Hi all, I'm pleased to announce CollecTor support within Stem!
https://stem.torproject.org/api/descriptor/collector.html
This introduces a brand new module that makes gathering Tor's network
topology at prior points in time dead easy. For example...
----------------------------------------------------------------------
import datetime
import stem.descriptor.collector
yesterday = datetime.datetime.utcnow() - datetime.timedelta(days = 1)
# provide yesterday's exits
for desc in stem.descriptor.collector.get_server_descriptors(start = yesterday):
if desc.exit_policy.is_exiting_allowed():
print(' %s (%s)' % (desc.nickname, desc.fingerprint))
----------------------------------------------------------------------
As ever, feedback and overly plump tomatoes welcome!
Hello Tor world! The Fundraising team was quite busy in July. Please reach out if you have any questions.
## Cryptocurrency
As we mentioned last month, BTCPayServer ran a two-week long campaign[1] for us that involved social media posts and mentions on a podcast[2]. The campaign reached the $10,000 goal in 25 hours[3] and raised a total of $18,892.34. We are very grateful to the BTCPayServer team who made this campaign easy for us to implement and a great success.
## Monthly Giving
In July we raised $4,774.81 from 418 monthly donors. Since April we have gained 118 monthly donors. This increase can be attributed to the banner on Tor Browser and monthly rolling invites to one-time donors. We offered all current monthly donors the patch[4] designed by Antonela and people were excited and grateful to receive the gift.
## Strategy
The ‘money machine’ members spread out to attend as many sessions as possible in Stockholm. We then spent our roadmapping session plotting out the grants we plan to apply to in the coming months and discuss which teams’ work can be included in each proposal.
Media Democracy Fund, a current sponsor, generously offered to pay for the time of a strategic fundraising consultant to help us formalize our fundraising plan for the 2019-2020 fiscal year. The fundraising team traveled to Washington DC for a full-day strategic session at the end of July.
During this session we talked about making fundraising projections that more accurately account for risk, which will help us create more realistic (thus achievable) annual budgets. We also discussed how to strategically approach major donors from prospecting to cultivation to asking for a gift, how to craft messaging specifically for donors, and how to better allocate the staff capacity of the fundraising and adjacent teams.
## Grants
Al helped the Guardian Project team to begin writing a grant proposal for support of the linguine project, but this has not yet been submitted.
We submitted a request to the Glaser Progress Foundation for $25,000 to support the Community team.
Part of our focus on the fundraising team is to stay in more consistent contact with our sponsors/donors. We want them to know what we’re doing, how we’re stewarding their gifts/completing their projects, and to see how their projects are interconnected. We sent this post-Stockholm meeting newsletter[5] to current sponsors, then sent a version to major donors, and then published it as a blog post[6] for all.
Upcoming requests:
RIPE NCC for improving Tor’s IPv6 support, due 9/1
OTF Core Infrastructure grant for Tor Browser, due 9/1
DRL SOIs for Community and Scalability, due 9/20
MOSS Scalability project, due 9/?? (rolling)
## Individual Giving
We continue to grow our monthly income from individuals visiting donate.torproject.org. In July the daily average of non-monthly gifts donated was up 315% over July 2018. This increase can be attributed to the new website, increased awareness about Tor, and the welcome emails we send to newsletter subscribers.
[1]https://bitcoinfortor.torproject.net <https://bitcoinfortor.torproject.net/>
[2]https://stephanlivera.com/episode/89/ <https://stephanlivera.com/episode/89/>
[3]https://cointelegraph.com/news/tor-projects-bitcoin-crowdfunding-campaign… <https://cointelegraph.com/news/tor-projects-bitcoin-crowdfunding-campaign-h…>
[4]https://tinyurl.com/yysrlnps <https://tinyurl.com/yysrlnps>
[5]https://crm.torproject.org/civicrm/mailing/view?id=267 <https://crm.torproject.org/civicrm/mailing/view?id=267>
[6]https://blog.torproject.org/reflections-our-stockholm-all-hands <https://blog.torproject.org/reflections-our-stockholm-all-hands>
Hi!
We had a very short meeting this week last Monday.
The logs are here:
http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2019/tor-meeting.2019-08-12-17.03.html
The contents of the network team meeting's pad:
= Network team meeting pad! =
This week's team meeting is at Wednesday 7 August 2300 UTC on
#tor-meeting on OFTC.
We have changed the day from Tuesday to Wednesday.
August schedule:
* Wednesday 7 August 2300 UTC (!!!)
* Monday 12 August 1700 UTC
* Monday 19 August 1700 UTC
* Monday 26 August 1700 UTC
Welcome to our meeting!
First meeting each month: Wednesday at 2300 UTC
Other meetings each month: Mondays at 1700 UTC until 3 November 2019,
when daylight saving time changes
On #tor-meeting on OFTC.
(This channel is logged while meetings are in progress.) (See
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2017-September/001459.ht…
for background.)
Want to participate? Awesome! Here's what to do:
1. If you have updates, enter them below, under your name.
2. If you see anything you want to talk about in your updates, put
them in boldface!
3. Show up to the IRC meeting and say hi!
After each week's meetings, the contents of this pad will be sent to
tor-project @ lists.torproject.org.
After that is done, the pad can be used for the next week.
== Previous notes ==
(Search the tor-project mailing list archive for older notes.)
In-person meetings:
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2019Stockholm/No…
22 July:
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2019-July/002401.html
29 July:
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2019-July/002408.html
7 August:
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2019-August/002418.html
== Stuff to do every week =
* Let's check the 0.4.1 release status page.
See
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/NetworkTeam/CoreTor…
(This page automatically shows the latest trac ticket status.)
* Let's check and update the roadmap.
What's done, and what's coming up?
We're using a kanban board:
https://dip.torproject.org/torproject/core/tor/boards
* Check reviewer assignments! How reviews from last week worked? Any
blocker?
Here are the outstanding reviews, oldest first, including sbws
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/query?status=needs_review&componen…
== Reminders ==
* Remember to "/me status: foo" at least once daily.
* Remember that our current code reviews should be done by end-of-week.
* Make sure you are in touch with everybody with whom you are doing work
for the next releases.
* Remember to fill up the 'actual point' field when you close a ticket.
We need those to calculate velocity.
* Check other's people call for help in their entries.
* When you are overloaded, it is ok to say "no" to things.
* And it is ok to reschedule things.
-------------------------------
---- 12 August 2019
-------------------------------
== Announcements ==
AFK
reminder: catalyst will be AFK Jul 29 through Aug 18
nickm will be AFK August 12 through August 16
ahf will be AFK all of August for BornHack and CCC Camp, but will be
on IRC every now and then
On September there is a technical writer from Google Season of Docs
starting to work with us on rewriting the Tor manual page. She will be
participating in the network team meetings. Her project:
https://developers.google.com/season-of-docs/docs/participants/project-tor
We are moving the kanban board from storm into
https://dip.torproject.org/torproject/core/tor/boards . This will help
lead a plan for migration into dip.torproject.org.
The release date for 0.4.1.x-stable is postponed to 20 August, so
that it will come out _after_ Nick is back from vacation. Please get
all 041 blockers fixed and merged if possible?
== Discussion ==
#31356 #31387 and #30992
== Recommended links ==
== Updates ==
Name:
Week of XYZ (planned):
- What you planned for last week.
Week of XYZ (actual):
- What you did last week.
Week of ABC (planned):
- What you're planning to do this week.
Help with:
- Something you may need help with.
PLEASE DO NOT BULK-DELETE THE OLD ENTRIES!
Leave the "Planned" parts!
Leave the parts for last week and this week!
gaba:
Last week (actual):
. catching up
. s30
. roadmap
This week (planned):
. s28
Help with:
teor: (online first week of the month, offline at the usual meeting time)
Week of 5 August (planned):
Urgent:
- config.c refactor code review (#30914), because nickm is
going away next week
- triage remaining backport backlog
Roadmap:
- finish add tor controller trace logging to diagnose stem
hangs (#30901)
- try nickm's suggested a simpler implementation
- split off bugs I found while writing the control trace
code
Other:
- code reviews
Week of 5 August (actual):
Urgent:
- config.c refactor meeting
Roadmap:
- worked on add tor controller trace logging to diagnose
stem hangs (#30901)
- found bugs in practracker, draft add files script,
others ...
- implemented #29879 and #31314, because they were useful
for backports
- merged #29280 and #30591 (sponsor 31: chutney and stem CI)
Other:
- ticket triage
- some code reviews
- IPv6 funding proposal first pass estimates and details,
personas and objectives meeting Friday
- proposal 306 IPv6 happy eyeballs review
- chutney and fallback-scripts merges
- backport triage, lots of CI merges, lots of backport merges
Week of 12 August (planned):
Urgent:
- config.c refactor code review (#30914), because we want to
get it done by the end of August
Roadmap:
- finish add tor controller trace logging to diagnose stem
hangs (#30901)
- try nickm's suggested a simpler implementation
- split off bugs I found while writing the control trace
code
- finish small 0.4.1 tasks
Other:
- code reviews
Week of 12 August (actual):
Urgent:
Roadmap:
Other:
- ticket triage
- cleared backport merge backlog
- Tried to help get Rust working on BSD (#31390)
- IPv6 funding proposal - extra objectives as people bring
them up
- update draft backport and release policies - maybe I
should turn these into proposals?
- helped anti-censorship team find the tor function that
provides complete bridge PT lines (#29128)
Nick:
Week of 5 August (planned):
- More review and merge
- Finish august practracker work by getting may-include support
- Fix several CI issues
- Work on validation refactoring for #29211 (config.c).
- Logs ot meetings
- Try to end the week with inbox zero
- Reschnedule 041-stable
- Walking onions paper
- Start on 0.4.1.x release notes
- NOTE: I am on vacation next week!
Week of 5 August (actual):
- Various meetings
- Logs of review and merge
- Did a little work on #29211 validation; came up with a better
approach.
- Talked with teor about approaches to 30901
- Finished first version all practracker tickets
- Worked on a git hook issue (30979)
- Started release process for 0.4.1.5 -- hoping it can come out
on 20 Aug
- Worked on CI failures; opened several tickets for jenkins and
appveyor issues, with patches
- Worked on walking onions paper
- ...
Week of 12 august (planned):
- ON VACATION
Mike (may have to leave early):
Week of 8/7 (planned):
- Fix https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/30992 and/or
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/31343
- Clean up #30942
- Catch up on researcher and scalability related mail
Week of 8/7 (actual):
- Fix https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/31343
week of 8/12 (planned):
Need help with/at risk of dropping this month:
- Deep-thought-required research project followup (masque, BGP,
ECN, etc)
- Private browsing meetings
- Relay community drive/mgmt (and related LTS herding)
- Circpad documentation + Sponsor 2 report
- Firefox ESR network code review
- Code reviews?
catalyst: - on leave
week of 07/08 (2019-W28) (planned):
- travel prep
- Stockholm meeting
week of 07/08 (2019-W28) (actual):
- travel prep
- Stockholm meeting
week of 07/15 (2019-W29) (actual):
- travel
- time off to recover from travel
week of 07/22 (2019-W30) (planned):
- Season of Docs selection due 07/23
- expense reports
- follow up from Stockholm meeting
- hand off some reviews to teor
- working partial days this week
asn:
Week of 08/05 (actual):
- Started looking at onionbalance v3.
- Finished reviews/merges backlog from vacations.
- Some travel planning for OTF.
- Revised #30381 branch.
- Another review of #15516.
- Triaged/reviewed 041 bugs: #30992
Week of 08/12 (planned):
- More onionbalance v3
- Work on WTF-PAD #30992
- Do reviews/merges.
ahf: - on leave
Week of 22/7 (planned):
- Do reimbursement
- Go over all notes from Stockholm that seems relevant to me.
- Follow up on pre-Stockholm items:
- Continue figuring out some info on a potential Danish funder.
- Continue with #5304 and #28930
Week of 22/7 (actually):
- Did reimbursement
- Went over all notes from Stockholm.
- Followed up on pre-Stockholm items:
- Continue figuring out some info on a potential Danish
funder (postponed until they are back from vacation).
- Continued work with #5304 and #28930
Week of 29/7 (planned):
- Finish off #5304 and #28930 before going on vacation.
- Review Roger's DEFCON slides.
- Do you need any help from me before I leave?
dgoulet:
Week of 05/08 (actual):
- Did scaling work for #31340. Takes a lot of work and concentration
so I
rushed a lot of hours there so I can have 100% focus.
- Got #15516 merged finally so I can finalize prop305 this week.
- Progress on #30924. Not done yet.
Week of 12/08 (planned):
- High priority for me is finishing #30924 and hopefully go in quick
back
and forth review with asn.
- Maybe some tor-scaling continuation from last week.
--
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
Here are our meeting logs:
http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2019/tor-meeting.2019-08-15-16.59.html
And here's our meeting pad:
Anti-censorship work meeting pad
--------------------------------
Next meeting: Thursday August 15th 17:00 UTC
Weekly meetings, every Thursday at 17:00 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/torproject/anti-censorship/gettor/boards
* Tickets that need reviews: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/query?status=needs_review&componen…
---------------------------
---- 15th August 2019 ----
---------------------------
== Announcements ==
* We have torproject.net domains for the snowflake broker and bridge! (thanks to anarcat)
== Discussion ==
*
== Actions ==
*
== Interesting links ==
* USENIX Security'19 and FOCI'19 papers are out:
* https://www.usenix.org/conference/foci19/workshop-program
* https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity19/technical-sessions
== 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: (gettor days are Thursday) - on leave
This week:
Next week:
Past week:
phw:
This week (2019-08-15):
* Worked with FreeBSD obfs4 operator: realised that FreeBSD's pf may cause issues with loopback communication
* Incorporated feedback for https://bugs.torproject.org/9316
* Worked with our prospective new default bridge operator: https://bugs.torproject.org/31164
* Drafted blog post for our "set up new obfs4 bridges" campaign
* Implemented anti-bot mechanism for BridgeDB: https://bugs.torproject.org/31252
* Allows you to return decoy bridges to bot requests
Next week:
Help with:
* Review for https://bugs.torproject.org/31252
Gaba: (updated August 15th)
Last week ():
* s28
This week (planned):
*
ahf - on leave
Last week:
- Worked on #28930
This week:
- Finished refactoring parts of #28930. Trying to figure out if we should begin the discussion on how PT's can report back on bootstrap info.
- Continued to work on a tool to convert Trac tickets into Gitlab tickets.
cecylia (cohosh): last updated 2019-08-15
Last week:
- snowflake dogfood
- updated snowflake client version in TB (#31403)
- review of bridgedb tickets (#9316, #22755)
- filed a torspec PR for the snowflake broker metrics spec (#31407)
- /metrics handler for collector (#31376)
- worked on sequencing layer (#29206)
- updated broker and bridge to get certs for torproject.net domains
- did a measurement to check in on snowflake client bootstrap failures (#31385)
This week (PTO 19 Aug - 22 Aug):
- snowflake dogfood
- look at go module support for rbm (#28325)
- sequencing layer for snowflake (#29206)
- review of bridgedb ticket #31252 and snowflake ticket #30130
- look more at bootstrap failures (#31385)
Help with:
- review of /metrics handler (#31376)
- review of broker metrics torspec (#31407) (probably from net-team)
- review of snowflake client version bump (#31403) (probably from applications team)
- take a look at and approve https://github.com/cohosh/snowflake/compare/domain
catalyst: - on leave
week of 07/11 (actual):
- Stockholm meeting
week of 07/18 (actual):
- recovering from travel
week of 07/25 (planned):
- recovering from travel
- mostly sponsor31
- preparing for extended leave starting 07/29
arlolra: 2019-08-15
Last week:
- revisions to #30310
- start looking at the suggestions in #31109
- more review of #31170
Next week:
- add a build step / documentation for code reuse in cupcake
- make an attempt at #31391
Help with:
- review of #30310
dcf: 2019-08-08
Last week:
- branch for Snowflake dark mode (#31170)
Next week:
- will be at FOCI/Usenix security
Help with:
- there is something wrong with Golang and the macOS SDK in #30126 that I haven't looked at yet
antonela: 2019-08-08
Help with: let's sync on S30 work - what is needed on my side?
Notes for August 8 2019 meeting:
MAIN DISCUSSION ITEMS:
Antoine:
+ what do we do about chiwui (check.tpo)? (see notes below)
- we are running an old system that we don’t want to support anymore; last deadline to replace it was April 2019, backups have been down since then, do we still want to keep the service running? Answer is yes. Now a question of when - before end of the year is the goal and Gaba will update the ticket with the new timeline.
+ need help come up with a plan for email, unsure where to go next? last meeting notes were "bottomline is: check with riseup for next steps and investigate giving everyone ldap. talk with TPA about giving everyone LDAP access, since everyone has PGP keys”
- relocating pad with discussion to pick up the issue again; tabled for now.
+ single point of failure when sysadmins go on vacation (general discussion)
- phw: dcf created a "survival guide" for snowflake infrastructure, which allows non-maintainers to perform basic maintenance tasks. we've been trying to create such survival guides for other anti-censorship services: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/
Mike:
+ Geko: It is looking unlikely that ESR network safety code review will be finished by 9/3. I have too many remaining network team responsibilities due this month. Related: As I see it, my top priority is closing out Sponsor2 w/ network team this month.. I am saying no to/dropping other stuff as a result. Is this the right move?
- gaba: yes; other discussion about moving some things around to get Sponsor2 work done.
Antonela:
+ Is there anything specific we want to discuss with mozilla folks at our monthly mozilla meeting next week? Ethan is collecting topics for the agenda until Friday. - Anto will ping matt and arthur to ask about Microsoft question and migrating away from ESR both being on the agenda; will start collecting topics and send to mozilla.
Gus:
+ follow-up from last week re: Drupal - I reach a friend and he asked where he could access our template and Drupal views. Do we have a staging env?
- pili sent an email about dev environment for this, but I'm not sure about accessing template and views; waiting until hiro is back from vacation
Arturo:
+ I saw there were some highlights for me last week, but I have lost the backlog and forgot what they were. Does somebody remember what they were and would like to discuss them?
- backlog sent
---------------->8
INDIVIDUAL NOTES:
Antoine:
1. what do we do about chiwui (check.tpo)? last deadline was april 2019, but that date passed and the machine wasn't upgraded. do we want to keep the service running? we don't want to maintain 3 different versions of Debian at once (oldoldstable, oldstable and stable). immediate impact: backups have been down since april and will not be restored. in https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/29399 - irl stated "end of LTS" as an horizon to fix this (june 2020), that is one year from now. will that happen? is that an okay timeline?
2. on vacation (totally offline) last week of august, will miss vegas
3. did some backup / restore tests and built backup documentation, which was identified as a critical part missing from my brain for weasel-redundancy
4. need help come up with a plan for email, unsure where to go next? last meeting notes were "bottomline is: check with riseup for next steps and investigate giving everyone ldap. talk with TPA about giving everyone LDAP access, since everyone has PGP keys" i'll keep going
5. new Ganeti cluster being built to replace old machines: much progress made, ready to go in production! (mostly means we can replace our old stuff, and unfortunately not a lot of new capacity yet, but high hopes this will make our work easier in the future)
Sarah:
1. afk for this meeting; setting up the booth for DEFCON
2. Bug Smash campaign has raised over $6,000 so far
Nick:
1. AFK next week, will be on vacation. Sent personal mail or use if you need me; I will be filtering all mailing lists into an "after vacation" folder.
2. Planned release date for 0.4.1.x stable is 20 August 2019; delayed till I'm back from vacation.
Philipp:
1. Reached out to MASQUE IETF standardisation group about turning protocol into pluggable transport
2. GetTor emergency maintenance
3. Business as usual in sponsor 28 and 30
Mike:
1. Have a larger pile of things to do in August than can get done; need to make some decisions about what is most important
Antonela:
1. made/making grants meetings: IPv6, DRL, Metrics+SimplySecure
2. Working with Nah on user research reporting for S9
3. regular work with browsers and websites for s9, s27 and s30
4. logistics for the OTF summit
5. OONI transition meeting on Friday [arturo: what is this? should someone from OONI also attend? i don't think so - Anto]
Gaba:
1. Followed up on DRL implementers meeting.
2. Sponsor 30 - follow up and triaging tickets.
3. Roadmap for network and anti-censorship team in dip.tpo to test platform. Still working on migration plan for gitlab.
4. Following on scalability next steps to look for funding.
5. Data portal moving forward to get UX work help.
6. Help grant writing for IPv6 proposal.
7. Admin on Apple development: Pili and Arturo will take it.
8. Talking with mayfirst about how/if they can take management of civicrm.
Gus:
1. Answering RT, doing some spam cleaning and checking about alternatives and future management
2. Sponsor 9 work - starting to reach local partners
3. Submitted and approved CCCamp about:freedom activities:
a. Tor Relay Operator Meetup;
b. Tor trainings in Global South - waiting until friday to share the activities publicly
5. Onboarding Nah in UX/Community work
Steph
1. out for this meeting for DEF CON
Isabela:
1. Working on organizing all the tasks from DC training.
2. Working on my tasks from DC training
2.1 Working w/ Al on vision letter draft [deadline august 15]
2.2 Creating Micro Strategy Flow for my funders/donors meetings in August and September
4. Doing the final 3 feedback summary syncs
Pili:
1. Start of month so lots of triaging this week (Sponsor 30, website, UX tickets) and trac gardening
2. Working on websites - updating sponsors and trying to close tickets
3. Working on gitlab migration document
4. Helping to organise documentation Hackathon at the start of September
5. afk for some of this meeting as I'll be on another meeting with Guardian Project and Tails about a joint proposal
6. Trying to push Orfox > TBA transition over the finish line
7. Tying up any loose ends before going AFK next week
Arturo:
1. Attended the CitizenLab Summer Institute in Toronto and it went very well
2. Working on wrapping up OONI Explorer
3. Working on OONI Probe desktop app
4. Fast path for data processing pipeline is coming together
Erin:
1. New format for Vegas notes - input welcome
2. Misc. HR stuff
Karsten:
1. Started using Apache Ivy for external dependency management
Hello, everyone!
Please join me in welcoming Babatunde Okunoye, one of the 2019 ICFP Fellows (https://www.opentech.fund/funds/icfp/).
Tor Project will be hosting Tunde during his tenure as the Open Technology Fund Senior Information Controls Fellow (2019-20). He will be doing research about ‘’Understanding the usage of tools during Information Controls in Africa: Nigeria, Cameroon, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia as case studies’’.
Bio & Contact:
Babatunde Okunoye
babatunde.okunoye(a)paradigmhq.org
Babatunde Okunoye is the Research Officer at Paradigm Initiative, taking the lead in producing all research material which feeds into the advocacy work of Paradigm Initiative in Digital Rights and Digital Inclusion in Africa. This includes the Digital Rights in Africa Report (launched at the Internet Governance Forum since 2016), Policy briefs, Research Journal articles and policy position papers in response to calls from organizations such as the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) and the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). Babatunde has completed research consulting projects and partnerships for such organizations such as the World Wide Web Foundation, the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), Privacy International and the Collaboration for Internet Policy in East and Southern Africa (CIPESA).
A Nigerian trained economist; Babatunde has a Certificate in Research Methods for Internet Policy and Advocacy in Africa from the Internet Policy Observatory, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania USA. He is a member of the Internet Society and a 2018 Fellow of the African School on Internet Governance.
Welcome, Tunde! We are looking forward to working with you!
Cheers,
Erin Wyatt
Director of People and Office Operations
ewyatt(a)torproject.org
PGP: 35E7 2A9F 6655 45F9 2CB6 6624 BA0C 9400 F80F 91CE
Releases
========
* Tails 3.15 was released on July 9th (bugfix release).
https://tails.boum.org/news/version_3.15/index.en.html
* Tails 3.16 is scheduled for September 3rd.
Documentation and website
=========================
- We updated most of our documentation to Tails based on Debian 10
(Buster). (#16282)
- We simplified and updated our description of the system requirements.
(#11663 and #16810).
- We fixed the display of the "Tor check" button on the homepage of *Tor
Browser*. (#15312)
This "Tor check" button is used by around 10% of users.
- We removed the "% translated" indication from our website because it
was misleading. (#16867)
User experience
===============
- Odile Carabantes and Enso Studio created an animation on
using the boot menu to start Tails:
https://tails.boum.org/install/win/usb#animation
- We tested 2 alternatives to *Etcher* as it has some privacy issues
(#16381):
- Rawrite32 (#16553)
- Win32 Disk Images (#14447)
- We proposed some small improvements to adjust *Tails Installer* to the
fact that we are now distributing USB images:
- Rename *Tails Installer* as *Tails Cloner* (#16907)
- Use USB images instead of ISO images in *Tails Installer* (#16906)
- We proposed a design to [[use *Tails Installer* to backup the
persistent volume:
https://tails.boum.org/blueprint/backups/
Hot topics on our help desk
===========================
1. Many people are still having graphic card problems, specially
"Error starting GDM with [AMD/ATI] Carrizo". (#16815)
2. We got a lot of support requests about **'Tails not being able to
delete images'**. After a while we realised it was because of a
confusing part of our documentation. We will try to fix that soon.
(#16975)
1. Users keep trying to use Electrum even when, at the moment, it is not
easy in Tails.
Infrastructure
==============
- We finished fixing the description of the mechanism for the
revocation of the Tails signing key after an external review.
(#15604)
https://tails.boum.org/doc/about/openpgp_keys/signing_key_revocation/
- We discussed additions of new people to the Tails signing key
revocation mechanism. (#16665)
- The new backups system for our entire infrastructure is live.
(#15071)
- We upgraded our Puppet master (sic) to Debian 10 (Buster), which
supports PuppetDB out of the box. This allowed us to drop a bunch of
hackish workarounds and it was a great way to fast-track the
onboarding of zen, our new sysadmin. (#16460)
- We made great progress on our web translation platform:
https://translate.tails.boum.org/
- We fixed a number of bugs identified since we submitted the platform
to a production workload.
- We modified in depth the permissions model to address issues
identified by a security review.
- We sent a public call for testing.
- We kept working on documentation for translators.
- We adjusted the resources allocated to the VM that runs this
platform and deployed Apache `mod_security` to make it a bit less
scary.
Funding
=======
- Our proposal to the Mozilla Open Source Support was accepted. It will
fund our work to:
- Improve Upgrades, late 2019 and early 2020 (#8415 and #15281)
- Support Secure Boot, mid 2020 (#6560)
- Migrate to GitLab, early 2020 (#15878)
Outreach
========
Past events
-----------
- A few Tails contributors attended DebConf19, the annual Debian
Developers and Contributors Conference.
intrigeri and nodens ran a skill-sharing session about AppArmor.
- Ulrike, anonym, and sajolida attended Tor Meeting in Stockholm,
Sweden.
Upcoming events
---------------
- carlosm2 is organizing a testing of Tails 4.0~beta1 at the Rancho
Electrónico en Ciudad de Mexico on Saturday August 17:
https://twitter.com/dospesosinc/status/1160723565802602502
On-going discussions
====================
- We asked for comments on a proposal for a "People" page on our website
that would be both trustworthy, human, and respect our pseudonyms:
https://lists.autistici.org/message/20190720.142700.203814ca.en.html
- We asked for comments on the proposal to use *Tails Installer* to
backup the persistent volume:
http://lists.autistici.org/message/20190723.163900.7bfc4f4a.en.html
Translations
============
## All the website
- de: 40% (2292) strings translated
- es: 53% (3002) strings translated
- fa: 32% (1803) strings translated
- fr: 89% (5025) strings translated
- it: 34% (1947) strings translated
- pt: 26% (1465) strings translated
Total original words: 59619
## Core pages of the website
- de: 69% (1216) strings translated
- es: 83% (1453) strings translated
- fa: 35% (624) strings translated
- fr: 96% (1680) strings translated
- it: 65% (1150) strings translated
- pt: 47% (823) strings translated
Total original words: 16505
Metrics
=======
* Tails has been started more than 759 660 times this month. This
makes 24 505 boots a day on average.
--
sajolida
Are you wondering why a meeting would start with the words "just throw
an ice cube in there"? You may not find an answer to this question, but
you should still read our meeting logs!
http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2019/tor-meeting.2019-08-08-17.01.html
...and here's our meeting pad:
Anti-censorship work meeting pad
--------------------------------
Next meeting: Thursday August 8th 17:00 UTC
Weekly meetings, every Thursday at 17:00 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://storm.torproject.org/shared/knaG2lEzepdsCC21DYk4dD4hRtwcUGnXQvalH1s…
* Our roadmap consists of a subset of trac tickets.
* Note that there's a bug that causes the roadmap to load slowly. To work around it, first click on "All boards", and then on "ROADMAP Anti-censorship team"
* The anti-censorship team's wiki page: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/AntiCensorshipTeam
* GetTor's roadmap: https://dip.torproject.org/torproject/anti-censorship/gettor/boards
* Tickets that need reviews: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/query?status=needs_review&componen…
---------------------------
---- 8th August 2019 ----
---------------------------
== Announcements ==
* The ICLab folks started measuring the reachability of our default bridges from their VPN vantage points!
* Psiphon expressed an interest in publishing data on their anti-censorship tool usage!
== Discussion ==
* Sponsor 30
* timeline: https://nc.riseup.net/s/JQfpF2QY42ZxZgM
* in trac: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/31268
* Testing gitlab for managing roadmap https://dip.torproject.org/torproject/anti-censorship/roadmap/boards
* Snowflake web extension https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/query?status=!closed&keywords=~sno… Anything from that list should be in our roadmap?
* #31278 (checking after meeting)
* #31285 (checking after meeting)
* #31310 (checking after meeting)
* What do we do with #31153 "Create a "tor-bridge" Debian meta package" ?
* Sponsor 28
* do we resume monthly meetings? last one was June 27th. We can do one the last week of August. -> We bring updates on S28 to the weekly anti-censorshi meetings.
* Do we need anything else from metrics team for #30777 - Run a "set up new bridges" campaign ? Not so far.
* Snowflake migration to TPA: we can get a tp.net domain right away that points to dcf's hosts. do we want to push for TPA hosts for this soon or push it out?
== Actions ==
*
== Interesting links ==
* Proposed turning MASQUE into a pluggable transport:
* https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/masque/Cxh1phx6vFgn19jyANmt2YwLDqQ
== 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: (gettor days are Thursday) - on leave
This week:
Next week:
Past week:
phw:
This week (2019-08-08):
* Created monthly anti-censorship team report and sent it to tor-project@
* Summarised what I learned from Nathan about censorship of Android play store and sent it to RACE list
* Wrote fix to make BridgeDB distribute vanilla IPv6 bridges again
* https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26542
* Interacted with IETF MASQUE people, pointing them at pluggable transports
* Emergency GetTor maintenance and bug fixes
* Filed ticket to have TvdW's default bridge removed
* His server contracting is ending with Aug 31st :(
* https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/31357
* Improved our "set up an obfs4" bridge guide and made other guides point to it
* Wasted time trying to understand odd MTU packets for a default bridge
* Turns out it had a non-standard TCP MSS :(
Next week:
Help with:
Gaba: (updated August 6th)
Last week ():
* s30
* roadmap
This week (planned):
* s28
ahf - on leave
Last week:
- Worked on #28930
This week:
- Finished refactoring parts of #28930. Trying to figure out if we should begin the discussion on how PT's can report back on bootstrap info.
- Continued to work on a tool to convert Trac tickets into Gitlab tickets.
cecylia (cohosh): last updated 2019-08-08
Last week:
- CLSI (31 July - 2 Aug)
- PTO(5 Aug - 7 Aug)
- merged #31100 (bug fix for loop in Firefox)
- provided more information for #31232 (migrate snowflake infra to tpa machines)
- updated snowflake webextension version
- made ticket for adding a metrics collector handler to the snowflake broker (#31376)
This week:
- snowflake dogfood
- finish windows build of pion branch (#28942 and #28942)
- sequencing layer for snowflake (#29206)
- /metrics handler for collector (#31376)
- look at #30126 to see if there's an rbm/Golang issue we can help with
Help with:
catalyst: - on leave
week of 07/11 (actual):
- Stockholm meeting
week of 07/18 (actual):
- recovering from travel
week of 07/25 (planned):
- recovering from travel
- mostly sponsor31
- preparing for extended leave starting 07/29
arlolra: 2019-08-08
Last week:
-
Next week:
- revisions to #30310
- start looking at the suggestions in #31109
- add a build step / documentation for code reuse in cupcake
- maybe more review of #31170
Help with:
-
dcf: 2019-08-08
Last week:
- branch for Snowflake dark mode (#31170)
Next week:
- will be at FOCI/Usenix security
Help with:
- there is something wrong with Golang and the macOS SDK in #30126 that I haven't looked at yet
antonela: 2019-08-08
Help with: let's sync on S30 work - what is needed on my side?
Hey Everyone,
Apologies for the delay in getting Vegas meeting notes out — I just recently took over the responsibility from Karsten and I needed a minute to get up to speed. :)
I have pasted the notes from two meetings below, July 25th and August 1st. Please note that starting with the August 1st notes, in response to feedback from readers of these emails who want a bit more information, we’re trying a new approach. The top of the notes will include the main topics discussed in the meeting, followed by a brief synopsis of each issue. The rest of the notes will be similar to past formats, with team leads' bullet point notes.
We hope you find the new format helpful!
Cheers,
Erin
Notes for July 25 2019 meeting:
Roger:
- Ola is still under essentially house arrest in Ecuador, and Chelsea is still in jail.
- OFTC is getting our support requests because our contact page sends people there. Let's change the contact page to stop doing that.
Gus:
- State of Onion (2019) - Community Team
- Going to CCC camp (August 16th - 26th)
- Working in Community Portal and Sponsor9 phase 3 (remote training)
Nick:
- Many network team members are taking PTO in August; others are recovering from Stockholm. We've tried to roadmap accordingly.
- Another alpha release should come out late this week or early next.
- Continuing to try to increase my role in 1:1 fundraising
isabela:
- Working on giving feedback to everyone (already did with some of you) - if I don't have weekly 1:1 w/ you, Jon will contact you to schedule time for us to go over your feedback
- Organizing upcoming meetings related to fundraising and preparing for the ones we had last week and are having this week
- Getting Bug Smash Fund campaign organized (together with our presence at ccc-camp and defcon)
- Will be in DC next week for training (30 and 31st, offline all of 31st for sure)
anarcat:
- post-stockholm scramble in progress, trying to figure out how to prioritize all the things on my plate that came out of the meeting
- still struggling to find time to take a step back and do long term plans, considering prioritization through the "ops report card" as a stopgap http://opsreportcard.com/ <http://opsreportcard.com/> (also part of the sysadmin book
- will be missing next meeting (and thu-friday this week and next week)
Mike:
- R&R after Tor and PETS marathon
- Pondering Research Director roles list
- Will complete Feedback by next week
Sarah:
- Working on mapping connections to major donor wishlist.
- Preparing for DEF CON. Will be afk August 3 - through DEF CON (August 11) but will be checking in and reachable via email and Signal.
- Preparing for fundraising meeting in DC next Wednesday.
- Reseaching attendees of cryptocurrency dinner Isa will attend Friday.
- BTCPayServer campaign has raised $17,663 and we should do a push to try to get to $20k in the last few days.
Philipp
- Anti-censorship team will attend OTF summit in Taipei (plus a pre and post event) and Citizen Lab Summer Institute
- Moving forward with pluggable transport spec, BridgeDB metrics, and Snowflake
+ In sponsor-speak: trying to make good progress with sponsor 28 and preparing for a running start with sponsor 30
- Working with bridge operators who had troubles setting up obfs4 (refining setup guide in parallel)
Steph
- Preparing for the bug smash campaign.
- Preparing for Def Con. Will be talking at the blockchain village on a panel about privacy. Getting printed materials ready. A volunteer is finalizing our badges.
- Reviewing a post on vpns.
- Preparing a pitch on Tor’s vision.
- Responded to several inquiries about the FSB leak.
- Finalizing the next newsletter.
- Published a reflective Stockholm blog post.
- Social media, social media, social media.
- Will be in DC the 30 and 31, offline most of 31.
Erin
- Taking over Vegas meeting reminders and notes
Karsten:
- Handing over Vegas meeting reminders and notes.
- Fighting with code dependencies related to Debian buster being declared stable.
------------>8------------>8------------>8------------>8------------>8
Notes for August 1:
MAIN DISCUSSION ITEMS:
Nick:
+I need to offload responsibility for being our admin on the Apple development world. Logically that should go to Admin, or be shared between Browser and OONI. It will require an apple device for 2FA, which is why I would like to quit. It is tied to the execdir@ account.
- Looking for trusted person to take over; trying to decide which team is best suited/most appropriate to take over or decide who will (OONI/Browser/Admin). TBD.
Georg:
+ Our CCCamp presence in the About:freedom cluster is a thing and our talk got accepted. We need to organize that.
- Hoping to get Tor shirts from Berlin, Sarah/Jon sending patches; Gus assisting with organizing; Geko organizing talk, will be asking what people want to talk about.
Steph:
+ Where are we with Pierre's guest post? Should I get back to him or are you doing that? Anything else we need here?
- GeKo is picking this up for now trying to move this forward
+ Getting someone from Tor to the browser vendor meetup in September
- Need to put them in touch with Microsoft person and Arthur
Antonela:
+ Arturo: how much UX capacity OONI needs the next semester?
-To be determined/coordinated by Isa and Arturo
Pili:
+ We're thinking of adapting OONI's partnership agreement for our training partners but would like some advice with regards to legal language
-ewyatt will have a look and will see if we can have it reviewed by an attorney; Isa will run it by SIDA.
+ The blog comments layout has been broken for a while and we don't currently have Drupal expertise to fix. Should we consider moving to another blogging platform? Started writing a document on this.
- It can wait until January; Gus might know some people who can fix the template in the meantime, will look into it; Pili will tt hiro when she's back from being afk.
Antoine:
+ WIP: A how-to-get-help page (part of https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/30881) <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/30881)>
Notes:
------------>8
TEAM LEAD NOTES:
Nick:
1) 0.4.1.4-rc released; waiting for any bug reports or feedback. Please let us know ASAP if something is broken!
2) Expect slow network team progress in August; many folks on vacation.
isabela:
1) almost done w/ all feedback review
2) training in DC w/ coach and money machine team
3) getting ready for the bug smash fund campaign that we will launch on August 1st
4) still have some feedbacks to finished (folks were away) will ping everyone on that
Sarah:
1) training in DC Wednesday
2) prepping for bug smash campaign to launch 8/1
3) prepping for DEF CON
4) BTCPayServer campaign finished and raised $18,892
5) meeting with board members and others to find connections to potential major donors
6) met with OTF to discuss next funding proposal
7) beginning to prep for YE campaign
8) afk from the 3-13th but will be checking email periodically and available on Signal
Georg:
1) digging out of backlog
2) done with feedback review so far (good stuff!)
3) moving forward with getting esr68 into shape (we'll hopefully have first nightly builds early next week)
Antoine:
1) weasel worked on creating a new virtual machine cluster to replacing our aging machinery
2) started working on reviewing our infrastructure, details in https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/30881see <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/30881see> in particular https://help.torproject.org/tsa/doc/how-to-get-help/ <https://help.torproject.org/tsa/doc/how-to-get-help/> :)
Antonela:
1) Back from vacs. Juggling with the backlog.
2) We ran a survey during the dev meeting about Tor Browser usage. We got 30 responses. Working on sharing the results with the lists.
3) Regular work with the anti-censorship, browser, OONI and community teams.
Erin
1) Insurance renewals
2) handbook
3) HR stuff
Gus:
1) Working on community portal - relay operations section
2) Joined rt this week (thanks Pili!), recruiting more volunteers to answer frontdesk and organizing an emergency plan (Cy is answering this week).
3) Helping Jon/Sarah/Steph on defcon preps
4) Writing Partnership Agreement based on OONI draft for S9 phase3 (remote training)
5) Following up with CCCamp and About:freedom cluster - https://events.ccc.de/camp/2019/wiki/Village:Tor_Project <https://events.ccc.de/camp/2019/wiki/Village:Tor_Project>
Philipp:
1) Published 24 hours worth of BridgeDB metrics on tor-dev@ and got useful feedback
2) Cecylia is attending the Citizen Lab's Summer Institute in Toronto
3) Reviewed a Tor Research Safety Board submission
4) Trying to focus more on RACE (PT spec improvements and obfs5 brainstorming/experimenting)
Pili:
1) S27: Monthly report and first work completion report
3) Playing with gitlab - created a number of repos and projects for UX and Community team
4) Community Portal
5) Hoping to help out with some funding proposals before the end of the week
6) Last week: Google Season of Docs candidate selection
Steph:
1) Training in DC Wednesday
2) Preparing for bug smash campaign launch - tor-project announcement, press release, blog post, social media
3) Preparing for defcon next week - materials, security, coordination
4) Responding to press inquiries
Gaba
1) training in DC w/ coach and money machine team
2) get up to speed from last week of being offline
3) getting the roadmap into gitlab and adjusting/testing how I think it should be used
4) we got a session about Tor accepted at the descentralized space at the mozilla festival in London at the end of October
Karsten:
1) Added Tom's bandwidth file archive to CollecTor (#30219) which concludes our efforts to archive bandwidth files (#21378).