.
We examined these disruptions via Google traffic and BGP data, and
published a
report: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/sierra-leone-network-disruptions-2018-elections/ 

# Progress on Probe Orchestration

We made a lot of progress on implementing probe orchestration for
automatically running network measurements on mobile OONI
Probe. See: https://github.com/ooni/orchestra

Some highlights include:

* Integrating the experiment signing with the Yubikey 4 hardware
security module
* Significant refactoring of the codebase to make it easier to separate
the alert push notification logic from that of experiment notification
* Renaming of Proteus to OONI Orchestra
* Upgrading the web frontend to the latest dependency versions

The unmerged branch containing the above changes is the
following: https://github.com/ooni/orchestra/pull/44

# Progress on the Windows app development

In collaboration with Simone Basso, we iterated on integrating
Measurement Kit into the Windows OONI Probe desktop
app (https://github.com/measurement-kit/go-measurement-kit/tree/feature/windows+binaries
<https://github.com/measurement-kit/go-measurement-kit/tree/feature/windows+binaries%29>)
<https://github.com/measurement-kit/go-measurement-kit/tree/feature/windows+binaries%29>.

# Revamping the OONI Probe mobile apps

As part of our work on revmaping the OONI Probe mobile apps, we
continued to make progress on the design and UI, and we released a new
testflight for iOS which includes new copy and all of the strings.

We also created a design brief for new illustrations to be included in
the revamped mobile apps, and we started working with illustrators.

# Short documentary on internet censorship in Cuba

We published a short documentary that we created during our trip to Cuba
last year, titled: "ParkNet: Exploring Internet Censorship in Cuba". 

This 5-minute film features some of our key findings on our study of
internet censorship in Cuba and is available
here: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/parknet-short-documentary-cuba/

More in-depth findings are available via our research report
(https://ooni.torproject.org/post/cuba-internet-censorship-2017/)
<https://ooni.torproject.org/post/cuba-internet-censorship-2017/%29>. 

This short documentary is our first experiment in presenting censorship
findings with video.

We have set up an OONI YouTube channel where we plan to publish more
videos in the next
months: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQhDgj9wBf4_w5bWFvLlq-w 

# Community use of OONI data

## Blocking of IM apps in Chad

OONI data was referenced in Internet Sans Frontieres' press statement
regarding the blocking of WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Viber and BCC in
Chad: https://internetwithoutborders.org/chad-is-blocking-social-media-and-messaging-apps-again/

## Blocking of news outlet in Venezuela

OONI data confirmed the blocking of news outlet El Pitazo in Venezuela.
We provided an analysis and interpretation of measurements that
supported IPYS Venezuela's report on the
blocking: https://ipysvenezuela.org/alerta/dos-medidas-de-censura-han-afectado-a-el-pitazo/

## Citizen Lab Netsweeper report

OONI data was used to identify blocked websites and middleboxes in the
Citizen Lab's research report, "Planet
Netsweeper": https://citizenlab.ca/2018/04/planet-netsweeper/

# Community activities

## OONI presentation at the International Journalism Festival (IJF)

On 13th April 2018, OONI was presented at the International Journalism
Festival (IJF) in Italy on a panel that discussed the many faces of
censorship. More information about this panel is available
here: https://www.journalismfestival.com/programme/2018/states-companies-algorithms-and-crowds-the-many-new-faces-of-web-censorship

The OONI presentation can be viewed
here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTecjRM8tAs&feature=youtu.be&t=11m56s

## Blog post on recent participation at conferences

We published a blog post on our recent participation at conferences in
Africa, India, and Europe. Our blog post is available
here: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/ooni-in-africa-india-europe-conferences/

## Community meeting

We hosted our monthly community meeting on 24th April 2018. As part of
the meeting, we discussed the following:
    
1. Recap of what OONI has been up to over the last month

2. Outreach: How to communicate OONI Probe more effectively and engage
wider audiences

3. Community engagement challenges: Monitoring censorship events in Chad
and elsewhere in Africa

# Userbase

In April 2018, OONI Probe was run 265,001 times from 4,911 different
vantage points in 210 countries around the world.

This information can also be found through our stats
here: https://api.ooni.io/stats

~ The OONI team.

-- 
Maria Xynou
Research and Partnerships Coordinator
Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI)
https://ooni.torproject.org/
PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E


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