CAREER: Internet-wide censorship detection, diagnosis, and circumvention beyond nation-state censorship

The Internet’s role as a shared global resource depends on its openness and accessibility to all users. Yet increasingly, barriers are being introduced to Internet access for all by certain actors who operate with diverse motivations, capabilities, and limitations and now influence online access. To preserve an open Internet, we need new approaches to detect, understand, and address these emerging practices of restricting Internet access. This project develops effective techniques and tools to safeguard the accessibility of online information against these new challenges. Its broader significance is to promote a more inclusive and secure technological future by ensuring that Internet freedom is upheld. Specifically, the work advances global Internet observatories through the design and validation of new methodologies capable of detecting Internet blocking activities. It also introduces scalable methods for identifying Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) middleboxes and monitoring their use in restricting access, while providing accurate threat models of modern DPI capabilities by simulating adversarial networks in collaboration with a mid-sized Internet Service Provider (ISP). Finally, the project investigates the technical, operational, and usability factors that shape the adoption of circumvention tools (CTs), ensuring these tools evolve to meet users’ needs and strengthen the resilience of an open Internet. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.