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Community Team report - November & December 2019
by gus 13 Jan '20

13 Jan '20

Community Team November & December 2019 ======================================= Support and Documentation ------------------------- In December, Cleopatra (c1e0 on IRC) started as Outreachy intern in the project "Help Tor support our users" <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/Outreachy#Project1:HelpTorPro…>. In the last month, Gus introduced C1e0 in the Frontdesk world, and we worked together to answer users requests. We've narrowed the queue for less than 90 new tickets. C1e0 will compile our users feedback in a monthly report, see <https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2020-January/002645.html>. During the Outreachy contribution period, MacTavish started the Tor Browser for Android Manual, Cleopatra and Gus are reviewing it and in January we will have as a new section inside Tor Browser Manual <https://tb-manual.torproject.org>. Trainings --------- In November we met with training partners in Global South to organize and schedule digital security trainings. And Tails and Tor were presented (among other tools) to journalism students at IUT Lannion (Lannion, France), Sciences Po Rennes (Rennes, France) and Bordeaux Aquitaine Institute of Journalism (IJBA) (Bordeaux, France). In December Fundación Karisma (Colombia) and Zaina Foundation (Tanzania) organised digital security trainings about Tor in their local communities. They used our training materials and followed our User Research guideline to collect feedback to UX team. Outreach -------- November - (Copenhagen) Ahf talked about Tor & circumvention censorship at Driving IT <https://blog.torproject.org/events/driving-it-copenhagen> - (Firenze) Gus talked about Tor at If_do hacklab <https://blog.torproject.org/events/internet-e-anonimato-la-rete-tor-firenze> - (Brussels) Tor Meetup Brussels with ahf, gus, francisco, vasilis <https://blog.torproject.org/events/tor-meetup-brussels> - (Brussels) Ahf and Gus organised Tor sessions at Freedom not Fear <https://blog.torproject.org/events/freedom-not-fear-brussels> - (DC) Roger talked at "The Future of Speech Online" <https://blog.torproject.org/events/future-speech-online-dc> - (Seattle) Gaba presented "The State of the Onion" during "Seattle GNU/Linux Conference" <https://blog.torproject.org/events/seagl-seattle> - (Roma) Gus talked about Tor with Avana hacklab at Strike: <https://blog.torproject.org/events/tor-workshop-strike-spa-roma> - (Torino) Gus talked about Tor at UNITO - "Non è la silicon valley, ma si mangia meglio!" <https://blog.torproject.org/events/non-e-la-silicon-valley-ma-si-mangia-meg…> - (Barcelona) Pili talked at "V Jornades Internacionals de dones en el sector TIC" <https://blog.torproject.org/events/v-jornades-internacionals-de-dones-en-el…> - (Pune) Kushal speaked about Tor at "WoSec and InfoSecGirls Workshop" <https://blog.torproject.org/events/wosec-and-infosecgirls-workshop-pune> - Global South online meeting notes: <https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/global-south/2019-December/000268.ht…> December - (São Paulo) Gus talked about Tor 101 and SecureDrop during Criptofesta <https://blog.torproject.org/events/criptofesta-sao-paulo-0> - (Campinas) Caio talked about Tor and relays in LHC hackerspace <https://blog.torproject.org/events/cebolizando-campinas> - (Brasilia) Gus talked at Criptobaile <https://blog.torproject.org/events/criptobaile-brasilia> - (Brooklyn) Isabela talked about "Taking Back the Internet with Tor" during Hackers Next Door <https://blog.torproject.org/events/hackers-next-door-brooklyn> - (Montevideo) Gaba gave a Tor/infosec workshop to journalists from <ladiaria.com.uy> - Relay operators met during the 36C3, read the assembly notes <https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2020-January/018022.html> - Blog post about Human Rights day <https://blog.torproject.org/digital-rights-are-human-rights> - Global South online meeting notes: <https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/global-south/2019-December/000270.ht…> Next Events ----------- February - Meet us during FOSDEM 2020 <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2020Brussels> Meta ---- Community Team weekly meetings, every Monday at 16:00 UTC, in #tor-meeting at OFTC <irc.oftc.net> Meeting notes * Community Team Meeting Notes - 04 Nov 2019 * <https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-community-team/2019-November/000…> * Community Team Meeting Notes - 18 Nov 2019 * <https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-community-team/2019-November/000…> * Community Team Meeting Notes - 25 Nov 2019 * <https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-community-team/2019-November/000…> * Community Team Meeting Notes - 02 Dec 2019 * <https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-community-team/2019-December/000…> * Community Team Meeting Notes - 09 Dec 2019 * <https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-community-team/2019-December/000…> * Community Team Meeting Notes - 16 Dec 2019 * <https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-community-team/2019-December/000…>

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www December 2019 report
by Hiro 13 Jan '20

13 Jan '20

What has happened in December in the Tor www world The blog template has finally been fixed! If you want to know more about the blog status check the following Trac ticket: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/32090 The download page has been improved based on feedback received since the redesign. User research has been running over: https://lektor-staging.torproject.org/tpo/develop/download/ We debugged errors in the build process for the websites. This was affecting translations specifically more than other things. We uplifted the styleguide Our wiki content is now in one place: https://dip.torproject.org/torproject/web/wiki We improved on Localized links so that a visitor isn't taken out of their locale while browsing. We applied some fixes for left-to-right/right-to-left support of different langauges Meeting notes for Dicember can be found: https://dip.torproject.org/torproject/web/www-meeting-notes/blob/master/201… This summary and past and future ones can be accessed online: https://dip.torproject.org/torproject/web/www-monthly

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OONI Monthly Report: December 2019
by Maria Xynou 10 Jan '20

10 Jan '20

Hello Tor world, In December 2019, the OONI team prioritized on the following: * Integrating the new OONI Probe test for Psiphon into the OONI Probe desktop app * Provisioning of Psiphon configuration into apps * API query optimization * Reducing technical debt and bug fixing ## Circumvention tool testing Throughout December 2019, we made important progress on the testing of circumvention tools. Specifically, we: * Added support for giving out Psiphon configuration files to clients in orchestra: https://github.com/ooni/orchestra/issues/78 * Added client support for performing authenticated orchestra requests: https://github.com/ooni/probe-engine/issues/109 * Added support for running circumvention tool tests inside of the OONI Probe CLI: https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/issues/77 Through the above work, we laid the foundation for implementing future circumvention tool tests inside of OONI Probe. You can now download and run the new OONI Probe Psiphon test via one of the latest ooni/probe-cli release candidate builds: https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/releases ## Measurement improvements We made a series of improvements to how OONI Probe measurements are performed. Specifically, we: * Released a new version of Measurement Kit which includes DASH using HTTPS: https://github.com/measurement-kit/measurement-kit/releases/tag/v0.10.8 * Validated that the OONI Probe Telegram test works well by using jafar (our censorship simulation tool) to trigger certain network conditions and ensure that the data output is OK: https://github.com/ooni/jafar/pull/15 & https://github.com/ooni/jafar/pull/17 * Added support to probe-engine to use the orchestra to fetch the configuration for Psiphon and to store locally the credentials for logging-in to orchestra: https://github.com/ooni/probe-engine/pull/185 ## OONI Probe 3.0 improvements We added support for the clean shutdown of probe-cli, providing a clean way of interrupting a running test on the OONI Probe desktop app: https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/issues/76 We also added support for filtering out incomplete test results (https://github.com/ooni/probe-desktop/pull/92) and we upgraded the styled-components to 4.0.0 (https://github.com/ooni/design-system/issues/49) ## OONI Explorer performance As the new OONI Explorer fetches measurements from the OONI API, improving the performance of OONI Explorer (in order to serve query results faster and more reliably) required improving the performance of the OONI API (see: https://github.com/ooni/api/issues/135) We therefore did a lot of work on improving the OONI API. More specifically, we: * Added throttling to the OONI API in order to prevent abuse: https://github.com/ooni/api/pull/139 * Removed SQLAlchemy models (resulting in performance improvements): https://github.com/ooni/api/pull/153 * Refactored the list_measurements table (resulting in a huge performance boost): https://github.com/ooni/api/pull/150 We also did several other important improvements to the OONI API and data processing pipeline: * Added support for detecting issues with the ingestion of data: https://github.com/ooni/pipeline/issues/256 * Added support for anomalous and confirmed blocked measurement columns in the fast-path pipeline: https://github.com/ooni/api/pull/141 * Added support for filtering by domain name for results in the fast-path pipeline: https://github.com/ooni/api/pull/144 * Created two new tables for citizenlab/test-lists ingestion: https://github.com/ooni/pipeline/pull/274 * Added tables that allow us to query by category code: https://github.com/ooni/pipeline/issues/263 * Explored how to update one of our postgresql databases ## Infrastructure Throughout December 2019, we spent a lot of time improving our infrastructure and dealing with incidents. Details around these incidents and what we did to resolve them are available through the following tickets: https://github.com/ooni/sysadmin/issues/410 https://github.com/ooni/sysadmin/issues/406 The infrastucture monitoring and alerting system that we have in place enabled us to more easily identify these issues. ## Blog post to encourage LGBTQI site testing In collaboration with OutRight Action International, we jointly published a blog post to encourage OONI Probe testing of LGBTQI websites around the world. The blog post is published on the following sites: * OONI: https://ooni.org/post/2019-measure-blocking-lgbtqi-sites/ * OutRight Action International: https://outrightinternational.org/content/let%E2%80%99s-measure-blocking-lg… VPNCompare published a blog post discussing our LGBTQI testing research: https://www.vpncompare.co.uk/ooni-lgbtqi-censorship/ ## Press coverage An Intercept article was published to cover our joint research report with Coding Rights & Women on Waves (titled "On the blocking of abortion rights websites: Women on Waves & Women on Web"): https://theintercept.com/2019/12/12/net-claro-e-vivo-bloqueiam-site-aborto-… ## User-base In December 2019, OONI Probe was run 9,270,932 times from 5,564 different vantage points in 209 countries around the world. This information can also be found through our measurement stats on OONI Explorer (chart on monthly coverage worldwide): http://explorer.ooni.org/ ~ The OONI team. -- Maria Xynou Research & Partnerships Director Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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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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Notes from Vegas Meetings JANUARY 2 & JANUARY 9 2020
by Erin Wyatt 10 Jan '20

10 Jan '20

Happy new year, everyone!! :D —————————>8 JANUARY 9 2019 + NEW BUSINESS - Considering using up our primary emergency hardware budget (162EUR/mth) to expand the Ganeti cluster to shutdown old machines and move critical services to the redundant cluster. [anarcat] • Response: Yes, let's do it. - How many proposal are we submitting to Righstcon? [gus] • Response: So far, 2. - Mozilla folks said that we should figure out ASAP what meetings/conversation topics and times wewant to have (if any) while at the Mozilla conference in Berlin, as the schedule will start filling up soon. (Last time, we scheduled our meeting with at the end of the conference, so we had time to prepare for it in person. I think this worked well, but it had some downsides due to lack of quick followup opportunities). FYI I am emailing [to ask] them for a meeting; planning on sending before the end of the week. + GENERAL NOTES Georg: 0) Still on "vacation" Erin 1) New vacation/AFK calendar on NC - email to people soon. 2) HR/Personnel stuff 3) Roadmapping 2020 - will include next review cycle, hiring process, handbook (incl. IP stuff), diversity report, etc. Anarcat 1. worked on evaluating automated install solutions since we'd possibly have to setup multiple machines if the donation comes through 2. got a big scare before vacations and we're evaluating priorities to avoid this problem in the future. will likely prioritize work on service stabilization and reliability instead of new services along with surveying/researching expectations on service support and availability to avoid the situation that happened 3. considering using up our primary emergency hardware budget (162EUR/mth) to expand the Ganeti cluster to shutdown old machines and move critical services to the redundant cluster. 4. happy new year everyone! :) Steph: 1) Doing campaign retros with comms/fundraising 2) Organizing a panel with EFF and FPF on privacy laws and tools for RightsCon 3) Working with Outreachy intern annalee_ 4) Started 2020 Comms roadmap with Isa 5) Preparing for San Fran fundraising event in March isabela 1) Having 1:1s w/ Vegas Leads about 2020 -> if I don't have one schedule w/ u yet, Jon is working on it and will schedule one soon 2) Off site meetings: Matt :), Brennan Center, NYU, ED NYC Club dinner 3) Doing some Money Machine + Comms tasks 4) Getting the Board Book prepared for our next meeting Jan 21st 5) Working on onboarding doc for onion advisors and updating the membership program doc (also need to do some follow up w/ julius). sarah 1) Working on final numbers and reflections for EOY campaign. 2) Planning March 26th event in San Francisco. 3) Several upcoming meetings with potential new foundation funders. 4) Updating the fundraising roadmap for 2020. Philipp 1) Giving a talk today on our anti-censorship work at my old college (https://twitter.com/torproject/status/1208102010832277504) 2) More writing for TTP grant application Antonela 1) Roadmapping UX team work for 2020 2) Community partners ran user research during December in Colombia and Tanzania. Working with nah on reporting those and integrate that user feedback in our development cycle. 3) Back to S27 land, syncing with devs, reviewing tickets. Gus 1) Roadmapping Community Team - 2020 with Pili 2) 1:1 with Isa last week 3) Coordinating remote trainings with partners in Global South 4) Outreachy: reviewing Cleopatra frontdesk support, new documentation PRs and monthly user feedback 5) Working on Tor Project Village proposal in IFF 6) Answering 2019 emails 7) Working on remote training workflow - https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/32893 [anarcat, we need your opinion about the RT part of this proposal] 8) Submitted a digital security workshop to Journalism Festival in Italy, but we didn't heard anything from the organization. Karsten 1) Started a discussion on tor-dev@ how to handle MaxMind's change to how we can access and use their databases. We use them for tor (statistics and path selection) and Onionoo. Right now we cannot update the databases that we have, so this is a bit urgent. 2) Reviewed and revised a patch to how we sanitize web server access logs (#32747), which will hopefully reduce sanitization time from several hours to under an hour each day. Maybe it'll also resolve artifacts like the one found in #31901. 3) Preparing for roadmapping meeting next week by going through the enourmous ticket backlog in Metrics/* components. Alex: 1) Scheduling 1:1 with network team folks for the next couple of months. Trying to have more of them on a single day to make my structure a bit simpler. 2) Some work around q1 roadmap. 3) Follow up on emails, EOM tasks, etc. 4) Figure out FOSDEM logistics and general q1 travel stuff for different events. Nick: 1) Wrapping up 0.4.3.x work; soon to enter feature-freeze. (Jan 15) 2) Likely to do another 0.4.2.x soon, plus maybe an 0.4.1.x too, to sort out minor issues in previous release with seccomp2 sandbox and NT services. 3) Still working on role transitions; got to figure out what planning/arch actually _is_. Mike: 0. Technically still on vacation. Will attend to discuss Mozilla Berlin stuff (see new biz above). 1. Have a Research Director Roles draft doc; will send to Gaba+Isa next week then circulate more widely. Pili: 1. Catching up from vacations 2. Roadmap Gardening 3. Organising for FOSDEM Matt: 1. Tor Browser releases based on 68.4.0esr and 68.4.1esr this week 2. At Real World Crypto 3. Tor Browser roadmapping and such. —————————>8—————————>8—————————>8 JANUARY 2, 2020 + OLD BUSINESS - Are we doing any RightsCon submissions? • Discussion: Yes, we discussed this at a vegas meeting; we are going to reach out to contacts that are going to check if they have any plans, maybe we can be part of their plans or plan something together with them. We created a list just before xmas, now its time to pick it up again and email some of the folks on that list - Did we ever make a shared plan on the trademark defense work? • Discussion: No for now; Jon is still the main point person to report such things, me and him still need to update the trademark FAQ regarding logo on swags that are for personal use not for sale etc - isabela (i think having things this way for now its fine, I believe we have other priorities i.e. membership program to organize and push fwd - isabela) + NEW BUSINESS isabela: - 2020 message: privacy by design + GENERAL NOTES Roger: 1) Are we doing any RightsCon submissions? 2) Did we ever make a shared plan on the trademark defense work? 3) Can we authorize and train some more people to do website changes? E.g. our Shadow dev job spot has been open for weeks after Erin filed a ticket to have it come down (#32826) and we keep getting new applicants. [this has done already by Pili and Hiro if anyone else needs or wants a training they should reach out to Hiro] [we also have some docs! https://dip.torproject.org/torproject/web/tpo/wikis/home - A] 4) The SponsorV and Sponsor2 reports are in. isabela: 1. Catching up on emails from the holidays 2. Working on email to sponsors reviewing tor in the media 2019 3. working on document for onion advisors orientation meeting and updating a little bit the membership program proposal 4. 2020 message privacy by design - next email I plan to send to tor-project sarah: 1. We raised about $315K for the EOY campaign. We probably still have checks at the PO box that haven't been added in yet. This is over $100K more than we raised last year and we've now raised more from individuals in the first 6 months of this FY than we did in FY19 in its entirety. I'll have a more comprehensive report in the coming days. [awesome work! -ahf] steph: 1. Wrapped up the EOY fundraising campaign. Comms report coming. 2. Will start planning/coordination for campaign for companies to run relays 3. Switching out social media campaign branding 4. Catching up! Alex: 1. Relaxed, a lot. 2. Went to 36c3. Was mostly at the BornHack assembly, but the Tor assembly seem to run fine (asfaik). The Relay operators meetup went well IMO. I did not go to the "Tor Relay Org" meeting there as I was told there was only 12 seats in the room, but it is my impression that went OK too. I have seen a number somewhere that around 20-25% of the exit capacity in the network were together in that room. 3. This "week" is going to be return to normal life, catch up on email, do harvest, schedule 1:1 with network team folks, and return to Gitlab work tomorrow. Nick: 0. Back online from the winter holiday; catching up on things. Antonela: 1. sending ux team report for december and a 2019 recap 2. emails, emails and more emails 3. resuming what i left open in december Philipp: 1. Back from holidays and catching up. Matt: 1. Missing this meeting 2. Catching up on missed items from the past week 3. Prepping release for next week

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Anti-censorship meeting notes 09 January 2019
by Cecylia Bocovich 09 Jan '20

09 Jan '20

Here is our meeting log: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2020/tor-meeting.2020-01-09-17.59.html And here is our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday January 9th 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 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 ------------------------- --- January 9th 2020 --- ------------------------- == Announcements == * == Discussion == * 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 == 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: (last updated before 2020-01-09) 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 (2020-01-02): * Catching up on emails. * Tried to write patch for #31009. Next week: * Helping with grant writing. Help with: * Let me know if you have thoughts on a potential BridgeDB rewrite * https://bugs.torproject.org/32900 Gaba: () Last week (Dec 16th): * s30 tracking This week (planned): AFK until January 9th. I'm on signal if needed cecylia (cohosh): last updated 2019-01-09 Last week: - finish debugging windows issues with snowflake (#31971) - update pion library version for Tor Browser (#32870) - grant writing - thought about passing STUN information through broker (#25591) - worked on updating and debugging gettor (#32906) - got a start at fixing the gitlab gettor distributor (#32711) This week: - finish gitlab gettor fixes(#32711) - think about gsoc projects - iterate on gettor survival guide - debug more issues with gettor links database - update gettor for newest tor browser alpha - look at reports of shadow socks blocking - snowflake proxy UX (#31109) Needs help with: - review of #31971 (from tor browser team) 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: 2020-01-09, will miss 2020-01-09 meeting Last week: - worked on turning off the non-IPv6 Snowflake broker (#32502) Next week: - delete the old broker (#32502) - turbo tunnel in Snowflake Help with: cjb: last updated 2019-01-09 Last week: - came up with a patch for #31011, testing seems difficult, will ask for help in the ticket. Next week: Help with:

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Communications Report: November & December 2019
by Stephanie A. Whited 03 Jan '20

03 Jan '20

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Anti-censorship team monthly report: December 2019
by Philipp Winter 03 Jan '20

03 Jan '20

Snowflake ========= * Published Snowflake WebExtension 0.2.0, enables metrics on different types of proxy implementation. * Fixed a data race in the Snowflake broker. <https://bugs.torproject.org/32576> * Started collecting metrics on Snowflake proxy types at the broker. <https://bugs.torproject.org/31157> * Continued investigations of Snowflake health and blocking in China. <https://bugs.torproject.org/32657> * Expanded Snowflake test coverage. <https://bugs.torproject.org/29259> GetTor ====== * Fixed distributor update script to prevent filling up disk space on the GetTor machine. <https://bugs.torproject.org/32712> Obfs4 and bridges ================= * Published obfs4 bridge docker image version 0.3: <https://community.torproject.org/relay/setup/bridge/docker/> * Added a new default bridges located at the University of Minnesota. <https://bugs.torproject.org/32547> * Added a cache to bridgestrap, so scan results can persist across restarts. BridgeDB ======== * Started porting BridgeDB to Python 3. Numerous unit tests now fail because strings and bytes are strictly separated in Python 3. This will require significantly more work. <https://bugs.torproject.org/30946> * Summarised an upcoming project deliverable in which we will build a feedback loop between BridgeDB and OONI. OONI wants bridges to test and BridgeDB wants to know where its bridges are blocked. We should get the two to talk to each other. <https://bugs.torproject.org/32740> * Worked with Karsten to have some of our BridgeDB metrics published on Tor Metrics. The graphs are now online at <https://metrics.torproject.org/bridgedb-transport.html> and <https://metrics.torproject.org/bridgedb-distributor.html>. <https://bugs.torproject.org/32135> Miscellaneous ============= * Continued talking to our admins to unify our monitoring infrastructure using both Nagios and Prometheus. <https://bugs.torproject.org/31159> * We discussed the idea of making our bridge authority more resistant to outages by setting up two physical instances behind a single, "virtual" IP address. <https://bugs.torproject.org/31878#comment:3> Outreach ======== * On January 9th, Philipp will give a talk on censorship resistance and Tor at FH Hagenberg in Austria: <https://twitter.com/torproject/status/1208102010832277504>

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OONI Monthly Report: November 2019
by Maria Xynou 03 Jan '20

03 Jan '20

Hello Tor world, Happy new year! In this email I share OONI's status report for November 2019, and our December 2019 report will follow next week. Apologies for the delay! # OONI Monthly Report: November 2019 In November 2019, OONI started working on the DRL Anti-censorship grant in collaboration with The Tor Project. We also started using 2 week cycles to track progress, effort, and priority estimation in order to improve how we estimate and track the work we do on projects. In particular, the work related to the DRL Anti-censorship grant is being tracked on the following public GitHub project board: https://github.com/orgs/ooni/projects/18 ## OONI measurements are now near real-time We are very excited to announce that starting from November 2019, OONI measurements are getting published on OONI Explorer and in the API in near real-time! This means that from the moment an OONI Probe user runs a test to it appearing in OONI Explorer, the delay has gone down from a maximum of 24h to an order of minutes. ## Report on internet blackout in Iran In collaboration with IODA and Iranian community members (Kandoo), we co-published a research report examining the internet blackout in Iran: https://ooni.org/post/2019-iran-internet-blackout/ Community members translated the report to Persian: https://paskoocheh.com/blog/posts/2019-11-29-iran-internet-shutdown-ooni-re… ## Psiphon test integration The primary focus during November was the integration of the Psiphon test into probe-engine, probe-cli and consequently the OONI Probe Desktop app. We picked this as the first item as we had already done a bit of cursory research into the problem and had a clear idea of how we would go about integrating and supporting it. The integration work done for the Psiphon test is also very propaedeutic towards doing other golang based circumvention tests, such as obfs4proxy and other golang based Tor pluggable transports. Our goal is that of getting Psiphon integrated inside of probe-engine, so that we are able to run the test from probe-cli which is in turn run by the OONI Probe Desktop app. This issue is tracked as part of: https://github.com/ooni/probe-engine/issues/89 Throughout November 2019, we made a lot of progress and completed most of the items necessary to achieve this goal. In particular, we ensured we’re using the latest version of Psiphon dependencies (see: https://github.com/ooni/probe-engine/issues/141) made sure the data format of the test result matches the old implementation (see: https://github.com/ooni/probe-engine/issues/128) and re-enabled the ability to build the Psiphon test inside of probe-cli (see: https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/issues/79) making it possible to build the Psiphon test from the command line interface used by the OONI Probe desktop app. Other completed issues relevant to Psiphon integration include: * httpx implement NewClientWithProxy (https://github.com/ooni/netx/issues/130) which allows us to test that Psiphon is working by using it * HTTPDoConfig: add support for proxy function (https://github.com/ooni/netx/issues/131) which enables using Psiphon as a proxy * porcelain: add proxy and byte counting support (https://github.com/ooni/netx/pull/134) which allows us to measure the amount of bytes sent and received over the Psiphon proxy * x/logger: mimic cURL logging (https://github.com/ooni/netx/issues/137) which has been useful for more easily debugging the new Psiphon test * psiphon: use netx so we fill the HTTP template (https://github.com/ooni/probe-engine/issues/129) which allows us to collect low-level events and generate the Psiphon test data format * orchestra: implement authenticated requests (https://github.com/ooni/probe-engine/issues/148) which allows us to fetch the Psiphon configuration from the OONI orchestra services On the OONI Probe desktop user interface front, with support from Antonela from the Tor UX team, we designed and implemented the Circumvention test card which will allow us to trigger the Psiphon test, but also all the circumvention tests we will be developing. For reference, see: * Add circumvention tool tests icon: https://github.com/ooni/design-system/issues/72 * Mockups for the Performance test card: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/804#issuecomment-559824046 Based on these mockups, we worked on adding support for triggering the circumvention tests inside of the OONI Probe Desktop app, see: https://github.com/ooni/probe-desktop/pull/88. ## OONI testing engine improvements We made a series of improvements related to the OONI Probe testing engine such as adding support for serialising binary header values in probe-engine (https://github.com/ooni/probe-engine/issues/110) and adding documentation for it in ooni/spec (https://github.com/ooni/spec/issues/164) When performing HTTP requests in the Telegram golang test rewrite, we are now sure to include the Accept and Accept-Language headers to look more similar to a real browser https://github.com/ooni/probe-engine/issues/113. We also dealt with several other low hanging fruit in the probe-engine and ooni-spec. See: * porcelain: confusing that two errors are returned https://github.com/ooni/netx/issues/141 * dash: write tests and reach 100% coverage https://github.com/ooni/probe-engine/issues/93 * Bump data format to v0.3.0: https://github.com/ooni/spec/issues/163 * Bump data format to v0.3.0: https://github.com/ooni/probe-engine/issues/111 * Update to ooni/probe-assets@20191129161951: https://github.com/ooni/probe-engine/issues/116 * Update well know OONI hosts we use: https://github.com/ooni/probe-engine/pull/117 ### OONI Probe Desktop app Beyond the Psiphon test specific improvements listed above, we also made several smaller improvements to the OONI Probe Desktop app, mostly related to UX and App stability. We added a link to the risks documentation in the onboarding screen (https://github.com/ooni/probe-desktop/issues/60) fixed a UI issue with some icons not being aligned (https://github.com/ooni/probe-desktop/issues/71) and made the macOS dmg disk image more pretty (https://github.com/ooni/probe-desktop/issues/31) We also did some brainstorming on how we could improve the usability of the card descriptions in the home page of the desktop app (https://github.com/ooni/probe-desktop/issues/63 & https://github.com/ooni/probe-desktop/issues/91) ### OONI Explorer and OONI API On the OONI Explorer front, our focus was on improving the application performancing by dealing with low hanging fruit we are sure is going to make improvements to it, while at the same time collecting more metrics to evaluate where we should be directing our other efforts related to app performance. In OONI Explorer, we fixed an issue with the OONI API requests being launched twice during search operations: https://github.com/ooni/explorer/issues/350. ## Infrastructure and backend improvements During this month we dealt with several improvements and incidents affecting our backend infrastructure, such as: * An incident related to the collector running out of disk space: https://github.com/ooni/pipeline/issues/265. * We implemented a pattern that allows us to deploy application using debian packages: https://github.com/ooni/pipeline/pull/264 * We resolved an issue with the input field missing from the fastpath: https://github.com/ooni/pipeline/pull/255 * We merged and deployed the event detector in production: https://github.com/ooni/pipeline/pull/228 ## Test list updates We collaborated with OutRight International on updating multiple test lists to include (more) LGBTQI websites: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/539 We also reviewed several test list updates by Netalitica researchers and opened pull requests for the following test lists: * Pakistan: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/541 * Tunisia: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/543 * Sudan: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/544 * United Arab Emirates: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/545 ## Community use of OONI data ### Freedom on the Net 2019 reports OONI data/reports were cited in the following Freedom on the Net 2019 reports: * Venezuela: https://www.freedomonthenet.org/country/venezuela/freedom-on-the-net/2019 * Zimbabwe: https://www.freedomonthenet.org/country/zimbabwe/freedom-on-the-net/2019 * Zambia: https://www.freedomonthenet.org/country/zambia/freedom-on-the-net/2019 * Nigeria: https://www.freedomonthenet.org/country/nigeria/freedom-on-the-net/2019 * Kenya: https://www.freedomonthenet.org/country/kenya/freedom-on-the-net/2019 * Jordan: https://www.freedomonthenet.org/country/jordan/freedom-on-the-net/2019 * Iran: https://www.freedomonthenet.org/country/iran/freedom-on-the-net/2019 * Indonesia: https://www.freedomonthenet.org/country/indonesia/freedom-on-the-net/2019 * Ethiopia: https://www.freedomonthenet.org/country/ethiopia/freedom-on-the-net/2019 * Egypt: https://www.freedomonthenet.org/country/egypt/freedom-on-the-net/2019 * Cuba: https://www.freedomonthenet.org/country/cuba/freedom-on-the-net/2019 OONI data is also indirectly cited via the following reports (which cite the reports of community members that use OONI data): * Ukraine: https://www.freedomonthenet.org/country/ukraine/freedom-on-the-net/2019 * Malaysia: https://www.freedomonthenet.org/country/malaysia/freedom-on-the-net/2019 ## Community activities ### OTF Summit OONI's Arturo and Maria traveled to Taiwan to attend the OTF Summit (4th & 5th November 2019) where they facilitated OONI workshops. They also participated in the Open Taiwan Day on 6th November 2019. ### Blog post by Karisma Foundation Our Colombian partners, Karisma Foundation, published a blog post where they encourage the use of OONI Probe during the November 21st strike: https://stats.karisma.org.co/ayudanos-a-establecer-y-documentar-posibles-bl… ### Community meeting We facilitated the monthly OONI Community Meeting on Tuesday, 26th November 2019, on the OONI Slack channel (https://slack.ooni.org/) As part of the meeting, we discussed: 1. Comprehensive testing of protocols 2. Testing the new OONI Probe Desktop apps: https://github.com/ooni/probe-desktop/releases/tag/v3.0.0-rc.3 3. Measuring internet blackouts from the edge of the network 4. Participating at the IGF 5. Request for feedback on OONI website re-design, FAQ, and glossary ## Userbase In November 2019, OONI Probe was run 406,846 times from 5,417 different vantage points in 205 countries around the world. This information can also be found through our stats on the OONI Explorer landing page: https://explorer.ooni.org/ ~ The OONI team -- Maria Xynou Research & Partnerships Director Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.torproject.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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Anti-censorship meeting notes, 2 Jan 2020
by Philipp Winter 02 Jan '20

02 Jan '20

We had a rather brief meeting today. Here's our log: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2020/tor-meeting.2020-01-02-17.59.html And here's the content of our new meeting pad, which now exists at: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-anti-censorship-keep Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday January 2nd 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 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 ------------------------- --- January 2nd 2020 --- ------------------------- == Announcements == * == Discussion == * 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 == * Please add your December 2019 highlights to our monthly report pad * https://pad.riseup.net/p/UC0va7a6H_XeI5HSsO8H == Interesting links == * https://gfw.report/blog/gfw_shadowsocks/ == Updates == 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 (2020-01-02): * Catching up on emails. * Tried to write patch for #31009. Next week: * Helping with grant writing. 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 2019-01-02 Last week: - vacation This week: - finish debugging windows issues with snowflake (#31971) - update pion library version for Tor Browser (#32870) - update gettor distributors - look at snowflake backlog for sponsor 28 - finish up nsf grant draft - think about gsoc projects Help with: 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: 2020-01-02 Last week: - copied logs and turned off the non-IPv6 broker (#32502) - published a meek turbotunnel branch https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/21 Next week: - delete the 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

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