# Sustained censorship in AE (2026-04)

**Country:** 🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates (AE)
**Date:** 2026-04-20
**Type:** Censorship
**Severity:** CRITICAL
**Status:** confirmed

## Summary

OONI detected 6 days of elevated network interference averaging 63.6% anomaly rate.

## Metrics

- Confidence: 72%
- Measurements: 6
- Anomaly Rate: 63.6%

## Evidence

- **OONI** (measurement): OONI signal: 7/14 measurements anomalous (50.0%)
  - Observed: 2026-04-30
  - Confidence: 70%
  - [OONI Explorer (independently verifiable)](https://explorer.ooni.org/search?probe_cc=AE&test_name=signal&since=2026-04-30&until=2026-04-30&only=anomalies)
- **OONI** (measurement): OONI signal: 1/2 measurements anomalous (50.0%)
  - Observed: 2026-04-30
  - Confidence: 70%
  - [OONI Explorer (independently verifiable)](https://explorer.ooni.org/search?probe_cc=AE&test_name=signal&since=2026-04-30&until=2026-04-30&only=anomalies)
- **OONI** (measurement): OONI tor: 13/13 measurements anomalous (100.0%)
  - Observed: 2026-04-28
  - Confidence: 90%
  - [OONI Explorer (independently verifiable)](https://explorer.ooni.org/search?probe_cc=AE&test_name=tor&since=2026-04-28&until=2026-04-28&only=anomalies)
- **OONI** (measurement): OONI tor: 10/14 measurements anomalous (71.4%)
  - Observed: 2026-04-27
  - Confidence: 79%
  - [OONI Explorer (independently verifiable)](https://explorer.ooni.org/search?probe_cc=AE&test_name=tor&since=2026-04-27&until=2026-04-27&only=anomalies)
- **OONI** (measurement): OONI tor: 15/25 measurements anomalous (60.0%)
  - Observed: 2026-04-27
  - Confidence: 74%
  - [OONI Explorer (independently verifiable)](https://explorer.ooni.org/search?probe_cc=AE&test_name=tor&since=2026-04-27&until=2026-04-27&only=anomalies)
- **OONI** (measurement): OONI telegram: 3/6 measurements anomalous (50.0%)
  - Observed: 2026-04-20
  - Confidence: 70%
  - [OONI Explorer (independently verifiable)](https://explorer.ooni.org/search?probe_cc=AE&test_name=telegram&since=2026-04-20&until=2026-04-20&only=anomalies)

## What we cannot say

- **Who caused it** — measurement data alone does not attribute the interference to any government, ISP, or other actor.
- **Intent** — anomalous or unreachable measurements indicate interference, not a stated motive or a deliberate-vs-incidental determination.
- **Which networks** — no specific ASN/ISP is identified for this incident.
- **The mechanism** — we cannot state whether this was DNS tampering, TLS/SNI reset, HTTP blockpage, throttling, or an infrastructure outage.
- **Sub-national scope** — measurement is aggregated at the country level; we cannot localize to a province, city, or network segment.
- **Independent corroboration** — this rests on a single source; treat it as a single-source signal, not a multi-source confirmation.

## Data Sources

ooni

## Citation

Voidly Research. (2026). Sustained censorship in AE (2026-04) [AE-2026-0256]. Retrieved from https://voidly.ai/incident/AE-2026-0256

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*Report generated by Voidly Research on 2026-06-21*
*Data licensed under CC BY 4.0*
*Incident ID: AE-2026-0256*
*Permalink: https://voidly.ai/incident/AE-2026-0256*