The state of Internet Censorship

Will Scott / Vasilis Ververis

Freedom House, 2015

Asia

China

Great Cannon

Bangladesh

India

Pakistan

Korea

Europe

Gambling censorship

  • New censorship "trend"
  • Govs blocking gambling/betting resources
  • Overblocking / "mistaken" blocking
  • Collateral damage
    • Inconsistent MX records
    • TLS timeout sites on same IP

Greece

Per ISP Blocking


HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 2015 01:51:15 GMT
Server: Apache
Location: https://www.gamingcommission.gov.gr/index.php/forbidden-access-black-list/
Content-Length: 258
Connection: close
                            


input: http://xn--mxaaaaded0cl8bwg.com
response:
body: ''
code: 403
headers:
- - Date
- ['Sun, 21 Jun 2015 22:47:44 GMT']
- - Content-Length
- ['0']
- - Connection
- [close]
- - Server
- [WebProxy/6.0]
                            

UK

  • Goverment pressured ISPs promoting filters
  • Each ISP decide on what is right/how to be blocked
  • 21013 sites blocked by strict filters
  • 11395 sites blocked by default filters

Middle East

Saudi Arabia


A HTTP requests test ran on 8/2/15
url: "http://www.arabtimes.com"
method: "GET"
body: "<title>Blocked URL</title><iframe frameborder='0'
    width='100%' height='100%'
    src='http://87.101.181.13'>This page is blocked</iframe>   "
code: 403
Date: "Thu, 10 Dec 2007 08:40:25 GMT"
Server: "Protected by WireFilter"
Connection: "close"
Content-Type: "text/html"
Accept-Ranges: "bytes"
Content-Length: "134"
response_length: "134"
                            

Iraq


HTTP invalid request line test ran on 3/22/15
HTTP/1.0 400 Bad Request
Server: squid/2.7.STABLE9
Date: Sun, 22 Mar 2015 22:02:48 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 1234
X-Squid-Error: ERR_INVALID_REQ 0
X-Cache: MISS from firewall.wahjalayn.com
X-Cache-Lookup: NONE from firewall.wahjalayn.com:3128
Via: 1.0 firewall.wahjalayn.com:3128 (squid/2.7.STABLE9)
Connection: close
                            

Iran

US Response

To ISIS

The Measurement Landscape

Lmaccount, Wikipedia. 2010

Seeing Censorship

Measuring Interference

Lepidopter

OONI powered Raspberry Pi image

Domain Measurements

Mobile Interference

External Measurements

Governance

Human Rights Protocol Considerations Research Group

To expose the relation between protocols and human rights, with a focus on the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly.

What isn't measured

Throttling

Platform Self-censorship

ISP Divergence

Social Impacts

Ethics

Abuse

Informed Consent

Getting Involved