December 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 … [View More]

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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 … [View More]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> [View Less]

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Stem Release 1.8
by Damian Johnson 29 Dec '19

29 Dec '19

Hi all, I'm delighted to announce Stem 1.8! https://blog.atagar.com/stem-release-1-8/ This is the final release in Stem’s 1.x series and with it Python 2.x support [1]. Over a year in the making, this introduces CollecTor, bandwidth metric, and HSv3 descriptor support. For a list of everything that's changed please see... https://stem.torproject.org/change_log.html#version-1-8 Cheers! -Damian [1] https://www.python.org/doc/sunset-python-2/

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Notes from Vegas Meeting DECEMBER 19 2019
by Erin Wyatt 20 Dec '19

20 Dec '19

Vegas Team Meeting Notes DECEMBER 19 2019 + NEW BUSINESS Anarcat - PSA: finished retirement of old IRC server (iranicum), everyone should now be using chives.torproject.org (AKA ircbouncer.tpo) instead. data will be deleted from server in 30 days, and from backup server in 60 days (#32281) only servers left on that host are "chiwui" (check.tpo, #29399) and gayi (svn.tpo, #17202) would love to retire the entire machine in january (#31686, 86EUR/mth!) - major server crashes this week [anarcat] … [View More]+ GENERAL NOTES isabela: 1. Met w/ Justin from NYU 2. Created onion-advisors list for a group of people that can give me support while I am talking with folks interested in using our technology 3. Reviewed answers to SIDA regarding our report, working on blog posts for YE campaign, looking at the new version of OTF proposal 4. taking care of all the things before holidays Steph: 1. Online a limited time this week 2. Covering EOY social media, prepping blog posts 3. Drafting next newsletter 4. Submitted first Outreachy feedback. Have been working with annalee_ on initial tasks Anarcat: 1. wrapping up everything before vacations 2. built test server for mail service, R&D postponed to january (#30608) 3. postponed DMARC mailing list fixes to january (#29770) 4. dealt with major downtime at moly, which mostly affected the translation server (majus), good contacts with cymru staff 5. gitlab meeting 6. untangled monitoring requirements for anti-censorship team (#32679) 7. PSA: finished retirement of old IRC server (iranicum), everyone should now be using chives.torproject.org (AKA ircbouncer.tpo) instead. data will be deleted from server in 30 days, and from backup server in 60 days (#32281) only servers left on that host are "chiwui" (check.tpo, #29399) and gayi (svn.tpo, #17202) would love to retire the entire machine in january (#31686) 8. major server crashes this week 9. usual churn (puppet merge work, email aliases, DNSSEC rotation, documentation, OONI DNS, NC DNS, etc) Roger: 1. My laptop's drive ate itself. If there's a thing I was going to do for you, remind me. 2. I'm going to say yes to talk invites for export control conference and for ISAT workshop Antonela: 1. working on IFF proposals 2. sent November report, writing December one which maybe will be a recap of 2019 3. S27 work, reviewed S9 public report, OTF TB proposal 4. reading other teams roadmaps and building the one for the ux team Pili: 1. Browser proposal reviews and revisions 2. S27 December report 3. Preliminary January roadmaps for teams 4. IFF proposal for State of the Onion 5. FOSDEM wrangling 6. Started Google Summer of Code wrangling 7. Redacted sensitive info from S9 report for wider sharing 8. AFK from 20th December - 6th January (at least) Gaba 1. Network team roadmapping meeting - https://nc.torproject.net/s/TGeW5CX4GqaagMN 2. Gitlab meeting 3. s30 & s28 tracking 4. Tor workshop at La Diaria's newsroom in Montevideo 5. Will be AFK from December 23rd until January 9th. You can reach out via signal if needed. 6. IPv6 project starts February 1st Sarah 1. Final push for EOY campaign. We are on track to raise at least $65K more than last year. 2. We've gained 250 new monthly donors since the start of the campaign who will generate $20K per year, if they stay on. 3. Will be online and available throughout the holiday, but Signal is the fastest way to reach me. 4. Setting up several meetings with large foundations in January. (Hewlett, Omidyar, Internet Society) Mike: 1. Submitted Sponsor2 report 2. Website Oracle Blog Post awaiting publish button Gus 1. Reviewing Cleo Frontdesk replies and working on tasks to the end of year. Submitted Outreachy feedback. 2. Answered Sponsor9 questions. 3. Online meetings with local trainers. 4. We had Global South IRC meeting this week. 6. Working on IFF proposal and waiting for more information about our Villa. Nick 1. Team has done some roadmapping for next couple of months, when we are in between grants. Thanks to ahf and gaba! 2. Preparing to go offline for vacation interval. Back in January. Please use signal if I'm needed; I will be putting all Tor email into an "AfterVacation" mailbox, starting this weekend. Philipp 1. Good progress on TTP grant, still on track \o/ 2. Business as usual with sponsor 28 and 30 Alex: 1. Roadmap session with the network team went really well. We now have a roadmap for the network team until our next dev meeting. Thanks a lot to Gaba for running that smoothly! 2. Been listening in on Georgetown interviews for the Shadow Developer hire. Progress is being made there as well. 3. FOSDEM devroom talk was approved. 4. Productive Gitlab meeting with Hiro, Anarcat, Catalyst, Pili, and Gaba. 5. Really looking forward to relax with family soon and then off to 36c3 on the 26th of December. I will check IRC in this period, but only socially and probably at weird times. Use Signal if there is anything urgent. Karsten: 1. Added two new graphs on BridgeDB requests to Tor Metrics. 2. Started analyzing Rob's relay flooding experiment. [View Less]

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Anti-censorship meeting notes, 19 Dec 2019
by Philipp Winter 19 Dec '19

19 Dec '19

Here is our meeting log: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2019/tor-meeting.2019-12-19-17.59.html And here is our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday December 19th 18:00 UTC Weekly meetings, every Thursday at 18:00 UTC, in #tor-meeting at OFTC (channel is logged while meetings are in progress). == Goal of this meeting == Weekly checkin about the status of anti-censorship work at Tor. Coordinate collaboration between … [View More]people/teams on anti-censorship at Tor. == Links to Useful documents == * Our anti-censorship roadmap: https://dip.torproject.org/torproject/anti-censorship/roadmap/boards * Our roadmap consists of a subset of trac tickets. * The anti-censorship team's wiki page: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/AntiCensorshipTeam * GetTor's roadmap: https://dip.torproject.org/groups/torproject/anti-censorship/gettor-project… * Tickets that need reviews: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/query?status=needs_review&componen… * Projects from sponsors we are working on: * https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/sponsors/Sponsor30 * https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/sponsors/Sponsor28 --------------------------- --- 19th December 2019 --- --------------------------- == Announcements == * We now have BridgeDB graphs on metrics! * https://metrics.torproject.org/bridgedb-transport.html * https://metrics.torproject.org/bridgedb-distributor.html == Discussion == * Sponsor 30: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/sponsors/Sponsor30 * UX - O3 * A1 - Develop Tor user personas as a tool to understand users’ contexts and mental models. * A2 - Define which censorship scenarios we are going to address. * O2 en IFF : https://pad.riseup.net/p/iff-bridgedb-usability-2020-keep * A3 - Identify which bridge selection and distribution methods are most used in targeted regions. * Anyone want to mentor a student developer during the summer? We have time to apply until early February. https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/how-it-works/#timeline Ideas from last year: https://2019.www.torproject.org/getinvolved/volunteer.html.en#Coding == Actions == * == Interesting links == * == Updates == FORMAT! Name: This week: - What you worked on this week. Next week: - What you are planning to work on next week (related to anti-censorship work). Help with: - Something you may need help with. Hiro: Started restoring Twitter Responder. When retrieving tweets I need to check for new tweets only otherwise Gettor will end up responding to old back log and already answered messages. <-- is this #27330 ? Next Week: - Work on gettor specs <-- Is this #3781? - More with review of strings and website content and translation phw: This week (2019-12-19): * Filed #32740 to build a feedback loop between OONI and BridgeDB. * Followed up on old email conversation with two university contacts, asking if they can run default bridges. * Reviewed #32712. * Worked with karsten to add BridgeDB to Tor Metrics in #32135. * Wrote patches for new default bridge at UMN (#32547); already blocked by GFW. * Started thinking about anti-censorship presentation in Austria. * Lots of work (but little progress) on porting BridgeDB to Python 3. * Attended meeting about TTP grant and read draft beforehand. * Provided a bit of feedback for #31011 (bridge authority should reject bridges with private addresses). Next week: * Help with: * Gaba: () Last week (Dec 16th): * s30 tracking This week (planned): AFK until January 9th. I'm on signal if needed cecylia (cohosh): last updated 2019-12-12 Last week: - merged snowflake test coverage improvements (#29259, #32300) - worked on a fix for gettor update script filling up disk space (#32712) - thought about how to tackle gitlab provider for gettor (#32711) - filed a gettor ticket for keeping track of provider reachability (#32716) - reviewed #32499 and #30716 - ran some tests for #31971 - continue snowflake health checks and looked at censorship in china (#32657) - continued looking into Windows issue (#31971) - worked on grant This week: On vacation Dec 13 - Jan 1 (inclusive). Reachable by signal if it's urgent, will occassionally check email Help with: - review of #32712 arlolra: 2019-12-12 Last week: - merged #32499 Next week: - read up on turbo tunnel - pick a new task (#31902, #31201, #19026, ?) Help with: - dcf: 2019-12-19 Last week: - posted a branch of meek with turbo tunnel - https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/21 - wrote a summary of the upcoming research paper on censorship in Russia - https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/20 - merged a Snowflake pull request re the proxy build - https://github.com/keroserene/snowflake/pull/46 Next week: - decommission old broker (#32502) - turbo tunnel in Snowflake Help with: cjb: 2019-12-19 Next week: - was looking for a good first ticket and found https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/31011, I'll give it it a try this week if that seems reasonable? - it looks like it has a companion ticket of https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/31009 which just needs someone to take a patch from Trac and put it in a GitHub PR [View Less]

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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 … [View More]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 [View Less]

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gitlab next
by Gaba 17 Dec '19

17 Dec '19

Hi! Thanks everybody for the help on finding issues in the gitlab migration [0]. We are going to be meeting next week to check on what is the status of this migration and look at other issues that came up in the last couple of weeks [1][2]. Anybody interested in this is invited to participate. Meeting will be on December 17th, at 15UTC in #tor-meeting Agenda and notes will be on: https://pad.riseup.net/p/pKCLewB9RpyjJfRP6X26 cheers, gaba [0] https://pad.riseup.net/p/gitlab-migration-… [View More]

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Tor Browser Release meeting this week: Wednesday 18th December @ 19UTC
by Pili Guerra 17 Dec '19

17 Dec '19

Hi everyone, This is your reminder of the Tor Browser release meeting this week. This will be our last meeting of the year ahead of our next release on January 7th 2020. It will be the last opportunity to discuss what will make it into this release. See you all then! 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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Next Global South Meeting
by cy63113 16 Dec '19

16 Dec '19

[EN] Hi Tor friends, just a quick reminder of our last Global South meeting of 2019 will be Wednesday, Dec 18th, 16UTC[1] at #tor-south[2][3] ----- [ES] Hola amigos de Tor, un recordatorio rápido de nuestra últimar reunión de Global South de 2019, será en miércoles, 18 de diciembre, 16UTC[1] en #tor-south[2][3] ----- [PT-BR] Olá amigos do Tor, lembrete rapidão de nossa última reunião do Global South de 2019 será na 4f, 18 de dezembro, 16UTC[1] (13h no Brasil), no #tor-south[2][3] See y'all … [View More]

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