Hello,

Apologies for sharing this late.

Throughout January 2021, the OONI team worked on the following sprints:

* Sprint 30 - Rough Shark (4 - 17 January, 2021) * Sprint 31 - Rhincodon (18 - 31 January, 2021)

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

Highlights are shared in this report below.

## Report on internet blocks and outages in Uganda amid 2021 general election

In collaboration with DefendDefenders, Defenders Protection Initiative, and CAIDA, we published a new research report documenting the internet disruptions in Uganda amid its 2021 general election.

Our report is available here: https://ooni.org/post/2021-uganda-general-election-blocks-and-outage/

We based our investigation on:

* OONI measurements collected from Uganda: https://explorer.ooni.org/search?until=2021-01-23&since=2020-12-23&p...

* OONI experiments using the `miniooni` research client (which we plan to eventually integrate into the OONI Probe apps)

* Public data sources monitoring internet outages (IODA data, Google traffic data, Oracle Internet Intelligence data, and CloudFlare Radar data)

In the days leading up to Uganda’s 2021 general election, ISPs blocked access to the Google Play Store (hampering people’s ability to download apps), as well as to a number of social media apps (including WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram) and websites (such as facebook.com) – regardless of OTT tax payment.

Access to certain circumvention tool websites (such as protonvpn.com) was blocked as well, though both Tor and Psiphon worked throughout the election period.

Starting from the eve of Uganda’s 2021 general election (in the evening of 13th January 2021), Uganda was disconnected from the internet entirely.

The country experienced a 4-day internet outage (which included election day), as shown through several public data sources: Internet Outage Detection and Analysis (IODA), Oracle’s Internet Intelligence Map, Cloudflare Radar, and Google traffic data. In our report, we also share network-level analysis of the internet outage based on IODA data.

The internet outage is further corroborated by the absence of OONI measurements from Uganda during this time period (since OONI Probe requires internet connectivity to perform tests), as well as by the drastic drop in Tor users and Psiphon users during this period.

Even though internet connectivity in Uganda was restored on 18th January 2021, access to social media and circumvention platforms remained blocked.

Notably, Ugandan ISPs only appear to have started blocking access to YouTube on 18th January 2021, even though the platform is not included on the OTT list of taxed platforms.

Further details are available through our report.

## Blocking of Signal in Iran

On 25th January 2021, Iran started blocking access to the Signal messaging app.

Thanks to OONI Probe users in Iran (who contributed relevant measurements), we were able to detect the blocking of signal.org within a few hours since the blocking started. We reported this through OONI’s Twitter account (sharing relevant OONI measurements): https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/1353637360727109633

OONI measurements on the blocking of signal.org were also shared by Zoomit, an Iranian technology media outlet: https://twitter.com/TheZoomit/status/1353636089647558656

Recent OONI measurements show that signal.org remains blocked on several networks in Iran: https://explorer.ooni.org/search?until=2021-03-20&since=2021-02-18&d...

## OONI Probe Mobile

In January 2021, we released OONI Probe mobile 2.9.0 and 2.9.1 on:

* Android: https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/releases/tag/v2.9.0 & https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/releases/tag/v2.9.1 * iOS: https://github.com/ooni/probe-ios/releases/tag/v2.9.0 & https://github.com/ooni/probe-ios/releases/tag/v2.9.1

With these new releases, we shipped a new OONI Probe test for RiseupVPN (which was developed by the LEAP collective).

We also:

* Completed UI tests: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1272 * Made various code quality improvements: https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/pull/402 * Completed the implementation of the check-in API in the OONI Probe engine and wrote wrappers and integration tests for this implementation: https://github.com/ooni/probe-engine/pull/1158%C2%A0 * Wrote a script to facilitate mobile app releases: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1287 * Worked on adding support for dark mode on iOS: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/925 * Improved the crash reporting system: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1332

## OONI Run

We added localization support to OONI Run (https://run.ooni.io/) to accommodate translations: https://github.com/ooni/run/pull/50

We prioritized adding localization support to OONI Run in response to community requests to translate the platform to Chinese (Taiwan).

## OONI Probe Desktop

Throughout January 2021, we worked towards the OONI Probe Desktop 3.2.2 release. This involved development work towards ensuring feature parity with the OONI Probe mobile app: creating a new Dashboard (with the same UI as the OONI Probe mobile app), adding support for running all tests with a single button, and adding the “Choose websites” button for custom URL testing (similarly to the OONI Probe mobile app).

We also:

Added support for setting the maximum execution time of the Web Connectivity test: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1280 Added support for storing measurements in the OONI backend (and not on disk): https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1313 Worked towards integrating the new RiseupVPN test into the OONI Probe desktop app

### Updated OONI Probe macOS homebrew package

We upgraded the OONI Probe homebrew package to run the new ooniprobe 3.x command line interface. In order to do this, we implemented native system scheduling features inside of the command line tool (see: https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/pull/192).

This allows users to enable automatic testing by running the command:

`ooniprobe autorun start`

More details about this can be found in the following issue: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1289

The maintenance of the package has since been taken up by the homebrew community, which is doing an excellent job at keeping it up to date: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/pulls?q=is%3Apr+ooniprobe+is%3Aclo...

We updated the installation instructions for the OONI Probe Command Line Interface (CLI) on our website to enable users to get the latest version of the OONI Probe command line tool: https://ooni.org/install/cli/macos

## Released Debian package for OONI Probe

We released a Debian package for OONI Probe with support for automatic testing.

As part of the installation process, this package displays the informed consent procedure through the use of native Debian packaging features. Packages are automatically built as part of the continuous integration workflow. See: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1061

We updated the OONI Probe installation page for Linux to feature the new Debian package: https://ooni.org/install/cli/ubuntu-debian

## OONI Probe engine

We released v.0.22.0 of the OONI Probe measurement engine: https://github.com/ooni/probe-engine/releases/tag/v0.22.0

Highlights from this release include:

* Significantly improved QUIC implementation * Significantly improved DNSCheck implementation * New `run`  experiment that takes in input a list of experiments to run along with their options as a JSONL

This release includes a series of API changes, improvements, updates, and bug fixes, as documented here: https://github.com/ooni/probe-engine/releases/tag/v0.22.0

## Expanding OONI Probe measurement methodologies

We improved upon our QUIC experiment, as documented through the following pull requests:

https://github.com/ooni/probe-engine/pull/1196 https://github.com/ooni/probe-engine/pull/1126 https://github.com/ooni/probe-engine/pull/1197 https://github.com/ooni/probe-engine/pull/1176

We also improved upon our DNSCheck (https://github.com/ooni/probe-engine/pull/1166) and urlgetter (https://github.com/ooni/probe-engine/pull/1182) experiments. We collaborated with community members who volunteered to work with us on these experiments.

### New OONI Probe RiseupVPN test

In January 2021, we shipped a brand new OONI Probe test for RiseupVPN!

You can now check whether RiseupVPN works on your network. Learn all about this test here: https://ooni.org/nettest/riseupvpn/

The RiseupVPN test (developed by the LEAP collective) was first made available through the 2.9.1 release of the OONI Probe mobile app (https://ooni.org/install/mobile). The test is now also available in the OONI Probe desktop app.

All RiseupVPN test results from around the world are openly published in near real-time on OONI Explorer: https://explorer.ooni.org/search?since=2020-12-30&test_name=riseupvpn

## OONI Explorer

We released OONI Explorer 2.4.0 (https://github.com/ooni/explorer/releases/tag/v2.4.0) which includes improvements to the metadata of the measurement pages for the purpose of search engine optimization. We also integrated percy.io for the visual testing of OONI Explorer (https://percy.io/407b7763/ooni-explorer/), and fixed some issues in measurements (https://github.com/ooni/explorer/pull/543).

## OONI backend

Throughout January 2021, we worked on the following backend activities:

* Deployed an event detector on test and updated it for the new ams-pg codebase * Monitored the dashboard for the reactive test-list * Investigated the counters bug and created a new counters_hourly_software table * Investigated the cause of the measurement drops * Handled measurement keys in the fastpath pipeline * Fixed the counters table update bug * Fixed the pagination in the API * Changed the DB query timeout in the API to fix test-url timeout bugs in probes * Fixed the API enumeration/paging bug * Worked on implementing the probe check-in API  * Generated report IDs * Fixed the category code filtering

## New partnership

We formed a new partnership with civil society members in Sudan.

We previously had the opportunity to collaborate with this partner as part of Internews’ 6-week internet shutdown measurement training program for human rights defenders, which we helped lead. This training program (which also included OONI modules) helped lay the ground for this partnership.

## Test list updates

In January 2021, we made a few minor updates to the Citizen Lab test lists, as documented through the following pull requests:

* Hong Kong test list: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/711 * Global test list: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/713

## Community activities

### OTF Virtual Summit 2021

Between 11th-15th January 2021, we attended the OTF Virtual Summit 2021.

On 13th January 2021, we participated as a panelist in the online session “Collaboration between organizations in the internet freedom field”, during which we shared some of the challenges, opportunities, and best practices we have identified in forming partnerships and working with digital rights organizations around the world.

## Userbase

In January 2021, 7,188,644 OONI Probe measurements were collected from 5,270 networks in 203 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.