[tor-project] OONI Monthly Report: June 2019

Wed Jul 10 14:21:29 UTC 2019

Hello,

In June 2019, the OONI team published two research reports, released
OONI Probe mobile 2.1.0, improved analysis capabilities through a series
of improvements to the OONI data processing pipeline, and continued to
make progress on the development of the OONI Probe desktop apps and
probe-engine. We also continued to work towards the stable release of
the revamped OONI Explorer.

## Report on Facebook live-streaming interference in Jordan

In collaboration with our Jordanian partners, Jordan Open Source
Association (JOSA), we co-published a research report which examines
Facebook live-streaming interference during protests in Jordan between
December 2018 to January 2019.

Our joint research report is available via the following sites:

OONI: https://ooni.io/post/jordan-measuring-facebook-interference/

JOSA: https://jordanopensource.org/technical-report/

Thanks to JOSA, we also published a PDF version of the report:
https://ooni.io/documents/jordan-facebook-interference.pdf

In this report we share our findings in detail, as these methodologies
could potentially be useful in examining similar cases elsewhere in the
world.

## Report on censorship events in Ethiopia

We published a research report which shares network measurement data on
recent censorship events in Ethiopia:
https://ooni.io/post/ethiopia-whatsapp-telegram/

OONI measurements collected from Ethiopia show the blocking of WhatsApp
and Telegram between 15th to 18th June 2019.

Both WhatsApp’s registration service (v.whatsapp.net) and web interface
(web.whatsapp.com) were blocked by means of SNI filtering, but the
blocks were lifted by 10:10 UTC on 17th June 2019.

Many Telegram endpoints were blocked between 15th to 18th June 2019,
strongly suggesting that Telegram’s mobile app was blocked (though
connections to some Telegram endpoints were successful). The IP blocking
of Telegram’s mobile app appears to have resulted in the (likely
unintentional) blocking of web.telegram.org as well.

We also share IODA and Google traffic data on the internet blackouts
that appear to have occurred between 11th to 14th June 2019.

## OONI data processing pipeline

We made a series of improvements to OONI's data processing pipeline.
These can be viewed through the following pull requests:

* Added pipeline metrics: https://github.com/ooni/pipeline/pull/208

* Progress on adding an analysis tool:
https://github.com/ooni/pipeline/pull/205

* Feed generator prototype: https://github.com/ooni/pipeline/pull/204

* Matched fingerprints by country and globally:
https://github.com/ooni/pipeline/pull/207

* Automated code restyle: https://github.com/ooni/pipeline/pull/206

The above pipeline work aims to support exposing blocking events in RSS
feed hosted on OONI Explorer.

## OONI Probe Mobile 2.1.0 release

We released OONI Probe 2.1.0 on Android and iOS.

Android: https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/releases/tag/v2.1.0

iOS: https://github.com/ooni/probe-ios/releases/tag/v2.1.0

The new release includes:

* Setting for manual (re-)upload of measurements
* Email support for bug reports
* Improved view of test methodologies

## Progress on OONI Probe desktop apps

We made progress on improving upon the UI of the OONI Probe desktop app.
We refactored some of the screens to be more alligned with desktop UI
patterns.

See: https://github.com/ooni/probe-desktop/pull/32

We also upgraded the probe-desktop codebase to use the latest version of
javascript dependencies and made some of the development patterns closer
to those used in OONI Explorer to make it easier to do code-sharing
between the two.

## Probe-engine in golang

We are experimenting with an OONI engine in Go. The objective of this
experiment is to understand whether this could
allow us to obtain good quality measurements with less code to maintain.
We're specifically looking into using the
automatic generation of Go bindings for mobile to better integrate with
the mobile apps.

As part of these experiments we're testing a branch containing
measurement and reliability improvements and we are
evaluating the measurements it produces in several network contexts.

See: https://github.com/ooni/probe-engine/pull/26

## Measuring the blocking of WhatsApp and Facebook in Liberia

Amid mass protests in Liberia over inflation and corruption, locals
reported that they couldn't access social media.

We coordinated local testing and analyzed OONI measurements, confirming
the blocking of WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and facebook.com.

Our analysis is available here:
https://gist.github.com/hellais/43c2d17a426b41fa5e847df1e73e5972

We shared our findings with the KeepItOn mailing list and with the
broader public:
https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/1136995395106758656

## Community use of OONI data

### AccessCheck

The Internet Monitor project of the Berkman Klein Centre for Internet
and Society at Harvard University launched AccessCheck, a tool that
allows people to check the accessibility of websites around the world:
https://accesscheck.thenetmonitor.org/

AccessCheck is powered by OONI data (along with data collected by VPNs,
VPSs, and ICLab): https://accesscheck.thenetmonitor.org/about

### IPYS Venezuela report on recent media censorship

Our Venezuelan partners, IPYS Venezuela, published a research report
documenting the blocking of media websites El Pitazo and Efecto Cocuyo
through the use of OONI Probe and OONI data.

Their report is available here:
https://ipysvenezuela.org/alerta/nuevos-episodios-de-bloqueos-digitales-afectan-el-pitazo-y-efecto-cocuyo/

## Community activities

### RightsCon

OONI's Arturo and Maria traveled to Tunisia to attend RightsCon
(https://www.rightscon.org/) between 11th to 14th June 2019.

At RightsCon, we:

* Facilitated an OONI workshop (hosted by The IO Foundation), as part of
the satellite events (Day 0 - 11th June 2019),
https://www.rightscon.org/program/

* Hosted the OONI Partners Meetup (Day 1 - 12th June 2019): A private
meeting with our partners

* Spoke on the panel: "Measuring internet shutdowns" (Day 2 - 13th June
2019),
https://rightscon2019.sched.com/event/Pvs2/measuring-internet-shutdowns

* Spoke on the panel: "Methods: Measuring freedom of internet" (Day 2 -
13th June 2019),
https://rightscon2019.sched.com/event/Pvea/methods-measuring-freedom-of-internet

* Spoke on the panel: "Detecting, understanding, and countering
censorship of Wikipedia" (Day 2 - 13th June 2019),
https://rightscon2019.sched.com/event/Pvem/detecting-understanding-and-countering-censorship-of-wikipedia

* Facilitated the session: "Supporting the KeepItOn campaign with
network measurement data" (Day 3 - 14th June 2019),
https://rightscon2019.sched.com/event/PvrM/supporting-the-keepiton-campaign-with-network-measurement-data

### Instagram

We created an Instagram account for OONI:
https://www.instagram.com/openobservatory/. Follow, like, and share!

## Userbase

In June 2019, OONI Probe was run 352,807 times from 5,033 different
vantage points in 209 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

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