[tor-project] OONI Monthly Report: July 2018

Thu Aug 9 14:58:07 UTC 2018

Hello Tor world,

In July 2018, the OONI team published two research reports in
collaboration with local partners, examining censorship events in Egypt
and Mali. We updated several test lists, continued to work on revamping
the OONI Probe mobile apps and made significant progress on the OONI
Probe desktop apps. We also carried out UX research (via a survey and
interviews) to collect community feedback on the current and
upcoming/revamped OONI Probe mobile apps.

## Report on internet censorship in Egypt

In collaboration with Egypt's Association for Freedom of Expression and
Thought (AFTE), we published a research report examining internet
censorship in Egypt.

The full report is available here:
https://ooni.torproject.org/documents/Egypt-Internet-Censorship-AFTE-OONI-2018-07.pdf

We also published a summary of the report on:

* Our site: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/egypt-internet-censorship/

* The Tor blog: https://blog.torproject.org/egypt-internet-censorship

Thanks to AFTE, we published Arabic translations:

* Full report:
https://ooni.torproject.org/documents/Egypt-Internet-Censorship-AFTE-OONI-2018-07.AR.pdf

* Report summary:
https://ooni.torproject.org/documents/summary-egypt-internet-censorship-arabic.pdf

Our research report received the following press coverage:

* Mada Masr (English):
https://www.madamasr.com/en/2018/07/02/news/u/report-internet-censorship-has-become-more-pervasive-in-past-year-62-of-blocked-websites-are-media-outlets/

* Mada Masr (Arabic):
https://www.madamasr.com/ar/2018/07/02/news/u/%D8%AA%D9%82%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%B1-%D8%AD%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A5%D9%86%D8%AA%D8%B1%D9%86%D8%AA-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D9%85%D8%B5%D8%B1-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B1%D9%82%D8%A7%D8%A8%D8%A9/

* Al Araby:
https://www.alaraby.co.uk/medianews/2018/7/2/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B1%D9%82%D8%A7%D8%A8%D8%A9-%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%89-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A5%D9%86%D8%AA%D8%B1%D9%86%D8%AA-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D9%85%D8%B5%D8%B1-%D8%A3%D8%B5%D8%A8%D8%AD%D8%AA-%D8%A3%D9%83%D8%AB%D8%B1-%D8%AF%D9%8A%D9%86%D8%A7%D9%85%D9%8A%D9%83%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%86%D8%AA%D8%B4%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%A7

* Al Manassa: https://almanassa.net/ar/story/10567

OONI's Maria was also interviewed about the report on the Al Araby TV
channel:
http://alaraby.tv/video/26968523/%D8%A8%D8%AA%D9%88%D9%82%D9%8A%D8%AA-%D9%85%D8%B5%D8%B1
(starts at 38 minutes).

## Report on internet censorship in Mali during 2018 elections

During Mali's 2018 presidential election, locals reported that social
media was inaccessible.

Thanks to daily measurements collected (for more than a year) from Mali
by our local partners, we were able to detect changes in censorship
policies on Mali's election day.

In collaboration with Internet Sans Frontieres, we published a report
that shares OONI data, corroborating local reports on the blocking of
WhatsApp and Twitter during the elections. We also found circumvention
tool sites guardianproject.info and anonymizer.ru to be blocked on the
election day as well.

Our research report is available here:
https://ooni.torproject.org/post/mali-disruptions-amid-2018-election/

Internet Sans Frontieres referenced OONI data from this report as part
of their press statement:
https://internetwithoutborders.org/mali-censure-des-reseaux-sociaux-pendant-lelection-presidentielle-de-2018/

In response, the EU election observation mission in Mali called on the
government to guarantee access to the internet and to social media
during the whole electoral period (including the second round of
elections on 12th August 2018):
https://eeas.europa.eu/election-observation-missions/eom-mali-2018/49004/d%C3%A9claration-pr%C3%A9liminaire-de-la-moe-ue-mali-2018_fr.
Internet Sans Frontieres also published a blog post on this:
https://internetwithoutborders.org/eu-asks-mali-to-protect-access-to-social-media-during-election/

## Progress on OONI Probe desktop apps

A lot of progress was made in working towards a beta release of the OONI
Probe desktop apps. See: https://github.com/ooni/probe-desktop/pull/2

We have reached a point where it's possible via the OONI Probe desktop
app to run all the experiments currently supported by the mobile app, as
well as to view the results.

Several views are implemented based on the desktop app mockups and we
did some testing and debugging of the app on Windows and macOS.

As part of this work, we also made a lot of progress on the command line
interface OONI Probe client. See: https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/pull/13

Some highlights include being able to build a CLI ooni tool that will
run on Linux to empower a fellow OONI developer that is developing on
the Linux platform.

Although we believe that we have made enough progress to call this a
beta, we have decided to hold back a bit from "officially" calling it a
beta, since we would like to do a bit more polishing of the desktop and
CLI app.

In particular, the outstanding issues are noted in the following two
GitHub milestones:

* OONI Probe Desktop: https://github.com/ooni/probe-desktop/milestone/1
* OONI Probe CLI: https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/milestone/1

## Progress on revamping OONI Probe mobile apps

On the iOS version (of the revamped OONI Probe mobile apps), we made
some UI and code improvements. See:
https://github.com/ooni/probe-ios/commits/feature/gson_objects

On the Android version, we finished the dashboard, the class to run
tests asynchronously with callbacks and the first test results screen.

See: https://github.com/lorenzoPrimi/ooniprobe-android/pull/2 &
https://github.com/lorenzoPrimi/ooniprobe-android/pull/3

## UX research

As part of our work on revamping the OONI Probe mobile apps, we carried
out UX research that aimed to collect community feedback on the current
OONI Probe mobile apps, as well as on our mockups for the
revamped/upcoming OONI Probe mobile apps.

To this end, we created and circulated a survey, and interviewed
multiple community members. We have many more interviews scheduled for
August as well.

We also published a blog post sharing the links to the survey, and
encouraging community members to participate in usability feedback
interviews:
https://ooni.torproject.org/post/ooniprobe-ux-survey-and-interviews/

## Updated test lists

We carried out research
(https://ooni.torproject.org/get-involved/contribute-test-lists/#test-list-research)
to update the following test lists:

1. South Sudan: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/366

2. Eritrea: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/367

Based on URLs provided by community members, we also updated the
following test lists:

1. Uzbekistan: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/363 &
https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/368

2. Multiple country test lists with Wikipedia domains:
https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/365

## Community use of OONI data

### Human Rights Censorship Dashboards: Monitoring internet censorship
in Southeast Asia

We are thrilled that Southeast Asian communities have set up a regional
Open Observatory!

Malaysia's Sinar Project launched the Internet Censorship Dashboards
project which engages communities all across Southeast Asia with
censorship measurement research through the use of OONI Probe and OONI
data. The collected measurements will be displayed in a dashboard,
enabling local monitoring of and response to regional censorship events.

Their project is available here:
https://sinarproject.org/digital-rights/updates/human-rights-censorship-dashboards

### Blocking of websites in Malaysia

Malaysia's Sinar Project  published a list of censored websites based on
OONI data:
https://data.sinarproject.org/dataset/list-of-censored-websites/resource/b2717db2-a8e5-40fa-b765-cf0ef755996f

### Blocking of websites in Burundi

CIPESA reported on the blocking of websites in Burundi through the use
of OONI Probe and OONI data:
https://cipesa.org/2018/07/a-new-interception-law-and-blocked-websites-the-deteriorating-state-of-internet-freedom-in-burundi/

### Tor blocking

Briar's Torsten Grote created and published data tables that show the
blocking of Tor around the world based on OONI measurements. This
resource is available here: https://grobox.de/tor/

## Community activities

### OONI Probe workshop in Albania

OONI's Simone and Elio hosted an OONI Probe workshop at the Open Labs
Hackerspace in Tirana, Albania, on 6th July 2018.

Information about their workshop is available via the following links:

https://www.facebook.com/events/396021484219636/

https://wiki.openlabs.cc/faqja/OONI_Probe_Workshop

### Lecture & OONI Probe usability workshop in Ukraine

OONI's Maria gave an OONI lecture in Kiev, Ukraine, on 13th July 2018.
Information about the event is available here:
https://m.facebook.com/events/251993642054831/

She also facilitated a day-long OONI Probe usability workshop in Kiev on
14th July 2018. The aim of this workshop was to introduce local
communities to censorship measurement research and collect their
feedback on the usability of the OONI Probe apps. As part of the
workshop, participants were requested to provide feedback for the
current OONI Probe mobile apps, as well as for the mockups of the
upcoming/revamped mobile apps. The feedback collected as part of this
workshop is guiding the revamp of the OONI Probe mobile apps.

### Cambodia election monitoring

Malaysia's Sinar Project leads most OONI community engagement activities
across Southeast Asia.

Leading up to Cambodia's 2018 elections (29th July 2018), Sinar Project
led a campaign to engage locals in Cambodia with OONI Probe testing to
montior (potential) censorship events. As part of these efforts, they
created customized OONI Run links to measure the blocking of local media
and NGO sites, embedded in the following site:
https://sinarproject.org/digital-rights/kh-2018-elections/cambodia-2018-elections

### Community meeting

We held a community meeting on Slack
(https://slack.openobservatory.org/) on Tuesday, 31st July 2018.

As part of our July community meeting, we discussed the following:

1. Updates on internet blackouts methodology and next steps

2. Monitoring internet censorship during Cambodia's elections:
Discussion of strategies carried out, lessons learned, feedback for the
OONI team, and planned next steps

3. Presentation of Magma: A guide for network measurement and data
analysis in risky environments

## Userbase

In July 2018, OONI Probe was run 217,316 times from 4,497 different
vantage points in 210 countries around the world.

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

~ The OONI team.

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