February 2015 - ooni-dev - lists.torproject.org

OONI weekly dev meeting today Monday 23rd of February 18:00 UTC
by Arturo Filastò 23 Feb '15

23 Feb '15

Hello Oonitarians, We have skipped the last two weekly dev meetings because of various necessities, but I am going to suggest we try and make it today. There are a lot of interesting things to discuss and think about together. These are the topics that I have in mind, feel free to append to this list if you think that there is something else: * Discuss the outcome of the "Future of OONI" thread: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/ooni-dev/2015-February/000246.html * Updates on the migration of the pipeline * Discuss how to get 1.2.3 released on debian * Updates on libight and iOS integration * Finishing the bridge reachability study The meeting will happen as usual on the #ooni channel on irc.oftc.net at 18:00 UTC (19:00 CET, 13:00 EST, 10:00 PST). See you soon! ~ Arturo

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Let's come up with the roadmap for the future of OONI
by Arturo Filastò 22 Feb '15

22 Feb '15

Hello Oonitarians and Divisionists, I would love to have your feedback on what you believe to be the most important topics for the future of OONI. I have made a list of what I believe are all possible and interesting tasks to perform, but we can't do them all and for sure we can't do them all at once. For this reason it would be very useful if you could express a vote from 1-5: 1: Nah, this is boring and pointless 2: Not really super important, I would give priority to other stuff 3: Useful, I would do it 4: This would be awesome 5: Epic! Feel free to also expand these topics with questions and feedback (or new ones). At the end of the list I will give you a table to cast your vote. # Get daily OONI measurements from 50 countries This means focusing on getting a large and diverse reliable OONI userbase. It does not simply mean to get at least 1 measurement in 50 countries, but it means either establishing relationships with trusted parties in 50 countries, or expanding our userbase to a point where we have at least 1 measurement per day for every test per country (from the same network). Ways of achieving this are: * Rent a VPS in X number of countries * Running the adopt an ooniprobe program (see below for more details) * Establish an agreement with operators in 50 countries to host the probing infrastructure (as previously stated) # Develop OONI tests for censorship circumvention tools This involves devising a methodology for testing the reliability of censorship circumvention tools in various countries. It means testing censorship circumvention tool both open source and propertairy. A cursory list of the protocols/tools we could be interested includes, but is not limited to: * Tor * VPN * Web proxies (hidemyass, etc.) * SSH tunnel * Freegate * Psiphon * Ultrasurf * alkasir If you think we should be testing some other tools too, please add to this list. Useful resources: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/publications/2011/2011_Circumvention_Tool_Eval… http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/publications/2010/Circumvention_Tool_Usage # Develop scheme for orchestrating ooni-probes This means coming up with a protocol that allows an OONI test developer to schedule a measurement to be run with a certain input they decide on a set of probes in country X. Obviously security considerations need to be taken into account and access will be in the initial stage only limited to a very restricted set of OONI developers that will be made public. # Implement data analytics and visualization for OONI tests We have a bunch of data and we would like to give meaning to it. This would involve writing tools for querying the data in the database and extract useful analytical information from it. Based on this data we can then start looking at historical OONI data and provide some sample visually supported reports. This is a list of tests we should develop analytics for: * HTTP requests * DNS Consistency * DNS Injection * TCP Connect * HTTP Invalid Request Line * HTTP Header Field Manipulation * Multi protocol port traceroute # Implement pub-sub system for ooni collectors Currently OONI collectors (the things you send your ooniprobe measurement results to) keep in sync thanks to a bunch of shell scripts and cronjobs. To have more real time data it would be useful to have a pub-sub mechanism that allows the pipeline to subscribe to all the collectors and the collectors will then publish the collected reports to it, as soon as they are submitted. This will allow the OONI data to go through the data pipeline much faster (instead of ~2 hours, perhaps just some minutes or even less potentially). # Reach production quality ooni rasperry-pi (beagle-board) images This involves implementing what is specified in the lepidopter specification: https://github.com/anadahz/lepidopter/blob/master/specification.md We should then provide scripts for building the image yourself or how to download and burn it to an SD card on Windows, OSX, Linux (with screenshots). As a bonus we could also offer shipping of pre-made raspberry pi images already burn to an SD card, similar to what is done with rasbpian images. # Promote and further develop OONI on mobile (Android, iOS) This involves improving the GUI of OONI on mobile and getting it into the Google Play store and the Apple App store. We should also work on making it easier for developers of existing iOS and Android apps to add internet measurement capabilities to their app by linking to libight. # Do research based on OONI This would involve doing some research on internet censorship based on OONI probe or on internet measurement in general and publishing them in peer reviewed venues. # Publish monthly reports about the status of internet censorship in a country This would be sort of like a monthly e-zine, where every month we analyse the status of internet censorship in a given country. It should be backed by OONI data, but the core of it should be an editorial type piece explaining the context of the country and how censorship is affecting them. I expect most of this work to be carried out by somebody that has a background in journalism and social sciences. # Run "adopt an ooni-probe" campaign This is basically a program where people make a donation to support getting somebody in an interesting country an ooniprobe or receiving an ooniprobe themselves. # Integration with other censorship measurement projects This means finding better ways of using data from other projects as part of OONI research or getting them to use our data. # Reaching out to communities inside of censored regions This means getting a better understanding of what "benefit" we can give to people that are running the tool. On this topic also see: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/14760 # Redesign the website for ooni This means removing the horrible bootstrap basic template of the current website and restructuring it so people actually understand what OONI is and how it can be useful to them. # Hold an international internet censorship conference This means running an event where we invite a bunch of people that are active in the field of internet censorship and discuss ideas and possible collaborations. # Implement a GUI for ooniprobe This means picking up where we left off with the OONI web gui and finish implementing it. This could potentially also be useful for the orchestration task as we could implement access control on the HTTP API that the web interface consumes. Goal | Vote ---------------------------------- Get daily OONI measurements | from 50 countries | 0 ---------------------------------- Develop OONI tests for | censorship circumvention | tools | 0 ---------------------------------- Develop scheme for | orchestrating ooni-probes | 0 ---------------------------------- Implement data analytics | and visualization for OONI | tests | 0 ---------------------------------- Implement pub-sub system | for ooni collectors | 0 ---------------------------------- Reach production quality | ooni rasperry-pi | (beagle-board) images | 0 ---------------------------------- Promote and further | develop OONI on mobile | (Android, iOS) | 0 ---------------------------------- Publish monthly reports | about the status of | internet censorship in | a country | 0 ---------------------------------- Run "adopt an ooni-probe" | campaign | 0 ---------------------------------- Integration with other | censorship measurement | projects | 0 ---------------------------------- Reaching out to communities| inside of censored regions | 0 ---------------------------------- Redesign the website for | ooni | 0 ---------------------------------- Hold an international | internet censorship | conference | 0 ---------------------------------- Implement a GUI for | ooniprobes | 0 ---------------------------------- Do research based on | OONI | 0 ---------------------------------- Thanks for taking the time to go through this long email, you can as always find us on IRC #OONI irc.oftc.net. Have fun! ~ Arturo

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Volunteering some developer time
by Kevin Murray 13 Feb '15

13 Feb '15

Hi, I'd love to get involved with the OONI project. I'm doing a PhD in high-performance/scientific computing, working with large experimental datasets. I have experience coding in C, python and R, and a modest understanding of statistics. I have also contributed code (mostly test cases) to little-t tor. Is there a particular part of the OONI infrastructure that would like a volunteer? If possible, it would be great to have a longer-term project, working with a mentor or similar, though I know everyone is very busy. I'm happy to work on any part of OONI. Thanks for your all work, and I hope I can be of assistance, Kevin --- Kevin Murray spam(a)kdmurray.id.au I'm an FSF member -- Help us support software freedom! <https://www.fsf.org/join> GPG pubkey: http://www.kdmurray.id.au/static/A4B4EE6A.asc FPR: 656C 0632 1EAB 2C3F 3837 9767 17C2 8EB1 A4B4 EE6A

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Timeline of Tor blocking
by Sadia Afroz 04 Feb '15

04 Feb '15

Hi all, I am trying to make a list of events when different censorship regimes blocked Tor. The goal is to understand the censorship arms race, especially capabilities of current censors and how long it took Tor to resolve those issues. The attached pdf has all the events I could find. I collected these events from the Tor blog, the bug tracker and the censorship wiki. For some of the events I couldn't find any dates and also I'm not sure if this is a complete list of all the censorship events. Can any of you help me find dates of some of the events or direct me to other sources of information to find more events? Thanks! -- Sadia

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Rescheduling ooni weekly dev meeting
by Arturo Filastò 02 Feb '15

02 Feb '15

Hi Oonitarians! Today at 19:00 CET we were supposed to have the weekly meeting, but I would like to ask if it were possible to reschedule it. Moreover some OONI people are at FOSDEM so I don't expect a lot of people to attend. I am going to suggest we simply postpone the meeting to next week and hold it on next monday at the same time. Are there problems with doing so? Would you prefer to do it sooner? ~ Arturo

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