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Talk Intermediate CC BY-SA 4.0

Internet Chowkidar: Crowdsourcing Censorship Measurement Across India

Approved
Session Description

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

Key Takeaways

References

Session Categories

Knowledge Commons (Open Hardware, Open Science, Open Data etc.)
Talk License: CC BY-SA 4.0

Speakers

Arya K.
Student

I am a Free Software Developer and Student.

Sysadmin @ https://psf.lt, Organizer @ FOSS United Mumbai

https://aryak.me/contact
Arya K.

Reviews

Sounds interesting. Whether the speaker will be able to complete the code by the time of the event remains to be seen.

Reviewer #1 Approved

Reviewer #2 Approved

Reviewer #3 Approved

The project is interesting, and the proposal is detailed, but i'm not sure about a full talk - in my humble opinion, a lightning talk should suffice to get the audience interested in the project.

As a side-effect, it'll be great if everyone in the audience installs OONI probe after the talk!

Reviewer #4 Approved