[tor-project] OONI Monthly Report: April 2023

[Maria Xynou]

Hello,

This email shares OONI's monthly report for April 2023.

*# OONI Monthly Report: April 2023*

Throughout April 2023, the OONI team worked on the following sprints:

* Sprint 88 (27th March - 9 April 2023)
* Sprint 89 (10th - 23 April 2023)

Our work can be tracked through the various OONI GitHub repositories:
https://github.com/ooni

Highlights are shared in this report below.

*## New partnerships*

We are excited to have formed 2 new partnerships!

Specifically, OONI established partnerships with the following digital
rights organizations:

* Roskomsvoboda (Russia): https://ooni.org/partners/roskomsvoboda/
* Miaan Group (Iran): https://ooni.org/partners/miaan/

The goal of the partnerships is to collaborate on the study of internet
censorship (in Russia and Iran), and we published dedicated partner pages
(provided above) to highlight their important work.

*## Published report on the blocking of Telegram in Brazil*

We published a new report documenting the blocking of Telegram in Brazil.

The report is available here: https://ooni.org/post/2023-brazil-telegram/

OONI data shows that some ISPs in Brazil immediately complied with the
federal judge’s decision to suspend Telegram, as the blocking of Telegram
started on 26th April 2023 (same day as the judge's decision). However, the
block was not implemented by all ISPs in Brazil, nor was it implemented in
the same way.

OONI data shows that some ISPs blocked access to all tested Telegram
endpoints, while others only blocked some of them. This suggests lack of
coordination between providers, and that each ISP implemented the block
autonomously.

Our Brazilian partner, Coding Rights, published a translated version of the
report:
https://codingrights.org/library-item/brasil-dados-da-ooni-sobre-o-bloqueio-do-telegram/

*## Published report on throttling of news media in Kazakhstan*

We published a new research report documenting the throttling of news media
websites in Kazakhstan. This report documents how OONI data can be used to
investigate and document cases of throttling.

The report is available here:
https://ooni.org/post/2023-throttling-kz-elections/

In our report, we analyze the ongoing throttling of Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty (RFE/RL) Kazakhstan’s service websites in Kazakh and Russian (
www.azattyq.org and rus.azattyq.org), which started on 27th September 2022.
We also document the temporary throttling of Current Time TV during
Kazakhstan's 2022 presidential election. OONI data shows the ongoing
throttling of RFE/RL Kazakhstan’s service websites on most tested Kazakh
providers, while Current Time TV was mainly throttled on AS9198 (JSC
Kazakhtelecom).

Our report received the following press coverage:
https://www.rferl.org/a/kazakhstan-rferl-internet-throttling-ooni/32383892.html
https://rus.azattyq.org/a/kazakhstan-throttling-azattyq-currenttime/32384076.html
https://www.azattyq.org/a/32383510.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I10nuJBKdUc

*## OONI Probe Mobile*

Throughout April 2023, we worked on OONI Probe Mobile bug fixing and
release engineering.

Specifically, we worked on the following bug fixes:
* Resolved a crash occurring on custom website list test results (
https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/pull/569);
* Fixed a bug related to starting the background service (
https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/pull/567);
* Made progress on improving pagination-based scrolling in the test result
screen (https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/pull/511,
https://github.com/ooni/probe-ios/pull/485).

We also worked on the following release engineering:
* Released OONI Probe version 3.8.0 and 3.8.1 (
https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/pull/560,
https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/pull/568);
* Released beta versions for the Android platform, following the
X.Y.Z-beta.A versioning pattern (
https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/pull/566);
* Worked towards a deployment plan for beta versions on Android.

*## OONI Probe CLI*

In April 2023, we:
*  Started working towards optimizing how we manage the Mozilla certificate
pool (https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2444);
* Continued investigating issues with our integration of tor (
https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2406#issuecomment-1479365235);
* Introduced the optional type to more robustly handle cases where a
specific value is not given (https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/pull/1131).

*## OONI Run*

As part of our work on improving OONI Run (https://run.ooni.io/), we
understood that the OONI Run v2 and the richer testing input designs should
be mutually compatible to reduce the overall complexity. We therefore
started sketching out a prototype check-in API implementation that allows
these two designs to interoperate (https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2445).
This is further discussed below (section on richer testing input).

We also started updating the frontend application in preparation for
upcoming UI changes. This work included migrating the codebase to
TypeScript (https://github.com/ooni/run/pull/128) and adding basic
end-to-end tests (https://github.com/ooni/run/pull/129).

*## Expanding OONI’s testing model to support richer testing input*

In April 2023, we continued working towards a design document (
https://github.com/ooni/ooni.org/issues/1292) for richer testing inputs and
we wrote a prototype (https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/pull/1130)
implementing some of the ideas in the design document. We realized that the
name “input” is often associated with the string we pass to experiments. We
therefore considered introducing the concept of “target” to describe a
piece of richer input, and we started working on a glossary defining terms
used in the probe implementation.

We also recognized that richer input and OONI Run v2 depend on each other (
https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2445). The future check-in v2 API
serving the richer input to the probes could also serve OONI Run v2
descriptors. This realization means that we need to ensure that the richer
input design and the OONI Run v2 design are mutually compatible.

We implemented an experimental version of the check-in API to support
richer testing input (https://github.com/ooni/backend/pull/658).

*## Creating a methodology for measuring throttling*

As part of our research on the throttling of news media websites in
Kazakhstan (https://ooni.org/post/2023-throttling-kz-elections/), we
applied our methods for measuring and evaluating cases of throttling. The
report that we produced documents how OONI data can be analyzed to
investigate cases of throttling. Specifically, our report documents how we
analyzed TLS handshake data from the OONI Probe Web Connectivity
measurements (collected from Kazakhstan). To perform this analysis, we used
the OONI data analysis tool (https://github.com/ooni/data).

*## OONI backend*

We extracted API specs into a JSON file (
https://github.com/ooni/backend/pull/655), we ran experiments around STUN
reachability, and we started moving issues from the old API and pipeline
repositories on GitHub to the backend repository. We also deployed and
configured Vector on our monitoring host to centralize the log management
and implement log analysis.

We detected a sudden drop in incoming measurements from the Android probe
due to a bug in version 3.8.0, and we created internal dashboards for
investigation. We also investigated an issue that incorrectly flagged
Signal measurements as failed.

*## OONI Explorer*

In April 2023, we implemented an API entry point to fetch the measurement
metadata and body by measurement_uid. This will allow OONI Explorer users
to access every measurement even when two different measurements share the
same report ID and URL (https://github.com/ooni/backend/pull/656). Along
with the backend changes, we also added a new measurement page that
requests the measurement based on the measurement_uid and redirects from
the legacy page that requires the report ID and URL (
https://github.com/ooni/explorer/pull/850).

*## Creating a Social Media Censorship Alert System*

In April 2023, we made progress on the event detector developed for the new
Social Media Censorship Alert System. As part of our work on social media
blocking detection, we switched to using the Pandas library and worked on
bug fixes and blocking detection improvements.

This work is documented through the following pull request:
https://github.com/ooni/backend/pull/651

*## Automating censorship detection and characterization based on OONI
measurements*

In April 2023, we made progress on automating the detection and
characterization of censorship based on OONI measurements.

Specifically, we carried out the following activities:
* Continued developing analysis of DNS measurements to determine when DNS
level blocking is happening;
* Built a basic set of UI components for displaying DNS-related analysis
and merged it into the ooni/data tool (https://github.com/ooni/data/pull/25
);
* Added support for running the analysis using dask to improve the
performance and make it easier to scale across multiple machines (
https://github.com/ooni/data/pull/27);
* Added support for storing the probe-generated analysis to make it easier
to compare the new analysis engine with the current probe-based one (
https://github.com/ooni/data/pull/27/commits/eb460a42734fb73f6bb573edd051e038713f9cdd
);
* Added support for parsing middlebox test results and storing features
related to them in database tables (
https://github.com/ooni/data/pull/27/commits/b8421096bd1d41b823e1a95ec51f3ea2ccc25ff8
);
* Added support for processing Telegram measurements (
https://github.com/ooni/data/pull/28);
* Added extraction and storing of additional probe-engine related
measurement file keys (
https://github.com/ooni/data/pull/27/commits/f0f65917acb2b0c33208e50673cd6cbca69ca6c9
).



*## Community use of OONI data### Sinar Project’s report on censorship
monitoring during Malaysia’s 2022 elections*

Leading up to and during Malaysia’s 2022 elections, Sinar Project
coordinated an OONI measurement campaign to monitor potential censorship
events (
https://sinarproject.org/digital-rights/measuring-and-detecting-network-interference/ge15
).

Based on the analysis of OONI data collected during Malaysia’s 2022
elections, Sinar Project published a report, documenting their findings.
Their report is available here:
https://imap.sinarproject.org/news/15th-malaysian-general-elections-internet-censorship-monitoring


*### Article about using OONI Probe in Turkmenistan*

Progres, an online non-profit journal, published an article about OONI in
Turkmen. This article describes OONI Probe, explaining how people in
Turkmenistan could use the tool to document internet censorship. The
article is available here:
https://progres.online/sowatly/name-ucin-web-sahypalar-acylmayar/



*## Community activities### OONI workshop at the Digital Rights and
Inclusion Forum (DRIF) 2023 in Kenya*

OONI’s Elizaveta traveled to Nairobi, Kenya, to participate in the Digital
Rights and Inclusion Forum (DRIF) 2023 organized by Paradigm Initiative.
Information about the event is available here: https://drif.paradigmhq.org/

On 13th April 2023, Elizaveta facilitated an OONI workshop (“Tracking
internet censorship: how to coordinate, document and investigate network
interference in your country”) as part of the event. Information about the
workshop is available here:
https://drif.paradigmhq.org/stec_event/open-observatory-of-network-interference/

*### OONI MAT demo for Freedom House researchers*

On 17th April 2023, OONI’s Maria provided a live demo of the Measurement
Aggregation Toolkit (MAT) for Freedom House researchers.

Through this session, Maria shared how researchers can use the MAT (
https://explorer.ooni.org/chart/mat) to track (and visualize) internet
censorship around the world based on real-time OONI data, and use the
platform to answer a variety of research questions. The goal of this
session was to enable Freedom House researchers to make use of OONI data,
increasing the use of OONI data as part of the annual Freedom on the Net
reports (https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net).

*### Presentation of Iran research to the EU High Level Group on Internet
Governance*

On 26th April 2023, OONI’s Maria joined IODA and ISOC to present the
findings from our technical multi-stakeholder research report on censorship
events in Iran (
https://ooni.org/post/2022-iran-technical-multistakeholder-report/) to EU
Member States at the morning session (open stakeholder session) of the High
Level Group on Internet Governance (HLIG).

As part of this presentation, Maria shared OONI censorship findings
involving the blocking of encrypted DNS, instant messaging and social media
platforms, app stores, browser extension repositories, and circumvention
tools in Iran.

*### OONI hackathon at Internet Without Borders conference in Berlin*

Between 28th-30th April 2023, the Internet Without Borders conference was
held in Berlin (https://internetborders.net/blog/2023/05/01/berlin-report/).
As part of this event, Ain Ghazal (OONI research fellow) facilitated an
OONI hackathon that involved developing a VPN measurement research
methodology for Russia and the occupied territories of Ukraine.

*### OONI Community Meeting*

On 25th April 2023, we hosted the monthly OONI Community Meeting on our
Slack channel (https://slack.ooni.org/), during which we discussed the
following topics:

1. Updates from the OONI team.

2. Community feedback for improving OONI tools (such as OONI Probe feature
requests).

3. Using OONI Probe to measure internet connectivity shutdowns.

4. Recording automated testing as a signal for identifying internet outages.

*## Measurement coverage*

In April 2023, 53,140,981 OONI Probe measurements were collected from 3,003
networks in 166 countries around the world.

This information can also be found through our measurement stats on OONI
Explorer (see chart on “monthly coverage worldwide”):
https://explorer.ooni.org/

~ OONI team.
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