# Sustained censorship in SA (2026-08)

**Country:** 🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia (SA)
**Date:** 2026-08-01
**Type:** Censorship
**Severity:** WARNING
**Status:** confirmed

## Summary

OONI detected 3 days of elevated network interference averaging 6.7% anomaly rate.

## Metrics

- Confidence: 67%
- Measurements (stored incident count; not the qualifying evidence count): 3
- Anomaly Rate: 6.7%

## Evidence

- **OONI** (measurement): OONI per-ASN: 15/300 anomalous, 8 confirmed on AS25019
  - Observed: 2026-08-01
  - Confidence: 90%
  - [OONI Explorer filtered results (not one measurement)](https://explorer.ooni.org/search?probe_cc=SA&test_name=web_connectivity&probe_asn=AS25019&since=2026-08-01)
- **OONI** (measurement): OONI per-ASN: 24/283 anomalous, 13 confirmed on AS35753
  - Observed: 2026-08-01
  - Confidence: 90%
  - [OONI Explorer filtered results (not one measurement)](https://explorer.ooni.org/search?probe_cc=SA&test_name=web_connectivity&probe_asn=AS35753&since=2026-08-01)
- **OONI** (measurement): OONI per-ASN: 13/200 anomalous, 2 confirmed on AS43766
  - Observed: 2026-08-01
  - Confidence: 90%
  - [OONI Explorer filtered results (not one measurement)](https://explorer.ooni.org/search?probe_cc=SA&test_name=web_connectivity&probe_asn=AS43766&since=2026-08-01)

## 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.
- **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** — fewer than two source labels appear in qualifying linked evidence; stored incident source labels may include quarantined OONI observations.

## Data Sources

ooni

These source labels come from qualifying linked evidence. Historical incident source labels and quarantined observations are excluded; multiple labels alone do not establish independent corroboration.

## Citation

Voidly Research. (2026). Sustained censorship in SA (2026-08) [SA-2026-0627]. Retrieved from https://voidly.ai/incident/SA-2026-0627

---
*Report generated by Voidly Research on 2026-11-05*
*Data licensed under CC BY 4.0*
*Incident ID: SA-2026-0627*
*Permalink: https://voidly.ai/incident/SA-2026-0627*