On August 20th and 21st, Psiphon joined the 16th annual Toronto Chinatown Festival for the first time as one of the event sponsors.

In this 2 day event, Psiphon raised public awareness on Internet content access by reaching out to over 200,000 participants and educating more than 200 visitors on Psiphon’s software. Psiphon has also given out 10 visitors a free month of Psiphon Pro and custom made festival giveaways to booth visitors during the event.

As an important neighborhood in the downtown core, Chinatown BIA hosts the Toronto Chinatown Festival every year aiming to bring upon pan-Asian community in the city to celebrate its rich cultural heritage.

Want to invite Psiphon to your next event? Email us at info@psiphon.ca

Did you know that Cuba is one of the countries with the most restricted internet access in the world? Home internet access is forbidden, and even though the government is introducing more and more public WiFi spots, they cost 2$ an hour, which in Cuba is one tenth of the monthly wage. Even then users cannot surf the web freely - they are subject to government surveillance and anti-government websites are blocked. Internet speeds are extremely slow.

Psiphon was in Miami this month at the Cuba Internet Freedom Forum , a conference to discuss and exchange ideas, look at the current state of the internet in Cuba and look for ways to support its growth.

Tell all your Cuban friends that Psiphon will help them access the open free internet!

In December, Psiphon blogged about a previous blocking event in Brazil, available here.

Psiphon use surged again in Brazil in response to another nationwide suspension of WhatsApp messaging service. On May 2nd, Brazilian state judge Marcel Maia Montalvão issued an order to block WhatsApp for 72 hours. The judge is seeking user data from WhatsApp as part of a criminal investigation. The five main mobile operators were ordered to block the messaging service, beginning at Monday at 2 p.m. local time.

In response to the recent suspension of WhatsApp services, company CEO Jan Koum posted a message to Facebook stating, “Yet again millions of innocent Brazilians are being punished because a court wants WhatsApp to turn over information we repeatedly said we don’t have. Not only do we encrypt messages end-to-end on WhatsApp to keep people’s information safe and secure, we also don’t keep your chat history on our servers. When you send an end-to-end encrypted message, no one else can read it – not even us.”

The suspension was overturned by another judge on Tuesday following an appeal from WhatsApp’s lawyers, allowing WhatsApp to resume services in Brazil.

In March, Judge Montalvão ordered the arrest of Facebook executive Diego Dzodan on charges of obstructing justice after WhatsApp failed to deliver messages subpoenaed in the criminal investigation. A day later, an appeals judge overturned that order and Dzodan was released. Although WhatsApp is owned by Facebook Inc, the two companies operate separately.

During a press conference that followed, Dzodan stated that WhatsApp is unable to turn over the data because it doesn’t store users’ messages after they’ve been delivered. In addition, the messaging service uses end-to-end encryption and messages cannot be intercepted.

Using Psiphon, Brazil’s WhatsApp users were able to retain or restore access to the application. The Psiphon user base in Brazil tripled within the first 24h of the ban. Brazil’s Globo news network recommended Psiphon to circumvent the blocking.

Psiphon in Brazil: bytes per hour, 29 April – 4 May 2016: