[tor-reports] OONI team status report December 2016

[Arturo Filastò]

Hello Tor!

Here is what OONI has been up to in December 2016.

# OONI Monthly Report: December 2016

The OONI team had an exciting December. Some highlights include:

* Publication of research reports in collaboration with partners

* UX design of OONI's web and mobile UI

* Specification of the OONI Probe Orchestraton System (OPOS)

## Research reports

In collaboration with partners, OONI published various research reports
in December. These include:

1. Ethiopia: Evidence of social media blocking and internet censorship:
https://ooni.torproject.org/post/ethiopia-report/

Thanks to the brave Girma Walabum who ran OONI tests in Ethiopia amidst
the country's wave of protests over the last months, we were able to
collect network measurements showing the blocking of WhatsApp and
various different types of websites, including LGBTI sites, political
opposition sites, human rights sites, circumvention tool sites, and
numerous media websites. The measurements also showed the presence of
Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology, used to filter access to a
major Ethiopian news site.

In collaboration with Amnesty International, we produced a report
providing a technical, legal, and human rights analysis of the findings.
This report received coverage from various news outlets, including The
Washington Post and Africa Times, amongst other news outlets. We were
also interviewed by an Amharic radio show on the findings.

2. The State of Internet Censorship in Malaysia:
https://ooni.torproject.org/post/malaysia-report/

As part of our partnership with Sinar Project, OONI network measurements
have been collected from Malaysia over the last months. In collaboration
with Sinar Project, we published a report providing a technical and
legal analysis of the findings.

The main findings of our study show that 39 different websites were
blocked in Malaysia by ISPs through the DNS injection of block pages.
These sites include news outlets, blogs, and medium.com for covering the
1MDB ongoing political scandal. As such, this report provides evidence
of politically motivated censorship.

The findings also show that a site that expresses heavy criticism
towards Islam (and which can be viewed as inciting hatred towards Islam
in the Malaysian context) was found to be blocked, along with popular
torrenting sites (such as piratebay.org), a popular online dating site,
and numerous pornographic and gambling sites. This report also received
news coverage, particularly from local Malaysian news websites, such as
The Malay Mail Online
(http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/from-porn-to-politics-malaysian-isps-aid-censorship-by-blocking-39-sites-sa).


3. Kenya: Censorship-free internet?
https://ooni.torproject.org/post/kenya-study/

As part of our partnership with Strathmore University's Centre for
Intellectual Property and Informational Technology Law (CIPIT), OONI
network measurements have been collected from Kenya over the last 5
months. In collaboration with CIPIT, we published a short report based
on our findings.

Even though network measurements were collected from 4 different vantage
points on an almost daily basis over the period of 5 months, we found
almost no signs of internet censorship in Kenya. While it's positive
that almost no signs of censorship were detected, we acknowledge that
our methodology presents various limitations, as outlined in the report.

4. The Gambia: Internet Shutdown during 2016 Presidential Election:
https://ooni.torproject.org/post/gambia-internet-shutdown/

In collaboration with the CIPIT, we tried to run OONI network
measurements in the Gambia leading up to its 2016 Presidential Election
in an attempt to examine whether sites and services would be blocked.
Instead, we came across an internet shutdown and wrote about it in our
report.

## Other publications

In addition to our research reports, we also published the following:

1. Tor at the Heart: OONI Highlights from 2016 --
https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-heart-ooni-highlights-2016

2. Tor at the Heart: The OONI project --
https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-heart-ooni-project

3. urandom.pcap: Belarus (finally) bans Tor --
https://ooni.torproject.org/post/belarus-fries-onion/

4. New OONI tests examine the blocking of WhatsApp and Facebook
Messenger -- https://ooni.torproject.org/post/whatsapp-and-facebook-tests/

5. A guide on how to use OONI's new web UI --
https://ooni.torproject.org/post/web-ui-post/

6. OONI releases Lepidopter Raspberry Pi distribution --
https://ooni.torproject.org/post/lepidopter/

## UX design of OONI's web and mobile UI

We contracted a UX designer and worked closely with him on re-vamping
the design of OONI's desktop and mobile clients.

Our work can be found here:
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/UX/OoniUiDesign

## Specification of the OONI Probe Orchestraton System (OPOS)

The goal of the OONI Probe Orchestration System (OPOS) is to support a
more dynamic and adaptive way of instrumenting instances of ooniprobe.

In particular the OPOS should allow the OONI project to:

    Adjust the frequency at which periodic scheduled measurements are run.

    Trigger a measurement on a specific input (URL, IP, keyword, etc.)
for a test that is already installed on the probe.


The document that outlines the specification for desigining the OONI
Probe Orchestration System can be found here:
https://github.com/TheTorProject/ooni-spec/blob/ac60b1ed237a7179e627f7c276cd42eb6febe5da/OONI-Probe-Orchestration-System-Design.md

## Measurement userbase

Our network coverage has been steadily increasing. In December we
received measurements from 63 different countries covering more than 156
unique network vantage points.

During December ooniprobe was run more than 12000 times.

~ The OONI team.