Internet censorship in the European Union

Diese Arbeit befasst sich mit Internetzensur innnerhalb der EU, und hier insbesondere mit der technischen Umsetzung, das heißt mit den angewandten Sperrmethoden und Filterinfrastrukturen, in verschiedenen EU-Ländern. Neben einer Darstellung einiger Methoden und Infrastrukturen wird deren Nutzung zur Informationskontrolle und die Sperrung des Zugangs zu Websites und anderen im Internet verfügbaren Netzdiensten untersucht. Die Arbeit ist in drei Teile gegliedert. Zunächst werden Fälle von Internetzensur in verschiedenen EU-Ländern untersucht, insbesondere in Griechenland, Zypern und Spanien. Anschließend wird eine neue Testmethodik zur Ermittlung der Zensur mittels einiger Anwendungen, welche in mobilen Stores erhältlich sind, vorgestellt. Darüber hinaus werden alle 27 EU-Länder anhand historischer Netzwerkmessungen, die von freiwilligen Nutzern von OONI aus der ganzen Welt gesammelt wurden, öffentlich zugänglichen Blocklisten der EU-Mitgliedstaaten und Berichten von Netzwerkregulierungsbehörden im jeweiligen Land analysiert.This is a thesis on Internet censorship in the European Union (EU), specifically regarding the technical implementation of blocking methodologies and filtering infrastructure in various EU countries. The analysis examines the use of this infrastructure for information controls and the blocking of access to websites and other network services available on the Internet. The thesis follows a three-part structure. Firstly, it examines the cases of Internet censorship in various EU countries, specifically Greece, Cyprus, and Spain. Subsequently, this paper presents a new testing methodology for determining censorship of mobile store applications. Additionally, it analyzes all 27 EU countries using historical network measurements collected by Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) volunteers from around the world, publicly available blocklists used by EU member states, and reports issued by network regulators in each country

Website blocking in the European Union: Network interference from the perspective of Open Internet

By establishing an infrastructure for monitoring and blocking networks in accordance with European Union (EU) law on preventive measures against the spread of information, EU member states have also made it easier to block websites and services and monitor information. While relevant studies have documented Internet censorship in non‐European countries, as well as the use of such infrastructures for political reasons, this study examines network interference practices such as website blocking against the backdrop of an almost complete lack of EU‐related research. Specifically, it performs and demonstrates an analysis for the total of 27 EU countries based on three different sources. They include first, tens of millions of historical network measurements collected in 2020 by Open Observatory of Network Interference volunteers from around the world; second, the publicly available blocking lists used by EU member states; and third, the reports issued by network regulators in each country from May 2020 to April 2021. Our results show that authorities issue multiple types of blocklists. Internet Service Providers limit access to different types and categories of websites and services. Such resources are sometimes blocked for unknown reasons and not included in any of the publicly available blocklists. The study concludes with the hurdles related to network measurements and the nontransparency from regulators regarding specifying website addresses in blocking activities.Peer Reviewe

How India Censors the Web

One of the primary ways in which India engages in online censorship is by ordering Internet Service Providers (ISPs) operating in its jurisdiction to block access to certain websites for its users. This paper reports the different techniques Indian ISPs are using to censor websites, and investigates whether website blocklists are consistent across ISPs. We propose a suite of tests that prove more robust than previous work in detecting DNS and HTTP based censorship. Our tests also discern the use of SNI inspection for blocking websites, which is previously undocumented in the Indian context. Using information from court orders, user reports, and public and leaked government orders, we compile the largest known list of potentially blocked websites in India. We pass this list to our tests and run them from connections of six different ISPs, which together serve more than 98% of Internet users in India. Our findings not only confirm that ISPs are using different techniques to block websites, but also demonstrate that different ISPs are not blocking the same websites

Internet measurements and policy

Ideally telecommunications policy decisions would be based on easily understandable data collected by several, federated, independent, open-source network measurement tools based on documented methodologies. In reality, most measurement tools are fragmented to such an extent that their data are limited in comparability and not immediately accessible to inform policy. This paper tries to understand how we could improve the current situation. We describe how successful internet measurement tools managed to foster their adoption by users. We argue that cooperation is the key to reduce the burden on individual project maintainers and we model factors reducing incentives to cooperate. We set forth an agenda for increasing cooperation and we provide examples of cooperation between projects