Developing a Science of Internet Censorship Resistance: Opportunities and Challenges for Network Measurement

The Internet has become a critical communication infrastructure for citizens to obtain accurate information, organize political actions, and express dissatisfaction with their governments. This fact has not gone unnoticed, with governments clamping down on this medium via censorship, surveillance and even large-scale Internet take-downs. As online information controls become more common, circumvention researchers are left working tirelessly to stay one step ahead. In this talk, I will present my research which leverages network measurement as a basis to stay one step ahead in the censorship arms race. In this talk, I will overview how we measure Internet censorship and describe ICLab, our platform for measuring Internet censorship. I will then describe two case studies where ICLab has helped to understand filtering in Yemen and Iran. Specifically, I will describe how ICLab has been able to pinpoint specific products used for censorship and how it helped understand how sanctions impact users’ Internet experience in Iran.