- tor-project - lists.torproject.org

August 2019 vision update
by isabela 21 Aug '19

21 Aug '19

Hello Tor! The context for our vision There is a unique opportunity ahead for Tor. Today, the world-wide debate about privacy and the collection and use of behavioral data has reached a new frenzy. On a societal level, we are starting to feel the chilling effects of data collection and its abuse. Less than a decade ago, conversations about preserving privacy often lead to the rebuttal, 'I have nothing to hide, why do I need privacy?' Today, this is changing. People are beginning to understand that privacy isn't about hiding bad things--but it’s about what defines us as human beings, who we are. Our day-to-day behavior, our personality, our fears, our relationships, and our vulnerabilities. We’re watching the tide of public awareness turn. The demand for privacy isn’t going away, and the industry can’t hide from it. We are also hearing that during discussions inside of the big tech companies in Silicon Valley, Tor comes up quite often, as we offer a holistic solution to meet these demands. Our standards are higher. We offer privacy by design—and we’ve been doing so for more than a decade. We are known for building transparent, ethical, reliable privacy technology. Leaders in the tech industry have started to look at Tor to meet their user’s expressed needs for these exact reasons. Cloudflare and Brave's integration of Tor technology, Facebook's onion service, file sharing tools like OnionShare and SecureDrop (and their adoption by some of the most important newsrooms in the world[1]), and our ongoing conversations with Mozilla about a possible Tor integration in Firefox, are all examples of how Tor can be the underlying technology for a diverse set of solutions with privacy by design. Where Tor is right now When I wrote my first email to tor-project as ED nine months ago[2], we were finalizing a long phase of work to bring a new user experience to Tor users. We put together an ambitious project to meet our users where they are to learn how to improve Tor for them. Every team inside of Tor did something to improve their users’ experience; the Metrics team redesigned their site and merged services like Atlas into the data to make it easier for the user to get what they want. The OONI team went mobile to reach more users and start to improve their end-to-end user experience. The Network team improved the experience of connecting to Tor for users on mobile devices. And of course, changes to Tor Browser, made by the Browser and UX teams, are quite visible, and so are the ongoing improvements to our website. And we created the Anti-Censorship team to make it easier for users who are under censorship to route around that censorship. Making Tor easier to use for our dedicated user base was a big step for us, because it required the creation of an iterative feedback loop that centers the user at every step of our development process. This has fundamentally changed how we work with one another as a team and community, improved usability for our core users, and set us up to prepare Tor for mainstream adoption. User experience improvements will make Tor more understandable for more people, and they further our goal of getting Tor into the hands of everybody who choose privacy tools. But it’s not the end of our work. Preparing Tor for mainstream use also means that we must be able to handle more users and meet speed and usability standards they expect. This is not an easy task; we have a lot of challenges ahead of us. Each team has their own challenges, and all require laying groundwork before we can start building and rolling out improvements. Adequate preparation is necessary to successfully ensure that Tor can meet these new standards. *That said, we do have an opportunity ahead of us to show the world that our vision of real privacy online is possible, and that is extremely exciting.* I believe that in about two years, we will have successfully laid the groundwork for us to release improvements that will show the impact of this work—more people will have easier, faster access to privacy tools. Realizing Tor’s Vision How are we going to get there? The same way we worked as a team to shift our development processes to incorporate user feedback into it. Each team will look at what they can do to drive their area of work towards this unified vision. For instance, we are all following the Network team efforts to scale the network and improve its performance metrics. This is not an easy task, we had to bring in the Metrics team, researchers, and other stakeholders to build a strategy, broken into phases, to get there. For the next year or so we will be focused on phase 0 and 1 of this strategy, which means we will have a pipeline to drive ideas/research questions into experimentation and validation, so we can release changes that will bring impact to the metrics we have selected to measure this project. The Anti-Censorship team is working on circumvention solutions that are difficult and expensive for censors to block but relatively easy and inexpensive for us to deploy and to scale, like Snowflake. Beyond that, the team is creating user-friendly experiences to make it easier for censored users to discover their circumvention solutions. Another challenge we face is building more reliable reachability checks in regions where it is quite risky for us to collect these measurements. On the Browser side, the team wants to shift away from ESR releases, so our users can benefit from getting the latest features, web platform improvements, and security updates sooner. The team is also planning on making browser performance improvements (one of the main pain points for users) and to start experimenting with new ideas :) For instance the idea of offering some add-ons or utilities within Tor Browser, like OnionShare. Another direction we are going with Tor Browser’s UI is continuing to blend our features with the normal mainstream browser experience. This includes things like placing configuration options where the user expects them, like the security options inside of browser preference configurations just like Firefox does. A lot of this work is directly connected with the Community and UX teams. Right now, the Community team is a one person team, so we must build a strategy to make things work with such limited resources. The main focus will be to build collaboration with volunteers to “help us help others.” And on that point, one of the goals of the team over the next year is to organize user support. Improved user support is an important part of scaling our user base, and it’s work that’s in need of some love. This team will continue to organize security trainings in the Global South and with our UX team to collect user feedback on all the changes made by other teams. None of this work will be easy, in part because some of our teams are small. Capacity is one of Tor's main challenges right now--and we have to work hard to increase it. And is why it's very important that we also are dedicating time and energy to our fiscal growth. As Roger says, “Tor does the work of a $100M organization with $4M budget.” That's why we have a team at Tor focused on growing our base of support. The ‘Money Machine’ team just participated in a great training that helped us build tools to organize and manage our strategies. This team has already been kicking ass since its formation around nine months ago, and now has a new boost to be even more efficient at building and executing fundraising strategies. I am glossing over many other things that folks at Tor know are important too. I am not even getting into the need for collaboration and support between sister projects like the Guardian Project, Tails, and Freedom of the Press Foundation, to name a few. This letter is just to give context to where we are, and why we are moving in a certain direction. But none of this came from my head alone. It came from you. All I am doing is organizing some collective thoughts. Let's enjoy this opportunity we have ahead of us and make the best of it. Like I said before, these are exciting times for Tor. We can have a big influence on the privacy debate and show that our vision is possible. It will take a lot of work and we have a lot of challenges ahead of us. But it will be worth it. Not for us, but for what we believe the internet should be. cheers, isabela [1] https://securedrop.org/directory/ [2] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2018-November/002061.html

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Tor Browser team meeting notes, 12 and 19 August 2019
by Georg Koppen 20 Aug '19

20 Aug '19

Hi! Here come the notes from our last two meetings, held on 12 and 19 August. The IRC logs can be found at: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting2/2019/tor-meeting2.2019-08-12-17.30.l… http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting2/2019/tor-meeting2.2019-08-19-17.30.t… The status updates and discussion items for both meetings are: Week of August 19, 2019 Discussion - next alpha release (switch to esr68? what about the notarization bug (#30126))? [GeKo: decision is postponed for next week, while targetting alpha as expected] - transition to gitlab - what are the browser team requirements for this? [GeKo: We'll pick the discussion up once Tor Browser 9 is out (end of October)] GeKo: Last Week: - afk This Week: - backlog - CCCamp - getting remaining toolchains ready for nightly builds (I have a patch for macOS shortly) - browser meetup (sysrqb/pospeselr: can I ignore all the related mails or do you need anything from me here? Something good to read I guess: https://webkit.org/tracking-prevention-policy/ and John Wilander's presentation at USENIX was good as well I heard) [sysrqb: yes, I think you can ignore them. They don't have much info.] - reviews (#30429 and related bugs/patches) - desktop toolchains (#30323, where I do a final test, windows (#28238, #28716 etc.)) - I need to prep for the talk at CCCamp mcs and brade: Last week: - #30429 (ESR 68 Rebase). - finished rebasing the updater patches. - tested the ESR68-based updater on Linux and macOS. - posted patches for review. - Helped with triage of incoming tickets. This week/upcoming: - We have several family commitments during the week of August 26th and will only be working Tuesday & Wednesday (27-Aug and 28-Aug). - We will be away from keyboard on September 5th and 6th (and Monday September 2 is a U.S. holiday). - #30429 (ESR 68 Rebase) — rebase updater patches. - test the ESR68-based updater on Windows. - revise the patches in response to acat’s feedback. - #29430: Use uTLS for meek TLS camouflage in Tor Browser. - #30126 (Make Tor Browser on macOS compatible with Apple's notarization). - Respond to Antonela's comments in #30237 (Onion Services client auth prompt). sysrqb: Last week: Identified cause of #31140 - crash on aarch64 Android More progress on #31010 68esr rebase This week: More progress on #31010 Start writing OrfoxRIP blog post boklm: Last week: - afk - made patch for #31447 (adding a comment about why we install the python package) This week: - Work on fix for #31449 (Signing tools for 32bit Linux are 64bit now) - Investigate #31448 (gold and lld break linking 32bit Linux bundles we need to resort to bfd) - Review #30334 (build_go_lib for executables) and #31264 (tar.gz output files contain nonreproducible timestamps) - Review/help with other toolchain updates Pili: Last week: - afk This week: - Orfox RIP blogpost - Team capacity, time estimations and task re-org - sent an email - S27 meeting acat: Last week: - Review latest updater patches (#30429) - Security slider translation deduplication (#24653). - Investigated why search icons disappear in nightly This week: - Investigate #31396. - Port #30683 to esr68 (and probably backport #31298 together) - Add missing commits from tor-browser-60.8.0esr-9.0-1 to #30429 - Fix regression for https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=467035 - Investigate why onboarding does not work in nightly. - Maybe do style fixing pass for #30429 tjr - No report I can think of Antonela - Guardian Project is planning their future work with Onion Browser, and they want to get closer with feature/UI matching to TBA. I put some notes here, could you help me to list what am i missing? https://pad.riseup.net/p/TBA9 [GeKo: I can take a look] - Network Settings (#31286) - are we good using the Tor Browser icon in Tor network settings? Thanks for your comment at the issue folks! sisbell: Last Week: - #31293: grade version 4.1 fails if network not enabled from rbm conf. Disabling network ok for 4.10 - got build working all the way through release for arm using new toolchain - generated new gradle dependencies - detailed diffs between Firefox esr68 build and our version, Only sig difference is we are picking up rust 1.34 vs their 1.35, although both supported This week - Testing of new build (some Firefox doc that arm may not work with NDK 17 build) - add additional android arch support - updated gradle dependency doc on how to update since this changes with 4.10 pospeselr: - Last Week: - booked (and rebooked) travel to silicon valley downtown sf - finished the xul layout for bridge settings in about:preferences - This week: - browser privacy meeting background prep - start wiring up preferences xul to tor launcher logic Week of August 12, 2019 Discussion pospeselr: Last Week: - office build machine setup fun - a bit of #31293 investigation ( broken tor-onion-proxy-library build ) - #31286 work ( network settings, new settings panel prototyped) This Week: - more #31286 (get all the visual elements laid out, then work on making it functional) - travel prep tjr: - Got a couple of patches uplifted to 68 \o/ - Worked on the alloc/dealloc mismatch. Had a working solution, it wasn't fully conceptually complete, working on that aspect. - Note: an x86 mingw-clang build of -esr68 with jemalloc enabled WILL crash. mcs and brade: Last week: - #30126 (Make Tor Browser on macOS compatible with Apple's notarization). - completed another round of testing. - #30429 (ESR 68 Rebase) — rebase updater patches. - posted a rebased #13252 patch for review. - made progress on other patches. - Provided some feedback for #31286 (Include bridge configuration into about:preferences). - Participated in discussions r.e. grant proposal. - Helped with code reviews and some bug triage. This week/upcoming: - #30429 (ESR 68 Rebase) — rebase updater patches. - finished initial rebasing of patches. - test the ESR68-based updater on all desktop platforms. - #29430: Use uTLS for meek TLS camouflage in Tor Browser. - #30126 (Make Tor Browser on macOS compatible with Apple's notarization). - Respond to Antonela's comments in #30237 (Onion Services client auth prompt). sysrqb: Last week: Android 68ESR patches (#31010) aarch64 crash debugging (#31140) A little fiddling with gradle failure (#31293) This week: Android 68ESR patches (#31010) aarch64 crash debugging (#31140) acat: Last week: - Review Android patches (#31010) - Address review comments for #30429 - Fix about:tor assertion failure in esr68 linux debug builds (#31322) - Review one updater patch in #30429 This week: - Review more updater patches? (#30429) - Security slider translation deduplication (#24653). - style fixing pass for #30429 - general testing for nightly, report issues+investigate if there is time antonela: Last week: - worked in TB usage survey recap, will share this week - working in Network Settings (#31286) - kickoff S30 with the anti-censorship team (mostly bridges UX in Tor Browser for this team) This week: - more on Network Settings (#31286) sisbell: Last Week: - Investigated #31293 - gradle failure when probing interfaces. Finally managed to reproduce. At time of query, no interface is not available in the container. Grade 4.1 throws NPE as a result (this has been fixed in gradle 4.10). I am unable to fix from gradle side. Could find no commits in config files that may be causing this issue. Blocked. - #31388 - Rust - added config needed for armv7 builds - #31389 - Clang - commit for using clang built in tbb - Working on issue with JNI phase failing in Firefox build This Week - Continue working through Firefox android build issues Georg

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Network team meeting notes, 19 August 2019
by Nick Mathewson 19 Aug '19

19 Aug '19

Hi! You can find the contents of our latest meeting logs here: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2019/tor-meeting.2019-08-19-17.00.html Below are the contents of our meeting pad: = Network team meeting pad! = This week's team meeting is at Monday 19 August 1700 UTC on #tor-meeting on OFTC. We have changed the day from Tuesday to Wednesday. August schedule: * 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 12 August: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2019-August/002431.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 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 == 1) When should we do the next 0.2.9 - 0.4.0 releases? Should we do a new release after updating dizum's IP address? (#31406) armadev says: usually we wait for a particularly compelling security or compatibility fix please, consider users in your choice. that is, making people upgrade their stable when they don't 'need' to will make them less inclined to do it when they do need to. i think doing it just for a new dizum ip address is borderline. since the old address will work for a long while yet (years, was alex's estimate) there is also something to be said for "a sufficient threshold of items which by themselves wouldn't be enough" but i would err on the side of being conservative, in the same way we should err on the side of being conservative of what needs a backport and they are tied together, since if you don't backport much, you don't need to release much, and if you don't release much, you tend to not want to backport as much Here is a draft policy for deciding which tickets need backports: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/NetworkTeam/Backpor… Here is a draft policy for deciding when to do a backport release: Summary: as needed, when there is an important, user-visible change https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/NetworkTeam/Release… 2) Sebastian wants to do a Rust refactor that raises the minimum required rustc to 1.32. https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/31443 Is that ok? 3) Are we all okay with with releasing 0.4.1.5 as stable? If not, please let nickm know before 1200 UTC on Tuesday. == 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 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): - 2 days off sick Urgent: Roadmap: - finished a few reviews, some still to go 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) Week of 19 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 - finish remaining code reviews, except for neel's big PR that I will split up Other: Week of 19 August (actual): Urgent: Roadmap: - finished some code reviews Other: - worked on #21003 so I could see the IPv6 addresses in logs to review #31088 Nick: Week of 12 august (planned): - ON VACATION Week of 12 August (actual): - ON VACATION - Poked at #29211 a little on long car rides when not driving - Read a little bit about lektor - Read some Rust code. Week of 19 August (planned): - Release 0.4.1.5 (stable) - More 29211 (configuration refactor) work. Hoping to reach the point where 1 module is module-wise configured - Review and merge - Revise old branches after they're reviewed. - Finish and submit walking onions paper. 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: week of 08/19 (2019-W34) (planned): - catching up after leave - skimming IRC highlights; please email me if you think i've missed something important - reorient on current CI status asn: Week of 12/08 (planned): - More onionbalance v3 - Work on WTF-PAD #30992 - Do reviews/merges. Week of 12/08 (actual): - Revised my #30381 branch. - Wrote a spec patch for #26294 and #31392. - Reviewed the DoS ticket #30924 as part of s27 - Reviewed #31356, #31375, #29879, #31353, #31352, #31175. - Talked with Damian about onionbalance v3 and opened #31369 for v3 desc support in stem. - Did merges. Week of 19/08 (planned): - Read [tor-dev] [prop305] Introduction Point Behavior - Check open hackerone issue. - Finish up with reviews and merges before CCC camp. - Attend CCC camp and participate in the talk. - Speak with the onionbalance maintainer during camp to make plans for v3 onionbalance. 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 12/08 (actual): - prop305 #30924 finalized and tested. Got a first round of review with asn also. - A little bit of tor-scaling work continuing my cell tracing timings + EWMA adjustments work. - Worked with dizum (Alex) to change IP: #31406 - Wrote "[tor-dev] [prop305] Introduction Point Behavior" per discussion with asn on IRC. Part of #30924. Week of 19/08 (planned): - Get #30924 revised from asn's review and into merge_ready state. - Start on the HS timeout issues (#30200 + #28841).

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S27: Onion Services meeting this week: Tuesday 20th August @ 15UTC
by Pili Guerra 19 Aug '19

19 Aug '19

Hi everyone, It’s time to meet again and talk about our Onion Services project since the move to a monthly meeting schedule. The next meeting is happening this week, on Tuesday 20th August at 15UTC on #tor-meeting. We hope to see you there. Thanks! Pili — Project Manager: Tor Browser, UX and Community teams pili at torproject dot org gpg 3E7F A89E 2459 B6CC A62F 56B8 C6CB 772E F096 9C45

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[New Feature] Stem CollecTor Support
by Damian Johnson 17 Aug '19

17 Aug '19

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!

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July Fundraising Report
by Sarah Stevenson 16 Aug '19

16 Aug '19

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>

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Network team meeting notes, 12th Aug 2019
by Gaba 15 Aug '19

15 Aug '19

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

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Anti-censorship meeting notes, 15 Aug 2019
by Philipp Winter 15 Aug '19

15 Aug '19

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?

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Notes from Vegas team meeting August 8th
by Erin Wyatt 14 Aug '19

14 Aug '19

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

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Introducing Babatunde Okunoye, OTF ICFP Fellow
by Erin Wyatt 14 Aug '19

14 Aug '19

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

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