Cuba
Digital Discrimination of Users in Sanctioned States: The Case of the Cuba Embargo
We present one of the first in-depth and systematic end-user centered investigations into the effects of sanctions on geoblocking, specifically in the case of Cuba. We conduct network measurements on the Tranco Top 10K domains and complement our findings with a small-scale user study with a questionnaire. We identify 546 domains subject to geoblocking across all layers of the network stack, ranging from DNS failures to HTTP(S) response pages with a variety of status codes. Through this work, we discover a lack of user-facing transparency; we find 88% of geoblocked domains do not serve informative notice of why they are blocked. Further, we highlight a lack of measurement-level transparency, even among HTTP(S) blockpage responses. Notably, we identify 32 instances of blockpage responses served with 200 OK status codes, despite not returning the requested content. Finally, we note the inefficacy of current improvement strategies and make recommendations to both service providers and policymakers to reduce Internet fragmentation.
Measuring Internet Censorship in Cuba’s ParkNets
Last May, the OONI team visited Cuba. We ran a variety of network measurement tests across eight vantage points in Havana, Santa Clara, and Santiago de Cuba, with the aim of measuring internet censorship.
We obviously ran our own network measurement software,OONI Probe, which is designed to examine various forms of internet censorship. We also ran other network tests, particularly in response to OONI Probe findings, such as latency measurements to blocked sites, traceroutes, and network scans.
This research report documents our key findings from the network measurement tests that we performed in Cuba. The aim of this study is to increase the research community’s understanding of information controls in Cuba based on empirical data.
The following sections of this report provide information about Cuba’s network landscape and internet penetration levels. The remainder of the report documents the methodology and findings of this research study.