{"676190":{"#nid":"676190","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Researchers Receive $1M+ to Track Internet Outages, Censorship in Iran and Elsewhere Around the World","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EAuthoritarian regimes worldwide have weaponized the internet, using censorship, restricted access, and outages to control their citizens.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ETo counter these tactics and raise awareness, researchers with Georgia Tech\u2019s \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/inetintel.notion.site\/Internet-Intelligence-Research-Lab-d186184563d345bab51901129d812ed6\u0022\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EInternet Intelligence Lab\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E will use $1.4 million in new grants to advance the state-of-the-art in global internet connectivity detection, tracking, and analysis.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe Open Technology Fund awarded Associate Professor \u003Cstrong\u003EAlberto Dainotti\u003C\/strong\u003E and Research Scientists \u003Cstrong\u003EZachary Bischof\u003C\/strong\u003E and \u003Cstrong\u003EAmanda Meng\u003C\/strong\u003E $960,840 to improve research infrastructure and methods to study internet censorship worldwide.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe funding supports efforts to improve the coverage and accuracy of \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/ioda.inetintel.cc.gatech.edu\/\u0022\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EIODA\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E (Internet Outage Detection and Analysis). Developed in the Internet Intelligence Lab, IODA tracks internet outages worldwide caused by natural disasters, configuration issues, or censorship. IODA collects this data and provides it to the public on its website.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOver the years, IODA has provided data to the United Nations, Amnesty International, and other international organizations. Meng said one of their goals is to make IODA\u2019s measurement data more accessible and usable for activists, intergovernmental organizations, and others in the internet freedom community.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe want to enhance our tool to further enable them to monitor and track internet connectivity so that they can use that as evidence in their advocacy efforts,\u201d she said.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EMeng and her colleagues will also use the grant to pilot two projects with \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/dataworkforce.gatech.edu\/\u0022\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EDataWorks\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E. Housed in Georgia Tech\u2019s College of Computing, DataWorks hires and trains people from the local community and provides data services to non-profit organizations.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDataWorks employees will help the researchers to:\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cul\u003E\u003Cli\u003EPilot a global outage tracking team.\u003C\/li\u003E\u003Cli\u003EClean and complete historic outage dataset which contributed to \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/dl.acm.org\/doi\/10.1145\/3603269.3604883\u0022\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003Egroundbreaking research published at SIGCOMM on political and technical signatures of internet shutdowns\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/li\u003E\u003C\/ul\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe second grant, totaling $499,442, was awarded to Meng by the U.S. State Department. This funding supports a project to develop systems and processes that can provide a more coordinated and collaborative way of tracking censorship events in Iran. This award is Meng\u2019s first federal grant as lead principal investigator.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ECollaborating to Track Censorship\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAlong with these projects, the IODA team collaborates with other censorship measurement groups. Recently, the IODA team worked with M-Lab, who secured funding from the Open Technology Fund, to coordinate a series of meetings to bring the internet measurement community together to share research and best practices and learn from each other.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe first of these meetings convened at Georgia Tech in June. Along with the IODA team, attendees included:\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cul\u003E\u003Cli\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/censoredplanet.org\/\u0022\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ECensored Planet\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E, a University of Michigan research group\u003C\/li\u003E\u003Cli\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/ooni.org\/\u0022\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EThe Open Observatory for Network Interference\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/li\u003E\u003Cli\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.measurementlab.net\/\u0022\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EM-Lab\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/li\u003E\u003Cli\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.cloudflare.com\/\u0022\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ECloudflare\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/li\u003E\u003C\/ul\u003E\u003Cp\u003EMeng says the overall goal of the first meeting was to identify ways in which these groups could coordinate more closely and become more knowledgeable about one another\u2019s work.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe are a set of groups that work together to verify outages or shutdowns as soon as they happen by comparing our data and making sure that we\u2019re seeing similar patterns,\u201d Meng said.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWhile we work together in that way, we realized there was a lot that we didn\u2019t know about each other\u2019s datasets, and we could learn from each other in terms of infrastructure or how we go about detecting outages and censorship events.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGeorgia Tech will host the next meeting in December.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":"","format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EInternet Intelligence Lab researchers have recieved two grants to track Internet outages and censorship across the world.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Internet Intelligence Lab researchers have recieved two grants to track Internet outages and censorship across the world. "}],"uid":"36532","created_gmt":"2024-08-23 15:14:22","changed_gmt":"2024-09-16 15:14:12","author":"Morgan Usry","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2024-09-12T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2024-09-12T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"674697":{"id":"674697","type":"image","title":"ioda final screenshot.png","body":null,"created":"1724426071","gmt_created":"2024-08-23 15:14:31","changed":"1724426071","gmt_changed":"2024-08-23 15:14:31","alt":"Screenshot of the IODA website outage map. ","file":{"fid":"258252","name":"ioda final screenshot.png","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/2024\/08\/23\/ioda%20final%20screenshot.png","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/2024\/08\/23\/ioda%20final%20screenshot.png","mime":"image\/png","size":166359,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/2024\/08\/23\/ioda%20final%20screenshot.png?itok=m4F0GcvF"}}},"media_ids":["674697"],"groups":[{"id":"47223","name":"College of Computing"},{"id":"1188","name":"Research Horizons"},{"id":"50875","name":"School of Computer Science"}],"categories":[{"id":"153","name":"Computer Science\/Information Technology and Security"},{"id":"135","name":"Research"}],"keywords":[{"id":"10199","name":"Daily Digest"},{"id":"169129","name":"internet access"},{"id":"187915","name":"go-researchnews"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39501","name":"People and Technology"},{"id":"39511","name":"Public Service, Leadership, and Policy"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EMorgan Usry, Communications Officer at the School of Computer Science\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003Emorgan.usry@cc.gatech.edu\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["morgan.usry@cc.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}