Internet Censorship in Italy: A First Look at 3G/4G Networks

The techniques used to enforce Internet Censorship vary, and as a consequence the users can experience different results while accessing the same censored content in different contexts. While the corpus of Internet censorship studies is growing, to the best of our knowledge we are the first to focus on censorship detection on 3G/4G (hereafter mobile) network operators. After an introduction on the censorship detection platform and tests we adopted, we report the preliminary results of an experimental campaign we performed in Italy using the five major mobile operators. Our analysis shows that there is no homogeneity of treatment for a censored resource across different mobile operators, with 99.5% of resources showing at least two different treatments, and the pairs of operators differing in the treatment of 32.5% up to 99.5% of censored resources. These results have significance regarding the transparency and precision of censorship, and the possibilities for circumvention and detection strategies.