Blocking of Catalan referendum sites

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Monday 9 October 2017 > català > français

Evidence of Internet Censorship during Catalonia’s Independence Referendum.

Catalonia held a referendum seeking independence from Spain. As the world awaits to see what happens next, we publish this post to share evidence of recent censorship events that occurred during and leading up to the referendum.

We confirm the blocking of at least 25 sites related to the Catalan referendum by means of DNS tampering and HTTP blocking, based on OONI Probe network measurements collected from three local networks. OONI data shows that these sites were blocked every day from (at least) 25th September 2017 (when the testing started) leading up to the referendum day, on 1st October 2017.

To collect evidence showing whether and how sites associated to the Catalan referendum were blocked, OONI Probe tests were run in Catalonia over the last week. OONI Probe is free and open software that anyone can run to measure the blocking of websites. All network measurement data collected by OONI Probe is automatically published to increase transparency of internet censorship worldwide.

OONI data confirms that, as of 25th September 2017 (when OONI Probe testing started), local ISPs have been blocking access to (at least) 25 Catalan referendum sites and continued to enforce the blocks on the referendum day.

• The Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI)