November 2019 - tor-project - lists.torproject.org

Are there countries where using Tor is illegal?
by Cristian Consonni 11 May '25

11 May '25

Hi, (Sorry if this question has already been asked in the past, feel free to point me to the relevant resources.) I know that the legal FAQs by the EFF state that: «we believe that running a Tor relay — including an exit relay that allows people to anonymously send and receive traffic — is legal under U.S. law.»[1] I also know there is a list of countries for which there is legislation that exclude communication service providers from liability. They are indicated in the Legal of the Tor Exit Guidelines page[2], they are USA, Germany, Netherlands, Austria, France, and Sweden. >From some articles in the press[3a][3b] it may be illegal - depending on how you interpret the wording[*] - to use Tor (and other technologies such as VPNs or proxies) in the UAE, with fines ranging in the millions of dirhams (hundreds of thousand of dollars). A couple of weeks ago it was discussed - on this list as well - that a law was introduced to the state parliament to ban Tor[4a][4b]. This follows a case of some months ago of a Russian Tor exit node operator being arrested for inciting mass riots and terrorism[4c][4d]. The idea of blocking VPNs or Tor seems to have already been considered in the past[4e]. This infographic about pluggable transports[5] suggests access to the Tor network is censored or limited in China, Uzbekistan, Iran, and Kazakhstan. Tor being censored orblocked may be different from it being illegal. What about other countries? Is there a place where I can find more about this topic? Cristian [1]: https://www.torproject.org/eff/tor-legal-faq.html.en [2]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/TorExitGuidelines [3a]: http://www.emirates247.com/news/emirates/dh500-000-fine-if-you-use-fraud-ip… [3b]: http://news.softpedia.com/news/people-caught-using-vpns-tor-or-proxies-in-t… [*]: «Whoever uses a fraudulent computer network protocol address (IP address) by using a false address or a third-party address by any other means for the purpose of committing a crime or preventing its discovery» [4a]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2017-June/043293.html [4b]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/22055 [4c]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2017-April/043109.html [4d]: https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/24/dmitry-bogatov-tor-russia/ [4e]; https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-and-tor-ban-looming-on-the-horizon-for-russia-… [5]: https://www.torproject.org/images/PT/2016-07-how-to-use-PT.png

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fosdem?
by Gaba 17 Jan '20

17 Jan '20

Hi! The call for proposals is open for fosdem [0] as well as the stand submission [1] . It would be great to have Tor people from Europe giving a talk in the main track and setting up a stand. Any volunteer? [0] https://fosdem.org/2020/news/2019-08-13-call-for-participation/ [1] https://submission.fosdem.org/submission/stand -- Project Manager: Network, Anti-Censorship and Metrics teams gaba at torproject.org she/her are my pronouns GPG Fingerprint EE3F DF5C AD91 643C 21BE 8370 180D B06C 59CA BD19

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August Fundraising Report
by Sarah Stevenson 10 Jan '20

10 Jan '20

Hello Tor world. Here is the Fundraising team’s report for August. As always, let us know if you have any questions. ## Events We ran our first booth at DEF CON in August. It was an exhausting few days, but we exceeded our goal and raised over $43,000! We also made several connections with folks who want to help us with projects in the coming months. We have compiled lessons learned and are looking forward to attending again next year. ## Appeals The Bug Smash campaign[1] ran from August 1 to August 31. We raised a little over $86K across postal mail, social media, email appeal, and in-person gifts at DEF CON and CCCamp. We received a mixture of currencies, including a variety of cryptocurrencies. This a strong increase over August 2018 when we raised $13K. ## Grants We submitted a grant to RIPE NCC Community Project’s support program for 50,000 EUR to improve our IPv6 support. Thanks to teor, Nick, & Gaba for their help writing this proposal. We submitted a concept note to OTF for a large Tor Browser project which would move us away from the ESR cycle and onto Mozilla’s regular release cycle; it would also allow us to implement some of Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection features. Thanks to the Browser team and Pili for making this happen! We found out that two of our grant requests were declined, one to NLnet for ESR migration and the other to the Deer Creek Foundation for Communications work. Upcoming grant requests: DRL SOIs for Community and Scalability, due 9/20 MOSS Scalability project, due 9/?? (rolling) NLnet, due 10/1 Herb Block Foundation, due 10/3 NSF Dark Decoys project, due ?? (rolling) ## Cryptocurrency We made a connection with a company called The Giving Block[2] that helps nonprofits accept cryptocurrency donations called. We are now listed on their website and will participate in their Giving Tuesday efforts this coming December. We are also discussing other ways to collaborate. ## Monthly Donors We continue to see growth in our monthly donor program, Defenders of Privacy. In August we received $5,386.75 from this group. As you can see in the chart below, our efforts to recognize and communicate with these donors has resulted in more stable income and less attrition. We should expect the group to continue to grow through the end of the year and then have a dip again in January when people tend to reassess their monthly commitments. [1] https://blog.torproject.org/tors-bug-smash-fund-help-tor-smash-all-bugs <https://blog.torproject.org/tors-bug-smash-fund-help-tor-smash-all-bugs> [2] https://www.thegivingblock.com/donate-bitcoin <https://www.thegivingblock.com/donate-bitcoin>

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Tor Browser team meeting notes, 16 September 2019
by Matthew Finkel 17 Dec '19

17 Dec '19

Hello! We held our weekly Tor Browser meeting on Monday in #tor-meeting2. Here is the IRC log: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting2/2019/tor-meeting2.2019-09-16-17.30.l… >From the weekly updates, we discussed and planned a Tor Browser Alpha release for Mac OS X due to the new notarization requirement. This will allow for additional testing before Tor Browser 9.0 becomes the stable version. We also discussed backporting a patch onto Tor Browser 8.5 for this and including it in the next stable release. >From the discussions, we decided on making about:blank the default New Tab page (instead of Firefox's new about:home page), and about:tor will be an alternative option. We are also beginning the triage of Tor Browser tickets for Bug Smashing and we are adding the keyword "BugSmashFund" on the applicable tickets. Finally, we are aiming at releasing the new Tor Network Settings UI in an upcoming alpha release. This moves the configuration settings menu from Tor Launcher into the browser's preferences screen (about:preferences#tor). Below are the notes from our meeting pad: Discussion: (acat) Should we allow users to change New Tab page to "Firefox Home" (Firefox default new tab page)? see https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/31575 (pili) BugSmashFund: if you see any bugs that are outside sponsor work and would be good to fix after ESR68 work is over please tag on trac with "BugSmashFund" keyword (pili) Gentle reminder to update tickets for September with points estimate and actual points once closed. (anto) could we have #31286 (Tor Network Settings on about:preferences#tor) on alpha channel? GeKo: Last week: - Bug 30126: Apple notarization - Bug 31538: Windows reproducibility - Bug 31584: Clean-up mingw-w64 project (currently testing a final patch) - fixed Windows nightly build failure (#31732) - wrote a patch for #31725 (mk localization did not work properly) - worked on missing pieces for #30429 - acat/sysrqb where are we with the reviews/fixups for #31010? Is there anything left from your side? - reviews (#24653, #26345, #30304, #31575) - double-checked our hardening flag situation for Windows and Linux bundles after toolchain updates; I think there a no surprises and unknown issues that popped up - caught up with blog comments (having 4 active blog posts to take care of in parallel is harder than thought :) ) This week: - stack smashing protection for Windows binaries (#29013) - #31597 (Mozilla bug review for bugs squashed between Firefox 61-68) - finish missing pieces for #30429 - maybe release for testing #30126 on alpha channel? we'd need #31702 for that which is supposed to apply cleanly for esr68 at least; apple is saying Catalina gets out in October so, we might have a bit more time here? - reviews mcs and brade: Last week: - Testing and research for #30126 (Make Tor Browser on macOS compatible with Apple's notarization). - Verified that #31464 is no longer an issue (meek and moat are broken on macOS 10.9). - Debugged #31607 (App menu items stop working). - On macOS, menu-related objects are being freed too soon or at the wrong time. - This is a strange issue that is proving to be difficult to debug. (GeKo: Do we know which patch is causing that? If not, could we track down this bug easier that way? mcs: We think it is not caused by a patch but by Tor Launcher opening a modal window during startup but we will confirm) This week/upcoming: - Continue work on #31607 (App menu items stop working). - #31491 (clean up the old meek http helper browser profiles). - Work on other tbb-9.0-must-alpha tickets if time permits. - Reminder: we will be on vacation next week. sysrqb: Last week: Mostly afk. Releases Began dog-fooding 9.0a6 This week: - Pick up #30943 again (only private tabs as the default) - Investigate auto-complete not working on 9.0a6 Android (#31720) - Maybe look at showing Tor Browser version number on Android (#30943) - Maybe help with getting x86_64 Android builds (#31192) _hc/eighthave: Last week: tor-android clean-up work, 64-bit builds and configure.ac --enable-android path tor-android reproducible build (given the same docker container) This week: Android-native TorService tjr: - Worked on the WASM patch but waiting on help: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1576254 - Landed the alloc/dealloc patch in 68: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1547519#c32 - There are a couple of concerning test failures for the MinGW build in the esr68 branch that might/are probably related to this. - I need to fix my IDA installation to be able to dig into these though... boklm: Last week: - Did some reviews: - #31450 (Still use GCC for 64bit Linux debug builds after switch to 68 ESR) - #31264 (tar.gz output files contain non-reproducible timestamps) - #31621 (Fix node bug that makes large writes to stdout fail) - #31641 (Provide link to Tor Browser for Android alpha on our alpha download page) - #31596 (Bump mingw-w64 version to pick up fix for #31567) - #31732 (Windows nightly build failure) - Made a patch for #31448 (gold and lld break linking 32bit Linux bundles we need to resort to bfd) - Opened #31755 (Separate update pings and update requests graphs for Tor Browser alpha and release users) - Looked at #31646 (Update abicheck to require newer libstdc++.so.6) This week: - Test patch for #31538 (Windows bundles based on ESR 68 are not built reproducibly) - Review #27493 ('mk_add_options' or 'export' MOZILLA_OFFICIAL) - Make patch for #31646 (Update abicheck to require newer libstdc++.so.6) - will be afk on Tuesday (tomorrow) acat: Last week: - #26345 - Finish Disable tracking protection UI in FF67-esr (in review) - Investigated if serviceworkers can still see localized msgs in #30683. - Investigated a bit RemoteSettings background requests: #31740 - Created Bugzilla ticket for #30683 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1581537) This week: - 31303: Browser Toolbox fails to open when tor-launcher is present V(is it fine if I take this one pospeselr?) - tbb-9.0-must-alpha tickets sisbell: Last Week: - #31564: Android bundles not reproducible - implemented solution using apktool. Need verification if it works across build machines with different OS. (GeKo: I'll do that while reviewing) - #31568: Gradle how-to. Found solution to remove missing resources that was causing double artifact entries. Documented this. This week: - open tickets for tor-android-service patches - 31564 (if additional changes needed) - 31192 - x86_64 support Pili: Last week: - mostly afk - Gave a talk on using onion services for APIs at API Days Barcelona This week: - Looking at our roadmap and capacity - Moving forward with team lead transition tasks Antonela: - #31660 - Investigating about ESR68 Onboarding > https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/31660 - #31286 - TB9 Network Settings is almost done. Shared with phw and the anti-censorship team to have them in the same page. > https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/31286 - #27511 - Working with TB New Identity > https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/27511 - Back to S27 Onion Services pospeselr: Last Week: got moat bridgedb requests mostly working with new about:preferences#tor page (#31286) CAPTCHA displayed, guesses can be made and submitted, bridge strings returned back but aren't displayed or saved anywhere This Week: rebase current patches to latest esr68 branch >:[ port over the read/write logic for the tor proxy settings, and integrate that into the bridgedb request logic Have a good week! Matt

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Metrics Team Meeting Notes, November 29th 2019 [includes last week releases]
by Gaba 29 Nov '19

29 Nov '19

Next meeting: *Thursday*, December 5th, 15 UTC Hi! We had our meeting on Friday November 29th (it had to be rescheduled this week). Pad for the meeting: https://nc.torproject.net/s/Znd4MkHebAznEgA Meeting Log: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2019/tor-meeting.2019-11-29-15.01.log… Agenda and Notes: collector disk space, and unreliable physical host (irl) irl asks for the disk space to be doubled: #32644 "metrics-team" keyword on IRC (karsten) we'll think about this more and make a decision next week. Pending reviews (karsten) Onionoo backends (karsten) irl asks for another backend host for onionoo-backend-02, and we keep onionoo-backend-01; we also turn off the webservers on omeiense and oo-hetzner-03 once the two new backends are running. irl and karsten are meeting on Tue, Dec 3, 15:00 UTC to set up the new backends. Roadmap - how are we doing? (gaba) https://trello.com/b/Mu5fYg53/tor-metrics-roadmap [announcement] we are testing phase of migration to gitlab - it would be good to get people to check for possible problems https://pad.riseup.net/p/gitlab-migration-problems Releases last week: #32635: Release Onionoo 7.0-1.22.0 Interesting links: Network Traffic Measurement and Analysis Conference https://tma.ifip.org/2020/call-for-papers/ -- Project Manager: Network, Anti-Censorship and Metrics teams gaba at torproject.org she/her are my pronouns GPG Fingerprint EE3F DF5C AD91 643C 21BE 8370 180D B06C 59CA BD19

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Gitlab Ticket Migration: Help Needed
by Alexander Færøy 29 Nov '19

29 Nov '19

Hello! We are moving into the final phase of testing out our migration tool for Trac tickets to Gitlab issues. We have managed to do a "complete run" where we have taken every ticket from Trac and turned it into a Gitlab issue on our https://dip.torproject.org/ Gitlab instance. All the converted Gitlab tickets can be found at https://dip.torproject.org/ahf-admin/legacy-20/issues/ and have the same Ticket ID as on Trac. But we are not done yet. We have discovered a few formatting issues with the conversion from the Trac markup language to the Markdown markup that Gitlab uses, but that might not be everything that is wrong, but we need help with discovering the rest. Gaba have created a pad at https://pad.riseup.net/p/gitlab-migration-problems where people can report issues on specific tickets in the bottom of the pad. It would be very useful for us, if people could spend some time going over some complicated tickets they have been involved with in the past and look for the following issues: 1. Is there any loss of information: is any information from Trac *not* being converted in the Gitlab issue. Right now we are missing some information such as assignee, estimated points, and actual points. We also don't change the author of the ticket and comments right now, as that would generate too many notifications for people who are using Gitlab today. 2. Is there any formatting issues? Right now we know of at least two "classes" of formatting issues, namely an issue around {{{ }}} (code blocks) and == Title == (headlines). But we do expect to find more. Please help us out by spending a few minutes going over some of your favorite tickets and look for issues and note them down in the pad. Please describe the issue as well as possible, such that it will be easy for us to spot what the issue is and hopefully make a fix in the Ticket converter tool :-) Thank you! All the best, Alex. -- Alexander Færøy

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Tor Browser Release meeting: Wednesday 27th November @ 19UTC
by Pili Guerra 27 Nov '19

27 Nov '19

Hi everyone, Please join us for the Tor Browser release meeting this week on Wednesday 27th November at 19UTC. Thanks! Pili — Project Manager: Tor Browser, UX and Community teams pili at torproject dot org gpg 3E7F A89E 2459 B6CC A62F 56B8 C6CB 772E F096 9C45

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minutes from the sysadmin meeting
by Antoine Beaupré 26 Nov '19

26 Nov '19

Hello! Here are the minutes from the last sysadmin meeting. # Roll call: who's there and emergencies anarcat, gaba, hiro present, weasel and linus couldn't make it, no news from qbi. # What has everyone been up to ## anarcat * followup with cymru ([#29397][]) * OONI.tpo now moved out of TPO infrastructure (hosted at netlify) and closed some related accounts ([#31718][]) - implied documenting how to retire a static component * identified that we need to work on onboarding/offboarding procedures ([#32519][]) and especially "what happens to email when people leave" ([#32558][]) * new caching service tweaks, now 88% hit ratio, will hopefully go down to 300$/mth costs in november! see the [shiny graphs][] * worked more on Nginx status dashboards to ensure we have good response latency and rates in the caching system * reconfirmed mailing list problems as related to DMARC, can we fix this now? ([#29770][]) * wrote a Postfix mail log parser (in lnav) to diagnose email issues in the mail server * helped with the deployment of a ZNC bouncer for IRC users ([#32532][]) along with fixes to the "mosh" configuration * getting started on the [new email service project][], reconfirmed the "Goals" section with vegas * lots of work on puppet cleanup and refactoring * NMU'd upstream ganeti installer fix, proposed stable update * build-arm-* box retirement and ipsec config cleanup * fixed prometheus/ipsec reliability issues ([#31916][], it was ipsec!) [#29397]: https://bugs.torproject.org/29397 [#31718]: https://bugs.torproject.org/31718 [#32519]: https://bugs.torproject.org/32519 [#32558]: https://bugs.torproject.org/32558 [shiny graphs]: https://grafana.torproject.org/d/p21-cvJWk/cache-health [#29770]: https://bugs.torproject.org/29770 [#32532]: https://bugs.torproject.org/32532 [new email service project]: https://help.torproject.org/tsa/howto/submission/ [#31916]: https://bugs.torproject.org/31916 # Hiro * Some work on donate.tpo with giant rabbit * Updates and debug on dip.tp.o * Security updates and reboots * Work on the websites * Git maintenance * Decommissioning Getulum * Started running the website meeting and coordinating dev portal for december ## linus Some coordination work around Nextcloud. ## weasel Nothing to report. # What we're up to next ## anarcat New: * varnish -> nginx conversion? ([#32462][]) * review cipher suites? ([#32351][]) * release our custom installer for public review? ([#31239][]) * publish our puppet source code ([#29387][]) [#32462]: https://bugs.torproject.org/32462 [#32351]: https://bugs.torproject.org/32351 [#31239]: https://bugs.torproject.org/31239 [#29387]: https://bugs.torproject.org/29387 Continued/stalled: * followup on SVN shutdown, only corp missing ([#17202][]) * audit of the other installers for ping/ACL issue ([#31781][]) * followup with email services improvements ([#30608][]) * send root@ emails to RT ([#31242][]) * continue prometheus module merges [#17202]: https://bugs.torproject.org/17202 [#31781]: https://bugs.torproject.org/31781 [#30608]: https://bugs.torproject.org/30608 [#31242]: https://bugs.torproject.org/31242 ## Hiro * Clean up websites bugs * needrestart automation ([#31957][]) * CRM upgrades coordination for january? ([#32198][]) * translation move ([#31784][]) [#31957]: https://bugs.torproject.org/31957 [#32198]: https://bugs.torproject.org/32198 [#31784]: https://bugs.torproject.org/31784 ## linus Will try to followup with Nextcloud again. ## weasel Nothing to report. # Winter holidays Who's online when in December? Can we look at continuity during that merry time? hiro will be online during the holidays. anarcat will be moderately online until january, but will take a week offline some time early january. to be clarified. Need to clarify how much support we provide, see [#31243][] for the discussion. [#31243]: https://bugs.torproject.org/31243 # prometheus server resize Can i double the size of the prometheus server to cover for extra disk space? See [#31244][] for the larger project. [#31244]: https://bugs.torproject.org/31244 Will rise the cost from 4.90EUR to 8.90EUR. Everyone is go on this, anarcat updated the budget to reflect the new expense. # Other discussions Blog status? Anarcat got a quote back and will bring it up at the next vegas meeting. # Next meeting Unclear. jan 6th is a holiday in europe ("the day of the kings"), so we might postpone until january 13th. we are considering having shorter, weekly meetings. # Metrics of the month * hosts in Puppet: 76, LDAP: 79, Prometheus exporters: 123 * number of apache servers monitored: 32, hits per second: 195 * number of nginx servers: 109, hits per second: 1, hit ratio: 0.88 * number of self-hosted nameservers: 5, mail servers: 10 * pending upgrades: 0, reboots: 0 * average load: 0.62, memory available: 334.59 GiB/957.91 GiB, running processes: 414 * bytes sent: 176.80 MB/s, received: 118.35 MB/s * planned buster upgrades completion date: 2020-05-01 Now also available as the main Grafana dashboard. Head to <https://grafana.torproject.org/>, change the time period to 30 days, and wait a while for results to render. The Nginx cache ratio stats are not (yet?) in the main dashboard. Upgrade prediction graph still lives at <https://help.torproject.org/tsa/howto/upgrades/> but the [prediction script][] has been rewritten and moved to GitLab. [prediction script]: https://gitlab.com/anarcat/predict-os -- Antoine Beaupré torproject.org system administration

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Next Global South Meeting
by Cybelle 26 Nov '19

26 Nov '19

[EN] Hi Tor friends, just a quick reminder of our Global South meeting Friday, Nov 29, 16UTC*[1]* at #tor-south*[2]*. Bring your updates, questions or just join us to the meeting. If you need help using IRC, read the complete IRC for beginners*[3]*. ----- [ES] Hola amig@s de Tor, un recordatorio rápido de nuestra reunión de Global South, viernes, 29 de noviembre, 16UTC*[1]* en #tor-south*[2]*. Tráe tus actualizaciones, preguntas o solamente únete a nosotros en la reunión. Si necesita ayuda para usar IRC, lea el IRC para principiantes completo (en inglés)*[3]*. ----- [PT-BR] Olá amig@s do Tor, lembrete rapidão de nossa reunião do Global South, 29 de novembro,16UTC (13h no Brasil)*[1]*, no #tor-south*[2]*. Traga suas novidades, dúvidas ou só junte-se a nós na reunião. Se você precisa de ajuda para usar o IRC, leia o guia do IRC para iniciantes (em inglês)*[3]* *[1]* https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/ *[2]* https://webchat.oftc.net/ *[3]* https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/onboarding/IRC <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/onboarding/IRC> See y'all there! Cheers, -- Cybelle DC8F 1F4C 9167 049F 7AA1 0BD6 2FB3 B0C9 F369 34C5 https://keybase.io/cy63113 @cyb3113

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S27 Meeting: Tuesday 26th November @ 15UTC
by Pili Guerra 25 Nov '19

25 Nov '19

Hi everyone, It’s time for our S27 meeting once again. Please join us this Tuesday 26th November @ 15UTC on #tor-meeting to discuss this Onion Services project. Thanks! Pili — Project Manager: Tor Browser, UX and Community teams pili at torproject dot org gpg 3E7F A89E 2459 B6CC A62F 56B8 C6CB 772E F096 9C45

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