(STR/AFP/Getty Images)Īs network filtering and censorship technology become easier to obtain and use - and incidents of blocking, filtering, or full internet shutdowns increase - data collected by OONI is playing an increasingly important role in holding governments to account. After temporarily blocking access to the messaging app Telegram in January, its use was officially prohibited last month. The tests look for telltale signs of what people in the digital rights community call "information controls" - the myriad techniques used to block websites and apps or make them so slow to load they become impossible to use.ĭuring the Iran protests, having that data "was really valuable to show what the government was doing," said Alimardani, who leads some Iranian digital rights programs for the advocacy organization ARTICLE 19 and is a doctoral student at the Oxford Internet Institute.Īngry over economic problems, Iranian students demonstrate at the University of Tehran December 30, 2017. The organization collects evidence of internet censorship in more than 200 countries, with help from as many as 50,000 volunteers - often activists and human rights defenders but also regular citizens - who run OONI's internet measurement testing apps each month. Peter Micek, general counsel, Access Now It's about holding government officials to the fire and keeping their commitments to protect free expression clear. But to understand how, exactly, Telegram was being blocked - and to what extent in different parts of the country - researcher Mahsa Alimardani turned to technical data gathered by a watchdog group called the Open Observatory of Network Interference, or OONI. Which is why, after anti-government protests broke out in the final days of 2017, the government instructed the country's internet service providers to implement temporary controls that would make Telegram harder to use - before outright banning its use this month.Īnecdotal reports are one thing. In Iran, use of the messaging app Telegram has officially been banned.įor some 40 million Iranians, Telegram has been an integral part of daily life, a place to talk with friends and family beyond the reach of government censors.
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