Hello Tor world,
In May 2018, the OONI team established a new partnership, created a fully working prototype of an OONI Probe Windows app, continued to make progress on revamping the OONI Probe mobile apps, and published interviews with community members. Further information is provided in the following report.
# Established new partnership
We are excited to have formally established a new partnership with Nigeria's Paradigm Initiative!
As part of our new partnership, we aim to collaborate on the study of internet censorship in Nigeria through the collection and analysis of OONI Probe network measurements.
Social media announcement: https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/993395765665062912
# Created a prototype of an OONI Probe Windows app
We reached a fully working prototype of an OONI Probe Windows app! This involved mostly fixing various issues that were Windows-specific and developing workarounds.
Below is a partial list of the issues we resolved and worked on: * https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/commit/a0be45e32313cf0423b3b49ce6b38acecc1... * https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/commit/d15fddc538e3020d758cbfe4fb68e18d911... * https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/commit/c97217c49e1bfc1500e526bff892388d0e7... * https://github.com/ooni/probe-desktop/commit/b5754c9a1405355a5b7d0604c10d88a... * https://github.com/ooni/probe-desktop/commit/686591c694102c678edafb73d52033b...
Moreover, we improved how exceptions are reported back to us by integrating sentry.io into the desktop app. We will likely add support for doing the same in the CLI tool as well. See: https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/issues/12
# Revamping the OONI Probe mobile apps
The iOS version of the revamped OONI Probe mobile app is almost ready! We completed the details screens and OONI Run, and we can start a testing and tweaking phase.
The current stable version has been updated to 1.3.2 with the update on measurement-kit, geoip and test lists:
* https://github.com/TheTorProject/ooniprobe-ios/pull/178 * https://github.com/TheTorProject/ooniprobe-android/pull/148
We also started refactoring the Android code and researching the required libraries. See: https://github.com/TheTorProject/ooniprobe-android/pull/149/commits
# Press coverage
OONI received the following press coverage in May 2018:
1. CBC News wrote a story about OONI, discussing the use of OONI Probe and OONI data by researchers and advocates around the world. This article, titled "When governments censor websites and block messaging apps like Telegram, here's where to turn for proof", is available here: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/ooni-tor-information-controls-measurement-...
2. The Malay Mail reported on the use of OONI data by Malaysian digital rights organization, Sinar Project, in monitoring censorship events during the country's elections and detecting the blocking of an election result site. This news article is available here: https://www.malaymail.com/s/1631677/watchdog-tm-maxis-censored-live-result-s...
# Community use of OONI data
1. Malaysia's Sinar Project published a report based on OONI data, revealing the blocking of an independent election results website during the country's elections: https://sinarproject.org/en/updates/internet-censorship-monitoring-14th-mala...
2. Kenya's Strathmore University CIPIT published a research report examining intentional internet dusruptions in Africa over the last 5 years. This report cites OONI data: https://blog.cipit.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Report_Intentional-Interne...
3. The "Ranking Transparency of Mobile Service Providers in Russia" report used OONI Probe and cites OONI data: https://roskomsvoboda.org/media/2018/05/RDR-report-EN-1-1.pdf
4. The Berkman Centre published an interview with Sinar Project (our Malaysian partner), which discusses their use of OONI Probe and OONI data as part of their work: https://medium.com/berkman-klein-center/open-without-freedom-8faf1df6e45b
5. OONI is cited in the Global Network Initiative's research report "Disconnected: A human rights-based approach to network disruptions": https://globalnetworkinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Disconnected-...
# Community activities
## Publication of community interviews
We have started publishing interviews with OONI community members to share their work with the world.
In May 2018, we published interviews with the following OONI community members:
1. Moses Karanja: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/ooni-community-interviews-moses-karanja/
2. Julie Owono: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/ooni-community-interviews-julie-owono/
Over the next months, we'll be filming and publishing more community interviews, which will be made available on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQhDgj9wBf4_w5bWFvLlq-w
## RightsCon 2018
We joined the internet freedom community at RightsCon (https://www.rightscon.org/), hosted in Toronto by Access Now between 16th-18th May 2018.
At RightsCon, we presented OONI and participated in the following sessions: 1. Enforcing Net Neutrality with Evidence Based Policy Making: https://rightscon2018.sched.com/event/EHoY/enforcing-net-neutrality-with-evi...
2. Shedding Light on Internet Blackouts: https://rightscon2018.sched.com/event/EHmS/shedding-light-on-internet-blacko...
3. Defending Minority Voices on a Censored Internet: https://rightscon2018.sched.com/event/EHmO/defending-minority-voices-on-a-ce...
4. When Repressive Authorities #KeepItOn: https://rightscon2018.sched.com/event/EHlH/when-repressive-authorities-keepi...
We published a blog post to encourage participation at our RightsCon sessions: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/ooni-rightscon-2018/
## OONI swag
By donating to The Tor Project, community members can now get OONI t-shirts and OONI stickers. See: https://donate.torproject.org/pdr
## Updated test lists
The following test lists were updated in May based on URLs provided by community members: * KZ: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/348
* PK: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/346
* AO: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/345
* Global: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/347
* IR: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/343
* UG: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/342
# Userbase
In May 2018, OONI Probe was run 246,655 times from 4,739 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.