Internet Chowkidar: Crowdsourcing Censorship Measurement Across India

Internet censorship has always been something that is hard to measure in India. Sadly, our censors aren't as kind as Russia's to who give us a whole list of blocked websites :P

It varies from ISP to ISP, City to City, and even from one day to the next. I'm sure you remember the lockdown days, when many ISPs randomly blocked duckduckgo without a court order or any legal requirement.

There is also some bans that are enforced selectively, like that of the Briar & Element (Matrix Client). They were supposedly only blocked in Jammu & Kashmir, for example.

Internet Chowkidar aims to solve these issues, by crowdsourcing internet blocking data from common people across the country. By collecting data for a diverse range of cities, ISPs and sites, we are able to reasonably gauge trends of internet censorship across the country.

This data can be easily cross-referenced with legal orders, giving us a wide variety of data points to use in the fight for internet freedom.

The talk will cover the following:

• A rough overview of internet censorship, and why fighting it matters

• The different types (and severity) of blocks, such as DNS, SNI, and deep packet inspection

• How we use ooniprobe to identify and differentiate between these blocks

• Demo using the GUI app

• Future of the project, and how you can contribute