From HandWiki - Reading time: 3 min
| Formation | 2012 |
|---|---|
| Type | Non-governmental organization |
| Website | ooni |
The Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) is a free software, global observation network created to detect censorship, surveillance and traffic manipulation on the internet. It develops tests designed to examine blocking of websites, of instant messaging apps, of Tor and other circumvention tools, and detection of systems that could be responsible for censorship and/or surveillance.[1] It relies on volunteers living under authoritarian regimes to run code that checks for crackdowns and then upload the results to their servers.[2] As of October 2019 OONI has analyzed 292 millon network connections in 233 countries.[3]
OONI was Launched in 2012[4][5][6] It is a free software project under The Tor Project, a research-education nonprofit organization that declares being devoted to empower decentralized efforts in increasing transparency of internet censorship worldwide.[7][8] In 2017, OONI launched OONI Probe [9], a mobile app developed to test network connectivity and let users know when a website is censored in their area.[10][7]
OONI has confirmed the blocking of 886 domains (and 1,019 URLs in total) in Iran over the course of three years between 2014 and 2017, most of which include news outlets and human rights sites.[11] It has also reported the blocking of (at least) 10 media websites in Egypt, including Mada Masr and Al Jazeera.[12] In 2018, OONI detected network disruptions in Sierra Leone right before and after the country's runoff elections.[13] On 24 February 2019, Cuban independent news outlet Tremenda Nota confirmed the blocking of its website a few hours before a referendum in Cuba. A new Constitution was voted in the country for the first time in decades. OONI network measurement data confirmed the blocking of the site along with several other independent media websites during the referendum.[14] The network had previously confirmed 41 websites blocked in the country in 2017.[15][16] Cases of internet censorship and network disruptions during elections have also been detected in Benin[17] and Zambia.[18] In May 2019, OONI reported on the Chinese Government blocking all language editions of Wikipedia.[19][20]