By Engagemedia & Sinar Project

Testing for censorship and network interference for Philippines online media with so far has not found any conclusive evidence of any form of online media censorship. Engagemedia with support of the public, will continue to run and monitor online media for signs of future censorship.

Threats against Philippines media online and offline, continue to rise under the administration of President Rodrigo R. Duterte. In the 28 months of the Duterte presidency, or from July 1, 2016 to Oct. 31, 2018, the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) has recorded at least 99 such cases of direct and indirect assaults against journalists and news media agencies. More recently in March 2019, Maria Ressa, a co-founder of an online news start-up Rappler that has been critical of the current administration has been arrested. In this escalating threat to media freedom, Engage Media has started to monitor and test for online media censorship of over 184 different Philippine media URLs using OONI Probe network interference tests.

On October 2018, an Open Observatory for Networking Interference (OONI) test was run to detect instances of censorship across sites that have published articles on Philippine president Rodrigo Roa Duterte's war on drugs from 1 January to 29 October 2018.

Key Findings

Tests on 70 websites that featured or covered Duterte’s war on drugs indicate that there were no conclusive measurements of online censorship on Smart cellular network. Three websites, foreignpolicy.com, cnnphilippines.com, and politics.com.ph, exhibited possible signs of network interference, but there is not enough data to conclusively indicate blocking or interference.

Method

On 30 October, EngageMedia identified 70 active sites (see Appendix below) covered or have published articles on Duterte's war on drugs from 1 January to 29 October 2018.

These sites have been subsequently tested for censorship or blocking using the OONI Probe mobile application on a Huawei Nova 2i Android phone using the Smart cellular network.

Findings

Out of the 70 sites used for testing, there was no conclusive evidence of any form of Internet censorship. One site, foreignpolicy.com, which published an article entitled, “Only the Law Can Stop Duterte’s Murderous War on Drugs”, reported connection issues. It is important to note that, in most instances, such error does not definitely state that there is an actual censorship. This might signify that there are middleboxes in the used network, which are commonly used for legitimate purposes, such as cache-loading. Two sites had generic time out errors; which with limited test data is likely to be false positive related to intermittent network connectivity, not an actual censorship.

Conclusion and Recommendations

At this time there is no identifiable censorship online with regards to websites that cover the controversial war on drugs by the Philippine government. In fact, two websites included in the test list, Raissa Robles’ blog and Pinoy Ako Blog, have been known to be reputable resources for staunch critics of the government were freely accessible.

While the tests run for this report showed no evidence of censorship, it is highly recommended to run the test during critical events in the country, such as on the midterm and fixed-term campaign and election seasons. As these events include controversial politicians and key actors, the additional tests might yield to more substantive and interesting results.

Finally, as knowledge and awareness of OONI and mobile app so far limited to several groups and individuals, organising more workshops to increase capacity of activists monitoring free media and freedom of expression of those in countries that do not experience internet censorship helps in preparing  for the worst case scenario of internet censorship and shutdowns by increasingly authoritarian governments.

How media and civil society can help run tests to monitor for online censorship

Journalists, civil society and the general public in the Philippines can help by running tests for online censorship with the OONI Probe app for iOS and Android mobile devices.

You can download the user friendly app on:

• Google Play Store for Android devices
• iTunes for Apple iOS devices

After downloading and installing app, and to run tests only for News Media and Political Criticism related websites, from the Websites test card, you can click the settings wheel on top right and then just enable the categories you wish to help test.

If you suspect a specific site may be blocked by your ISP, you can also choose websites to run a test for specific URL and get immediate preliminary results .

Inquiries and Contact

Nica Dumlao. Email: [email protected]

Appendix

Seventy websites have been identified by EngageMedia which have categorised in four categories: News and Media, Organisations, Social Media and Political Criticism.

These sites have been submitted to Citizen Lab Test Lists and will be tested by users of OONI Probe in the Philippines.

News and Media

Social Media

Organisations

Political Criticism