October 2020 - 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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Tor's year-end campaign: live!
by Al Smith 23 Nov '20

23 Nov '20

Hello Tor world! Today we launched the annual year-end fundraising campaign on behalf of the Tor Project. This year, our theme is “Use a Mask, Use Tor: Resist the Surveillance Pandemic.” (You’ve probably seen the campaign graphics on about:tor already if you’ve upgraded to Tor Browser 10.0.1!) We chose this theme for our 2020 campaign because we wanted to use a positive message and speak to the power of community action & care. Use a mask, use Tor promotes the steps we can all take to combat the virus by using masks. Wearing a mask protects others. Wearing a mask is about caring about each other, our community. In the same way, when using Tor, you are not only protecting your identity and privacy online, but you are also helping to hide others who are using Tor. After all, anonymity loves company To put it simply, using a mask keeps yourself and your communities safe in person. Using Tor keeps yourself and your communities safe online. You can read the full justification behind the slogan, and what we plan to do in 2021 with your support, on our blog: https://blog.torproject.org/use-a-mask-use-tor Every donation made from now through the end of 2020 will count towards our year-end campaign. Be on the lookout for events, giveaways, and new merch available from now until December 31. Plus -- new swag! See https://donate.torproject.org for the new t-shirt and hoodie designs. If you’re not in the position to make a donation, you can help by sharing this message or amplifying what the Tor Project’s account does on Twitter / Mastadon / Instagram / LinkedIn / Facebook. Use a Mask, Use Tor! Thanks for your support. Al -- Al Smith (they/them) Fundraising • Communications The Tor Project

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Community Council activity summary, April 2020-August 2020
by Taylor Yu 13 Nov '20

13 Nov '20

Hi all, Here is a brief summary of the Community Council's activities from April 2020 through August 2020. The 2019 and 2020 Community Councils overlapped in the month of August. April 2020 The Council talked about longer term plans for the Council's role in the future. May 2020 The Council started planning for the upcoming Community Council election cycle. Some exploration of how to make the handover to the new Council go more smoothly because we won't have an in-person meeting for the foreseeable future. June 2020 The Council reviewed an existing community health concern in the light of new information, and began to draft a statement for internal communication. The Council reviewed existing practices in choosing to reject bad relays. Given the shortage of volunteers, made a one week extension for the call for volunteers for the next Community Council. More reminders in more places about Code of Conduct the Community Council, and other related documents. July 2020 The Council took action regarding a past Code of Conduct violation by a community member. The Council took action regarding an existing community health matter. The Council began the process of elections for the next year's Council. August 2020 The Council began the transition process to the 2020 Council. The Council continued to take action regarding an existing community health matter. --- end of summary --- This summary will also be posted on the Council's wiki page. This will be the last update from the 2019 Community Council. If you have any feedback about this summary format, or any other feedback to the Council, please contact us at tor-community-council(a)lists.torproject.org.

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Next Tor Browser Release Meeting - 03 November 2020
by Matthew Finkel 02 Nov '20

02 Nov '20

Hello everyone, The next Tor Browser release meeting will be held on 03 November at 1900 UTC in #tor-meeting. Please add discussion items on the pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-browser-release-meeting-keep If we do not have any discussion items for the meeting by 1700 UTC on 3rd Nov, then the meeting will be cancelled. Thanks, Matt

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Anti-censorship meeting notes 2020 Oct 29
by Cecylia Bocovich 30 Oct '20

30 Oct '20

Hey everyone! Here are the meeting logs: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2020/tor-meeting.2020-10-29-15.58.html and our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday October 29th 16:00 UTC Weekly meetings, every Thursday at 16:00 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 people/teams on anti-censorship at Tor. == 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?s… Sponsor 30 https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/4 https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/7 https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/5 https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/6 Sponsor 28 must-do tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/10 possible tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&… Anti-censorship related tickets that we want other teams to fix: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-anti-censorship-tickets-keep <-- it will be moved into gitlab with TPO labels <-- do we still need this? The label is 'for anticensorship team' Public bug-reporting pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-anti-censorship-bugs-keep == Announcements == Please add your October highlights to our monthly report pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/-mFSnGRKoOGCIq0pByRz Found a student who's interested in working on: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/emma/-/issues/4 == Discussion == == Actions == == Interesting links == "Towards a Scalable Censorship-Resistant Overlay Network based on WebRTC Covert Channels" https://www.gsd.inesc-id.pt/~nsantos/papers/barradas_dicg20.pdf == 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. phw: This week (2020-10-29): Reviewed Snowflake patches, rdsys patch, grant budget, and S30 report. Lots of rdsys and Salmon refactoring. Made good progress on cohosh's idea of making Salmon more privacy preserving by not storing a social graph on the server side. Experimented with statsd/graphite for metrics. Seems very promising. Took a look at the recent censorship in Tanzania. Next week: Finish refactoring Salmon and start working on cohosh's "social graph reduction" idea. Help with: cecylia (cohosh): last updated 2020-10-29 Last week: - talked to guardian project about their efforts to integrate snowflake - sponsor 28 evaluations (x_x) - more revisions to and deployed snowflake#40013 - published snowflake-webext!7 on addon stores and website - helped out with snowflake mobile bug (snowflake#40018) - implemented cached broker stats (snowflake#40012) - modified a script to plot default bridge connections from Tanzania (https://gitlab.torproject.org/-/snippets/67) This week: - follow up on progress towards a telegram bot for gettor - pick up snowflake multiplexing work again (snowflake#25723) - roll out and monitor snowflake web deployment - sponsor 28 PI meeting - clean up and write tests for snowflake#40012 Needs help with: - firewall feedback for snowflake#40013 (dcf) juggy : This week: - Got very basic "suggested readings" list up and running here : https://jugheadjones10.github.io/anti-censorship-reading/ Next week: - Keep studying BridgeDB to write architectural overview Help with: - Open issues here (https://github.com/jugheadjones10/anti-censorship-reading ) for papers/resources/readings that you think might be useful for newcomers arlolra: 2020-10-29 Last week: - Next week: - getting back up to speed - follow ups to #33365 - start on #31201 Help with: - dcf: 2020-10-29 Last week: - Azure CDN bookkeeping - made a patch to remove an unnecessary error log from Snowflake proxy https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… Next week: - review broker firewall changes https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… Help with: Antonela: 2020-08-27 This week: - Wrapping Babatunde's research on the use of circumvention tools during internet censorship in Africa. Wrapping Personas for s30 with it. For september: - We are planning interviews with users in China to run our bridges discovery issues script in real time. We discussed to include TBA + snowflake as a task for users to run over a week or two and report back. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/research/-/issues/4 - I still have bridges.tpo to lektor issue open - More work on UX/UI for TB 10.0/10.5 - Review Salmon related tickets (im late with it!) agix:2020-10-29 Last week: -Implemented feedback on #5 (rdsys) -Got more familiar with rdsys Next week: -Get feedback from my univesity professor regarding tackeling Pluggable Transports/HTTPT/Issues/#4 in my master thesis -More familiarization with rdsys Help with: - hanneloresx: 2020-10-22 Last week: - Took break to focus on work Next week: - #32117: Look at CAPTCHA success rate for users from the US across different types of bridges Help with: - thymbahutymba: 2020-04-02 Last week: - CI/CD pipeline for multiarch docker images, which has a problem with the apt tor version even though the apt repository have been changed into the Dockerfile. Next week: Help with: HashikD: 2020-10-16 This week: - Finished work on #19 Next week: - Network checks Help with: -

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Decommissioning sbws.lavafeld.org
by Vasilis 27 Oct '20

27 Oct '20

Hi, About 2 years ago I setup a server to run sbws. It seems the sbws instance instance running in sbws.lavafeld.org is not being actively used. In case you would like to continue seeing this service up and running, please do let me know. Cheers, ~Vasilis

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Damian's Status Report - October 2020
by Damian Johnson 23 Oct '20

23 Oct '20

Hi all, hope everyone's getting through this pandemic reasonably well. Just my usual not-so-monthly status report. https://blog.atagar.com/october2020/ Cheers! -Damian

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Ministry of finance advises against blocking of Tor
by Jens Kubieziel 22 Oct '20

22 Oct '20

Hi, tl,dr: The ministry of finance of the German state of Thuringia advises against the blocking of the Tor network. Longer version: In march I tried to reach <URL:https://tmasgff.de/>, the website of the ministry of social affairs of Thuringia. However their provider, Alfahosting, was blocking Tor traffic. So I reached out to the ministry and asked why this is so. They answered that there is a huge amount of hacking traffic coming from the Tor network. That's Why all traffic coming from Tor is blocked. So I made an FOIA-like request (Thuringia has a transparency law) and asked how many attacks they saw from the Tor network and from the non-Tor network: <URL:http://fdstaat23zv6kdmntgkvdzkr7hipl5oqswwi3xawzkj2w2gwsbxmrwyd.onion/a/181821> After some back and forth they told me, that their provider won't answer the request for "security reasons". The ministry requested a statement from the CI(S)O of the state which resides inside the ministry of finance. He answered that providing information to users from the Tor network is no special risk and the ministry won't recommend blocking the Tor network. Since the the site <URL:https://tmasgff.de/> is available. Best, -- Jens Kubieziel https://kubieziel.de/blog/ https://datenkanal.org/ https://insecurity.radio.fm/

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Anti-censorship meeting notes, 22 Oct 2020
by Philipp Winter 22 Oct '20

22 Oct '20

Hi all, Here are our meeting minutes: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2020/tor-meeting.2020-10-22-15.58.html And here is our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday October 22nd 16:00 UTC Weekly meetings, every Thursday at 16:00 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 people/teams on anti-censorship at Tor. == 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?s… * Sponsor 30 * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/4 * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/7 * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/5 * https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/6 * Sponsor 28 * must-do tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/10 * possible tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&… * Anti-censorship related tickets that we want other teams to fix: * https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-anti-censorship-tickets-keep <-- it will be moved into gitlab with TPO labels <-- do we still need this? The label is 'for anticensorship team' * Public bug-reporting pad: * https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-anti-censorship-bugs-keep == Announcements == * == Discussion == * Where to put the snowflake probetest? Broker machine? Bridge? == Actions == * == Interesting links == * == 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. phw: This week (2020-10-22): * Reviewed tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake!13 * Reviewed tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake!14 * Reviewed rdsys pull request. * Roadmap meeting for Sponsor 28 and 30. * Ticket maintenance; added new issues for rdsys and Salmon. * Worked on Sponsor 30 report. * Finally reviewed Tor Research Safety Board submission. * Call with I2P folks regarding how we can help each other wrt Snowflake. * Moved forward with Salmon. * Implemented "secret IDs" for users. * Started refactoring user <-> proxy mapping. Next week: * Finish refactoring Salmon and start working on cohosh's "social graph reduction" idea. Help with: * cecylia (cohosh): last updated 2020-10-22 Last week: - fixed a race condition bug that causes snowflake to crash (snowflake#40017) - sponsor 28 evaluations - made revisions to snowflake#40013 This week: - follow up on progress towards a telegram bot for gettor - work with Guardian project on Snowflake integration - more work on snowflake NAT matching - pick up snowflake multiplexing work again (snowflake#25723) Needs help with: - review of snowflake-webext!7 juggy : This week: - Got very basic "suggested readings" list up and running here : https://jugheadjones10.github.io/anti-censorship-reading/ Next week: - Keep studying BridgeDB to write architectural overview Help with: - Open issues here (https://github.com/jugheadjones10/anti-censorship-reading ) for papers/resources/readings that you think might be useful for newcomers arlolra: 2020-06-11 Last week: - Next week: - follow ups to #33365 - start on #31201 Help with: - dcf: 2020-10-22 Last week: Next week: Help with: Antonela: 2020-08-27 This week: - Wrapping Babatunde's research on the use of circumvention tools during internet censorship in Africa. Wrapping Personas for s30 with it. For september: - We are planning interviews with users in China to run our bridges discovery issues script in real time. We discussed to include TBA + snowflake as a task for users to run over a week or two and report back. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/research/-/issues/4 - I still have bridges.tpo to lektor issue open - More work on UX/UI for TB 10.0/10.5 - Review Salmon related tickets (im late with it!) agix:2020-10-22 Last week: -Finished first draft for #5 (rdsys) Next week: -Dig deeper into Pluggable Transports/HTTPT/Issues/#4 -Tackle a new ticket Help with: -Review of #5 (rdsys) hanneloresx: 2020-10-22 Last week: - Took break to focus on work Next week: - #32117: Look at CAPTCHA success rate for users from the US across different types of bridges Help with: - thymbahutymba: 2020-04-02 Last week: - CI/CD pipeline for multiarch docker images, which has a problem with the apt tor version even though the apt repository have been changed into the Dockerfile. Next week: Help with: HashikD: 2020-10-16 This week: - Finished work on #19 Next week: - Network checks Help with: -

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Anti-censorship meeting notes, 15 October 2020
by Cecylia Bocovich 15 Oct '20

15 Oct '20

Here is our meeting log: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2020/tor-meeting.2020-10-15-15.58.html and our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday October 15th 16:00 UTC Weekly meetings, every Thursday at 16:00 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 people/teams on anti-censorship at Tor. == 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?s… Sponsor 30 https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/4 https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/7 https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/5 https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/6 Sponsor 28 must-do tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/10 possible tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&… Anti-censorship related tickets that we want other teams to fix: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-anti-censorship-tickets-keep <-- it will be moved into gitlab with TPO labels <-- do we still need this? The label is 'for anticensorship team' Public bug-reporting pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-anti-censorship-bugs-keep == Announcements == == Discussion == Anti-censorship related tickets that we want other teams to fix: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-anti-censorship-tickets-keep <-- it will be moved into gitlab with TPO labels <-- do we still need this? The label is 'for anticensorship team' == Actions == == Interesting links == == 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. phw: This week (2020-10-08): Prepared for and presented at the PTIM. Lots of bridgestrap refactoring; made it test bridges by configuring a bridge over the control port and then waiting until it received the bridge descriptor. Next week: Hopefully wrap up bridgestrap. Help with: cecylia (cohosh): last updated 2020-10-15 Last week: - implemented proof of concept for snowflake NAT matching snowflake#40013 - read kyle's report on snowflake detection and made some tickets - talked to phw about rdsys reimplementation - wrote up some results from snowflake measurements in China (snowflake#32657) This week: - review of rdsys - follow up on snowflake NAT matching solution (snowflake#40013) - follow up on progress towards a telegram bot for gettor - work with Guardian project on Snowflake integration - sponsor 28 evaluations (might miss part of next meeting) Needs help with: - review of snowflake#40013 - thoughts on snowflake#32657 juggy : This week: - Got very basic "suggested readings" list up and running here : https://jugheadjones10.github.io/anti-censorship-reading/ Next week: - Keep studying BridgeDB to write architectural overview Help with: - Open issues here (https://github.com/jugheadjones10/anti-censorship-reading ) for papers/resources/readings that you think might be useful for newcomers arlolra: 2020-06-11 Last week: - Next week: - follow ups to #33365 - start on #31201 Help with: - dcf: 2020-10-15 Last week: - put updated snowflake.torproject.org messages where they can be picked up by translators https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - filed a ticket about a phantom ".tx" language option at snowflake.torproject.org https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - spent some time deciding that an Azure root TLS certificate change does not affect us (because obfs4proxy pins the public keys of intermediates, not roots) https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/security/fundamentals/tls-certificat… Next week: Help with: Antonela: 2020-08-27 This week: - Wrapping Babatunde's research on the use of circumvention tools during internet censorship in Africa. Wrapping Personas for s30 with it. For september: - We are planning interviews with users in China to run our bridges discovery issues script in real time. We discussed to include TBA + snowflake as a task for users to run over a week or two and report back. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/research/-/issues/4 - I still have bridges.tpo to lektor issue open - More work on UX/UI for TB 10.0/10.5 - Review Salmon related tickets (im late with it!) agix:2020-10-08 Last week: -Finished patch for #34218 -Started with #5 (rdsys) but didn't quite finish it yet Next week: -Definetly finnish rdysy #5 -Dig deeper into Pluggable Transports/HTTPT/Issues/#4 Help with: -Review of #34218 hanneloresx: 2020-10-15 Last week: - Investigate #33727 Next week: - #32117: Look at CAPTCHA success rate for users from the US across different types of bridges Help with: - thymbahutymba: 2020-04-02 Last week: - CI/CD pipeline for multiarch docker images, which has a problem with the apt tor version even though the apt repository have been changed into the Dockerfile. Next week: Help with: HashikD: 2020-10-06 This week: - Next week: - Will be back shortly Help with: -

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