[tor-project] Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2023-08-17

Shelikhoo shelikhoo at torproject.org
Thu Aug 17 16:43:52 UTC 2023


Hey everyone!

Here are our meeting logs:
http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2023/tor-meeting.2023-08-17-15.57.html

And our meeting pad:

Anti-censorship work meeting pad
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                                                         THIS IS A 
PUBLIC PAD
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Anti-censorship
--------------------------------

Next meeting: Thursday, Aug 24 16:00 UTC
Facilitator: shelikhoo

Weekly meetings, every Thursday at 16:00 UTC, in #tor-meeting at OFTC
(channel is logged while meetings are in progress)

This week's Facilitator: shelikhoo


== Goal of this meeting ==

Weekly check-in about the status of anti-censorship work at Tor.
Coordinate collaboration between people/teams on anti-censorship at the 
Tor Project and Tor community.


== Links to Useful documents ==

     * Our anti-censorship roadmap:
         * Roadmap: 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/boards
     * The anti-censorship team's wiki page:
         * 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/home
     * Past meeting notes can be found at:
         * https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/
     * Tickets that need reviews: from sponsors, we are working on:
         * All needs review tickets:
             * 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/merge_requests?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&state=opened&assignee_id=None
         * Sponsor 96 <-- meskio, shell, onyinyang, cohosh
             * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/24
         * Sponsor 139 <-- hackerncoder, irl, joydeep, meskio, emmapeel 
working on it
             * https://pad.riseup.net/p/sponsor139-meeting-pad


== Announcements ==

== Discussion ==

     * No webtunnel and conjure options at 
https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-transport.html

== Actions ==

     * Next week (August 10th): follow up on Snowflake/Pion 
incompatibility with Android 11+ and SDK >29) when Guardian project 
responds and shelikhoo returns:
         * 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40278
         * might only affect android apps that target android>11, but 
google will start requiring it soon (end of August 2023)
             * 
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/11926878
         * Issue on pion side, closed as wontfix: 
https://github.com/pion/transport/issues/228
         * we ought to be up to date with dependencies, as renovatebot 
is connected to the snowflake repo
         * meskio will cc Guardian Project on #40278 to see if they have 
any insight
         * shelikhoo will try to reproduce and will try the available 
patches
             * no news 2023-08-03


== Interesting links ==

     * "Citation Filtered: Iran’s Censorship of Wikipedia" (ca. 2013)
         * https://repository.upenn.edu/handle/20.500.14332/37498
         * 
https://web.archive.org/web/20181226101810/http://citationfiltered.org/
         * https://github.com/collina/citationreference


== Reading group ==

     * We will discuss "" on
         *
         * Questions to ask and goals to have:
             * What aspects of the paper are questionable?
             * Are there immediate actions we can take based on this work?
             * Are there long-term actions we can take based on this work?
             * Is there future work that we want to call out in hopes 
that others will pick it up?


== Updates ==

Name:
     This week:
         - What you worked on this week.
     Next week:
         - What you are planning to work on next week.
     Help with:
          - Something you need help with.

cecylia (cohosh): 2023-08-17
     Last week:
         - rebased tor-browser-build MR for lox client integration
             - 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser-build/-/merge_requests/715
     This week:
         - tidy up and share shadow simulations guide for PTs
         - deploy the lox distributor for testing with rdsys
             - 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/lox-rs/-/issues/19
         - finish testing tor-browser-build MR for lox client integration
         - followup on conjure reliability issues
     Needs help with:

dcf: 2023-08-17
     Last week:
         -
     Next week:
         - merge goptlib STATUS TYPE=version 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/goptlib/-/merge_requests/1
         - revise encapsulation.ReadData redesign to return an error in 
the case of a short buffer 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/merge_requests/154
         - open issue to have snowflake-client log whenever KCPInErrors 
is nonzero 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40262#note_2886018
             - parent: 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40267
         - open issue to disable /debug endpoint on snowflake broker
     Help with:

meskio: 2023-08-10
    Last week:
         - review webtunnel documentation for the community portal 
(web/community!310)
         - fix snowflake release CI (snowflake!157)
         - create an issue to discuss HTTP CONNECT and MASQUE for the 
future of PTs (team#130)
         - lox reviews (lox-rs!22 lox-rs!20)
    Next week:
         - be AFK at CCCamp

Shelikhoo: 2023-08-17
    Last Week:
         - [Merge Request Awaiting] Add SOCKS5 forward proxy support to 
snowflake (snowflake!64) (stalled)
         - [Invesagate] Snowflake failed to connect on Android 11 and 
above 
(https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40278)
    Next Week/TODO:
         - logcollector alert system <- immediate todo

onyinyang: 2023-08-03
     Last week(s):
         - Implemented db
             - decided against polodb and went for sled instead
  https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/lox-rs/-/merge_requests/22
             - not sure if reading/writing the lox-context to json 
should still be supported at all or just removed
      - Implemented and tested a basic k-invites for open entry distribution
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/lox-rs/-/merge_requests/20
       - Thought more deeply about how best to sync Lox with rdsys given 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/168
             - the rdsys API is really not designed for a distributor 
like Lox that needs persistence. Even a lastPassed flag will only be 
helpful for `gone` resources if Lox stores all of the resource info from 
rdsys and checks it regularly. This diverges from the original intention 
of rdsys, in which rdsys should be the 'arbiter of truth' for the status 
of resources
             - The next step is to check the rdsys API and see if the 
get functionality can improve this situation. I think ideally we want a 
list of all resources assigned to Lox and their current statuses that 
can then be checked against something like the `lastPassed` flag each 
time Lox polls rdsys.
     This week:
         - Continue with implementing db and synchronization between 
Lox/rdsys (possibly reliant on some aspects of the former point)
         - Work on adding metrics
         - AFK from August 5 - 21!
     (long term things were discussed at the meeting!):
          https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-ac-community-azaleas-room-keep
             - brainstorming grouping strategies for Lox buckets (of 
bridges) and gathering context on how types of bridges are 
distributed/use in practice
             Question: What makes a bridge usable for a given user, and 
how can we encode that to best ensure we're getting the most appropriate 
resources to people?
                 1. Are there some obvious grouping strategies that we 
can already consider?
                  e.g., by pt, by bandwidth (lower bandwidth bridges 
sacrificed to open-invitation buckets?), by locale (to be matched with a 
requesting user's geoip or something?)
                 2. Does it make sense to group 3 bridges/bucket, so 
trusted users have access to 3 bridges (and untrusted users have access 
to 1)? More? Less?

Itchy Onion: 2023-06-08
     Last week:
     - fixed snowflake pipeline due to outdated Debian image
     - continue working on rdsys#56 implementation. Still need to do the 
following:
         - finish up computing bridge distribution in Kraken
              - does it have to be deterministic?
              - does the disproportion have to be strictly followed
          - finish writing tests
          - refactor code because some functions are getting extremely long
          - what to do with stencil package?
     This week:
     - review MRs
     - continue working on rdsys#56 implementation. Still need to do the 
following:
         - fixed a problem with vanilla bridges not being added properly 
to the database
         - still working on tests
         - adding a migaration patch 
(https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/56#note_2908572)

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