Hello,
Today Venezuela Inteligente, IPYS Venezuela and OONI jointly published a research report examining internet censorship in Venezuela.
Our research report is available here: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/venezuela-internet-censorship/
Our study is based on the analysis of hundreds of thousands of OONI Probe network measurements collected from multiple local vantage points over the last 4 years.
Key findings include:
1. **Media censorship:** A number of independent media websites are blocked (primarily by means of DNS tampering) by (at least) 4 Venezuelan ISPs. These include El Pitazo and El Nacional, two of Venezuela's major, independent news outlets known for reporting extensively on corruption (and other political issues). All 3 of El Pitazo's domains (elpitazo.info, elpitazo.com, elpitazo.ml) were found to be blocked across ISPs (possibly in an attempt to reinforce the censorship).
Over the last days, state-owned CANTV appears to have started blocking investigative journalism site armando.info as well (by means of HTTP blocking). This though requires further testing, since some measurements aren't consistent.
2. Blogs expressing political criticism, Zello (heavily used by protesters), and a number of currency exchange websites were found to be blocked. This suggests that internet censorship in Venezuela may be a symptom of its economic and political crisis.
3. **Tor blocking:** We were able to confirm the blocking of the Tor network and obfs4 by state-owned CANTV through OONI measurements and through a number of additional tests and experiments. Our report shares relevant data (in tsv files). The blocking started about two months ago, and appears to be ongoing.
Overall, internet censorship in Venezuela doesn't appear to be centralized, since different ISPs were found to adopt different censorship techniques and censor different platforms. Moreover, ISPs don't always appear to roll out the same censorship in all regions (for example, CANTV appears to block armando.info in Caracas, but not in other states).
The recent blocking of Tor and (more) independent media sites signifies that internet censorship in Venezuela is potentially becoming more pervasive. Further research and testing is therefore required.
You can expand upon our study through the use of OONI Probe (https://ooni.torproject.org/install/) and OONI data (https://ooni.torproject.org/data/).
Thanks for reading!
Best,
Maria.