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OONI Monthly Report: November 2021
by Maria Xynou 14 Jan '22

14 Jan '22

Hello, OONI's November 2021 status report is shared below. *# OONI Monthly Report: November 2021* Throughout November 2021, the OONI team worked on the following sprints: * Sprint 51 (1st - 7th November 2021) * Sprint 52 (8th - 21st November 2021) Our work can be tracked through the various OONI GitHub repositories: https://github.com/ooni Highlights are shared in this report below. *## Published research report investigating internet shutdowns through Mozilla telemetry* In collaboration with IODA, we published a new research report which analyzes Mozilla telemetry to investigate internet shutdowns in Myanmar, Uganda, Belarus, and Iran over the last year. Our research report is available here: https://ooni.org/post/2021-investigating-internet-shutdowns-mozilla-telemet… Mozilla also published a blog post about our report: https://blog.mozilla.org/data/2021/11/08/detecting-internet-outages-with-mo… The goal of our research was to evaluate whether Mozilla telemetry could be a valuable resource for the Internet freedom community to investigate Internet shutdowns. To this end, we analyzed an aggregated dataset of network activity based on Firefox web browser usage worldwide (access to which was provided to us by Mozilla). To evaluate how useful Mozilla telemetry is for researching Internet shutdowns, we: * Selected case studies (known shutdown events from January 2020 onwards) * Analyzed Mozilla telemetry * Compared Mozilla telemetry with other public datasets We checked whether Mozilla telemetry provides signals for: * Myanmar: Internet outages following February 2021 military coup * Uganda: Nationwide internet outage amid 2021 elections * Belarus: Internet outages amid 2020 elections * Iran: Internet outages following 2020 elections Our detailed findings are documented in our report. Overall, our analysis demonstrates that Mozilla telemetry is a valuable resource for investigating Internet shutdowns worldwide, providing novel insights through geographical data granularity. We encourage Mozilla to publish aggregated Mozilla telemetry as open data to support research and advocacy efforts investigating Internet shutdowns worldwide. We also share further recommendations in our report: https://ooni.org/post/2021-investigating-internet-shutdowns-mozilla-telemet… *## Published blog post on Myanmar research paper findings* A few months ago, the OONI team collaborated with researchers at IODA, Kentik, UC San Diego, and University of Michigan / Censored Planet on a research paper examining censorship events in Myanmar (through diverse measurement datasets) following the military coup. The paper, titled "A multi-perspective view of Internet censorship in Myanmar", was published by FOCI 2021: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3473604.3474562 In November 2021, we published a blog post which summarizes the research paper findings: https://ooni.org/post/2021-multiperspective-view-internet-censorship-myanma… *## Blog post for Internet Society (ISOC)* In November 2021, our partner, Internet Society (ISOC), published our guest blog post where we discuss why collaboration and transparency is key to internet measurement: https://pulse.internetsociety.org/blog/internet-measurements-collaboration-… This blog post was also cross-posted on the OONI blog: https://ooni.org/post/2021-internet-measurements-collaboration-transparency/ *## OONI Probe Mobile* We released OONI Probe Mobile 3.4.0 for Android ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/releases/tag/v3.4.0) and iOS ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-ios/releases/tag/v3.4.0) This release includes the following new features and improvements: * New label indicating when a VPN is being used * Improved UI for requesting autorun permission ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1820) * Logs are retained for 1 week * Bug fix in RiseupVPN and Signal analysis logic We also released OONI Probe Mobile 3.4.1 with further bug fixes and improvements (https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/releases/tag/v3.4.1) Following the release of OONI Probe Mobile 3.4.0, we started to observe an increase in the volume of measurements contributed by automated runs. The new label which indicates the use of a VPN will hopefully also help improve OONI data quality. We also worked on improvements to our build system for OONI Probe so that it can be further automated through continuous integration. In particular, we added support to build the Android and iOS dependencies as part of continuous integration. *### Interviewed mobile developer candidates* In September 2021, we published a job opening to hire a new mobile developer for OONI Probe ( https://ooni.org/post/2021-job-opening-ooni-mobile-developer/) We reviewed applications and throughout November 2021, we interviewed candidates. ## OONI Run Based on community feedback, we made improvements to the OONI Run ( https://run.ooni.io/) platform. Specifically, we rewrote the URL editor ( https://github.com/ooni/run/pull/74) we limited the OONI Run platform to website testing (https://github.com/ooni/run/pull/79) and we deployed the changes to production. *## Integrating tor into OONI Probe* We made progress on integrating tor into OONI Probe Mobile and OONI Probe Desktop. In particular, we worked on adding support for building go-libtor on Android, iOS, and Linux: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1867 *## Expanding censorship measurement methodologies* Two essential steps required for shipping our new Websteps experiment (for measuring the blocking of websites) include: * Comparing our new Websteps experiment with our current Web Connectivity experiment; * Deploying the new Websteps test helper in production. In November 2021, we made considerable progress on both. To compare Websteps with Web Connectivity, we developed test cases to measure accuracy and to compare the two experiments in terms of bandwidth used, overall test runtime, and accuracy at detecting blocking events ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1805) We also worked on polishing the Websteps design documents and we shared them with community members who have relevant expertise, in order to receive their feedback for the improvement of our new experiment (https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1811) We worked towards deploying and using the new Websteps test helper ( https://github.com/ooni/backend/issues/544) We started off with an incremental rollout where only a few ASNs use the new test helper, and we eventually plan to replace the old test helper. We continued to investigate TLS parroting and interference ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1812) and we made several OONI Probe CLI releases which include a series of improvements to our experiments (improving the data quality of measurements), as documented through the following releases: https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/releases/tag/v3.11.0-beta.2 https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/releases/tag/v3.12.0-alpha.3 https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/releases/tag/v3.12.0-alpha.2 https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/releases/tag/v3.11.0-beta.1 https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/releases/tag/v3.12.0-alpha.1 *## OONI Explorer* We added support to the OONI Explorer Search page for filtering based on failed measurements (https://github.com/ooni/explorer/pull/623) We also worked towards making OONI Explorer easier to debug (to improve the quality of OONI Explorer, and to make the MAT easier to debug) by improving how we log and report errors in OONI Explorer. *## OONI Measurement Aggregation Toolkit (MAT)* We continued to make improvements to the OONI Measurement Aggregation Toolkit (MAT). We measured the performance of the MAT UI components to identify bottlenecks. We worked on improving the interactivity and filtering of the table chart, we fixed the presentation of the horizontal axis of the chart, we worked on improvements to one-dimensional charts, and we worked towards making measurable performance improvements to the two-dimensional (2-axis) chart pages with large datasets ( https://github.com/ooni/explorer/pull/622) *## Building a web platform for test list updates* We continued to make progress on the web platform ( https://test-lists.ooni.org/) that we’re building to enable community contributions to the Citizen Lab test lists ( https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists) In particular, we made improvements to display the contributor and the date of when a URL was last updated in the list view ( https://github.com/ooni/test-lists-ui/pull/15) we added a notifications feature (https://github.com/ooni/test-lists-ui/pull/16) and a favicon ( https://github.com/ooni/test-lists-ui/pull/17) and we fixed a backend bug affecting the platform’s submit button ( https://github.com/ooni/backend/issues/545) *## OONI backend* In November 2021, we started migrating our infrastructure over to Clickhouse (an alternative database solution). To this end, we reviewed the architecture by: * Implementing Clickhouse in our fastpath data processing pipeline; * Switching the fasthpath and API CI to bullseye; * Implemented the experimental Measurement Aggregation Toolkit (MAT) using Clickhouse, and added relevant tests; * Implemented the experimental PG to the Clickhouse feeder; * Updating the CI to test Clickhouse; * Determining what to keep in PG (failure modes and recovery); * Preparing an architecture diagram; * Splitting the platform in tiers; * Using raw SQL or SQLalchemy; * Implementing an experimental PG to the Clickhouse feeder; * Performing tests by using Clickhouse for the measurements API; * Handling JSONL. We also worked on the following backend activities: * Reviewed the new monitoring host, and removed the old host; * Handled unplanned and upcoming VM reboots; * Investigated an issue affecting the timing of measurements (probe clock issues); * Fixed a bug resulting in probe failures ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1328) * Started reviewing and cleaning up DNS records used by OONI; * Tested switching some ASNs to the new test helper; * Experimented with centralized logging management; * Continued to monitor OONI measurement coverage from unattended runs on OONI Probe Mobile and Desktop (particularly in light of the recent iThena integration of OONI Probe). *## Collaboration with Netalitica* Netalitica researchers continued to do excellent work in reviewing and updating the Citizen Lab test lists. In November 2021, we reviewed their updates to the test lists for Nicaragua and Ecuador and shared feedback for improvements. *## Test list updates* In November 2021, we contributed minor updates to the following Citizen Lab test lists: * Egypt: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/863 * Global: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/862 We also opened a pull request with updates to the test list for India ( https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/864) contributed by participants of the Bachchao Project’s 2-day test list event ( https://ooni.org/post/2021-event-india-test-list/) *## Notable community use of OONI Probe and OONI data### OONI Probe integrated into Murakami* In November 2021, Measurement Lab (M-Lab) integrated OONI Probe into their Murakami measurement tool (https://www.measurementlab.net/blog/murakami/) This is documented through the following pull request: https://github.com/m-lab/murakami/pull/103 We thank M-Lab for integrating OONI Probe into Murakami, as this will help boost OONI measurement coverage! *### VEsinFiltro report on censorship during 2021 regional elections in Venezuela* In November 2021, VEsinFiltro published a report documenting the blocking of independent news media websites, political criticism sites, human rights sites, multimedia dissemination sites, and circumvention tool sites during the 2021 regional elections in Venezuela. Their report makes use of OONI data, among other data sources. VEsinFiltro’s report is available in: * English: https://vesinfiltro.com/noticias/2021-election-blocks/ * Spanish: https://vesinfiltro.com/noticias/2021-bloqueos-elecciones/ *## Community activities### OONI presentation at ISOC Community Week 2021* On 16th November 2021, OONI’s Maria presented OONI as part of the Internet Society’s (ISOC) Community Week event. Information about the ISOC Community Week 2021 is available here: https://www.internetsociety.org/events/community-week/ *### OONI presentation at Tor’s State of the Onion 2021* On 17th November 2021, OONI’s Arturo presented OONI as part of the Tor Project’s annual State of the Onion 2021 event ( https://blog.torproject.org/state-of-the-onion-2021) during which he shared OONI highlights from 2021, as well as upcoming OONI projects for 2022. The event was live-streamed on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNhIjtXuVzk *## OONI training for civil society in the Gambia* On 29th November 2021, OONI’s Maria facilitated an (online) OONI training for human rights defenders in the Gambia in preparation for the country’s 2021 elections. *### OONI Community Meeting* On 30th November 2021, we hosted the monthly OONI Community Meeting on our Slack channel (https://slack.ooni.org/) during which we discussed the following topics: 1. OONI research reports published in November 2021. 2. Iranian government is using a new type of regional Internet censorship during protests which blocks International internet access (except few services) but allows local websites and services. It would be nice if an OONI test could be developed to detect & log this scenario and submit the result to OONI once the international connectivity is fully restored. This is tracked through the following epic: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1600 *## Userbase* In November 2021, 31,393,906 OONI Probe measurements were collected from 2,276 AS networks in 157 countries around the world. This information can also be found through our measurement stats on OONI Explorer (see chart on “monthly coverage worldwide”): https://explorer.ooni.org/ ~ OONI team.

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OONI Monthly Report: October 2021
by Maria Xynou 14 Jan '22

14 Jan '22

Hello, Happy new year! Hope you're all doing well. These days we're primarily supported by the DRL, which is why we do quarterly reporting. That said, we'd like to share monthly updates from the OONI team with the community, hence our October 2021 report shared below. I'll also follow-up to share our November and December 2021 reports. *# OONI Monthly Report: October 2021* Throughout October 2021, the OONI team worked on the following sprints: * Sprint 49 - Humpback whale (1st - 10th October 2021) * Sprint 50 - Amphipoda (11th - 24th October 2021) Our work can be tracked through the various OONI GitHub repositories: https://github.com/ooni Highlights are shared in this report below. *## Published research report on the blocking of the Signal Private Messenger App * We published a research report which shares OONI data and analysis on the blocking of the Signal Private Messenger App in Iran, China, Cuba, and Uzbekistan. This report is available here: https://ooni.org/post/2021-how-signal-private-messenger-blocked-around-the-… In April 2021, we released a new OONI Probe test for measuring the blocking of the Signal Private Messenger App (https://ooni.org/nettest/signal) Since then, OONI community members tested Signal worldwide every day, contributing measurements as open data: https://explorer.ooni.org/search?until=2021-10-23&since=2021-09-23&test_nam… As part of this study, we analyzed all Signal measurements collected from around the world between April 2021 to September 2021. During this period, we found that the testing of Signal primarily presented signs of blocking in Iran, China, Cuba, and Uzbekistan. Further information and findings are available in our research report. *## OONI Probe Mobile* We released OONI Probe Mobile 3.3.1 for Android ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/releases/tag/v3.3.1) which includes bug fixes and optimizations. In particular, we: * Fixed an Android bug related to our RiseupVPN test: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1787 * Fixed an Android bug related to automated runs: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1789 * Fixed an Android bug related to our use of Sentry for crash reports: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1788 We also worked on: * Adding support for detecting if an OONI Probe user is behind a VPN: https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/954 * Adding support for a VPN label and modal: https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/pull/453 * Deleting logs weekly (instead of immediately): https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1800 *## OONI Probe Desktop* We released OONI Probe Desktop 3.6.0: https://github.com/ooni/probe-desktop/releases/tag/v3.6.0 This release includes our new Experimental card, which currently features our STUN reachability test. We plan to release new experimental tests as part of this new card. OONI Probe Desktop 3.6.0 also includes support for 2 new languages: Swahili and Dutch. We thank the Localization Lab community for ongoing OONI Probe translations, and we are particularly grateful to Tanzania’s Zaina Foundation for leading efforts related to translating OONI Probe to Swahili (and increasing the reach of our app in East Africa). We also released OONI Probe Desktop 3.6.1 ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-desktop/releases/tag/v3.6.1) with bug fixes and further improvements. Moreover, we worked on improvements towards a new OONI Probe CLI release ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1843) *## Expanding censorship measurement methodologies* Shipping our new Websteps experiment ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1733) requires deploying the new Websteps test helper in production. To this end, we worked on comparing the old with the new OONI Probe test helper ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1707) This required extensive testing and investigation to ensure that no issues emerge when we deploy the new test helper. We now have some TLS parroting capabilities in our miniooni research tool ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli#miniooni) and we started investigating TLS parroting and interference (https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1812) *## OONI Explorer* We deployed recently merged OONI Explorer pull requests to production, and we ensured that anomaly search is included for all supported tests (including the Signal and RiseupVPN tests). We also worked towards addressing issues that result in failed measurements not being displayed correctly (https://github.com/ooni/explorer/issues/611) Moreover, we refactored OONI Explorer pages to remove the need for a custom server (https://github.com/ooni/explorer/pull/619) and we upgraded core dependencies (react, next) to the latest versions ( https://github.com/ooni/explorer/pull/620, https://github.com/ooni/explorer/pull/621) *## OONI Measurement Aggregation Toolkit (MAT)* We made several improvements to the OONI Measurement Aggregation Toolkit (MAT). Specifically, we improved the MAT table view by adjusting the tooltip UI, sorting labels alphabetically, and deploying progress to production. To add interactivity features to the MAT table view, we made filtered table rows the source for charts, and we fixed the link from the tooltip link to the search page (https://github.com/ooni/explorer/pull/618) among several other improvements. To improve the performance of the MAT, we switched to the Clickhouse-based backend for the MAT pages ( https://github.com/ooni/explorer/pull/622) *## Building a web platform for test list updates* We continued to make progress on the web platform that we’re building to enable community contributions to the Citizen Lab test lists ( https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists) In particular, we made a series of UI improvements based on initial community feedback (from the testing of the private beta version of the platform). We added an onboarding section to guide users through the process of using the test list web platform ( https://github.com/ooni/test-lists-ui/issues/5, https://github.com/ooni/test-lists-ui/pull/11) We reduced the ambiguity between the “notes” and “comment” sections of the web platform ( https://github.com/ooni/test-lists-ui/issues/7, https://github.com/ooni/test-lists-ui/pull/9) We also improved upon error messages (https://github.com/ooni/test-lists-ui/pull/8) and added support for displaying website category descriptions ( https://github.com/ooni/test-lists-ui/pull/10) *## OONI backend* In October 2021, we worked on the following OONI backend activities: * Deployed the new monitoring host; * Created a set of benchmark queries, and tested BigQuery (as a potential alternative database) by running benchmark queries against the whole dataset; * Continued to investigate alternative database solutions to boost the performance of our services by comparing Clickhouse, DuckDB, PostgreSQL 13, and BigQuery; * Implemented an experimental PG to Clickhouse feeder; * Added backend support to the Measurement Aggregation Toolkit (MAT) using the Clickhouse-based backend; * Continued to monitor OONI measurement coverage from unattended runs on OONI Probe Mobile and Desktop; * Updated DNS handling in ansible and added graphs; * Continued to investigate missing jsonl files from the s3 bucket ( https://github.com/ooni/backend/issues/538) *## Partnership with Internet Society (ISOC)* In July 2021, we established a new partnership with Internet Society (ISOC) to collaborate on the ISOC Pulse project: https://pulse.internetsociety.org/shutdowns In particular, OONI is now a data partner ( https://pulse.internetsociety.org/partners) for ISOC’s Pulse project on internet shutdowns. Our goal is to provide relevant OONI data and analysis that can help support the project’s timeline on blocking events around the world. In October 2021, ISOC published a blog post which announced OONI as a new data partner for their Pulse project, and which explained why OONI data will support their project. Their blog post is available here: https://pulse.internetsociety.org/blog/welcome-cloudflare-ooni-and-w3techs We also updated the OONI Partners page on our website to feature ISOC as one of our new partners and to highlight their work: https://ooni.org/partners/internet-society *## Collaboration with Netalitica* Netalitica researchers continued to do excellent work in reviewing and updating the Citizen Lab test lists. Based on our feedback, they made further improvements to the test lists for India and Burundi, and we opened a pull request for both test list updates: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/829 *## Community use of OONI data### Report on social media blocks in Sudan* Community members from Sudan published a report which documents the blocking of social networking sites in Sudan based on OONI data ( https://twitter.com/ga800l/status/1449385940175265792) Their report is available here: https://www.beamreports.com/2021/10/16/%D9%85%D8%A7-%D8%AD%D9%82%D9%8A%D9%8… *## Community activities### DIG Festival 2021* On 3rd October 2021, OONI’s Arturo participated in a panel discussion at the DIG Festival for investigative journalism in Modena, Italy ( https://dig-awards.org/en/dig-festival-2021-english-only/) As part of this panel, Arturo discussed OONI’s censorship measurement approach and algorithmic censorship. *### Bachchao Project test list event* On 9th and 10th October 2021, OONI’s Maria participated in the Bachchao Project’s 2-day event (organized for communities in India), titled “India, Let’s Build the List”. As part of her participation, Maria gave a 1-hour presentation (“Introduction to Internet censorship”) on Day 1 to introduce participants to basic concepts around internet censorship. On Day 2 of the event, Maria demoed OONI’s new web platform for updating test lists, and helped facilitate the hands-on sessions for updating the Citizen Lab’s test list for India. Information about the 2-day event is available via the Bachchao Project’s relevant blog post: https://thebachchaoproject.org/event-report-india-lets-build-the-list/ *### OPTIMA 2.0 Network Measurement Training* On 21st and 28th October 2021, OONI’s Maria attended Internews’ live sessions for the “Introduction to Network Measurement” and “OONI” training modules of the OPTIMA 2.0 training program, where she addressed participant questions pertaining to the training modules. Information about Internews’ OPTIMA Network Measurement Training program is available here: https://internews.org/resource/optima-network-measurement-training/ *### Swahilipot Hub event for HacktoberFest Mombasa* On 22nd October 2021, OONI’s Maria facilitated an OONI workshop (titled “How to measure Internet censorship”) for Kenyan civil society as part of the Swahilipot Hub event for HacktoberFest Mombasa ( https://swahilipothub.co.ke/) *### Ford Foundation Retreat Webinar* On 28th October 2021, OONI’s Maria participated as a speaker on the Ford Foundation’s Retreat webinar titled “Designing the Internet We Want”. As part of her participation, Maria highlighted the importance of censorship measurement for a free and open internet. *### OONI Community Meeting* On 26th October 2021, we hosted the monthly OONI Community Meeting on our Slack channel (https://slack.ooni.org/) during which we discussed the following topics: 1. OONI’s research report on the blocking of the Signal app in China, Cuba, Iran, and Uzbekistan. 2. Improving the OONI Probe sharing button. 3. Featuring latest censorship events and issues (such as those tracked on GitHub) through the OONI Probe app. *## Userbase* In October 2021, 24,910,212 OONI Probe measurements were collected from 2,410 AS networks in 165 countries around the world. This information can also be found through our measurement stats on OONI Explorer (see chart on “monthly coverage worldwide”): https://explorer.ooni.org/ ~ OONI team.

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UX team meeting notes, January 11th
by Duncan Russell 12 Jan '22

12 Jan '22

Hello & happy new year! Thanks to everyone who made it to yesterday’s UX Team meeting – the first one of the year. We’re looking forward to seeing you all again in a week’s time on January 18th. Here are the minutes from yesterday’s meeting: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/202 <http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2022/tor-meeting.2022-01-11-16.59.log…>2/tor-meeting.2022-01-11-16 <http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2022/tor-meeting.2022-01-11-16.59.log…>.59.log.html <http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2022/tor-meeting.2022-01-11-16.59.log…> Yesterday we discussed our change to a weekly frequency for team meetings, the addition of a weekly planning section to better communicate what we’re working on individually, Joydeep’s monthly status report for December, and our plan to set aside a few hours each month for a team reading morning. Lastly, we continued the discussion in #tor-ux with a review of the work we did in Q3 2021 on the UX Team Roadmap. *** == User Experience Team Meeting == UX Team meetings happen every Tuesday at 1700 UTC in #tor-meeting on OFTC. Here are the logs from our last meeting on January 11th: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/202 <http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2022/tor-meeting.2022-01-11-16.59.log…>2/tor-meeting.2022-01-11-16 <http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2022/tor-meeting.2022-01-11-16.59.log…>.59.log.html <http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2022/tor-meeting.2022-01-11-16.59.log…> == Useful links == About the UX Team: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/team <https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/team> UX repository: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux <https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux> UX roadmap: https://www.figma.com/file/n4ETd0cUkcfj3KyclJQnt3/UX-Team-Planning?node-id=… <https://www.figma.com/file/n4ETd0cUkcfj3KyclJQnt3/UX-Team-Planning?node-id=…> UX kanban: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/boards?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&… <https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/boards?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&…> Team kanban: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/boards?scope=all&label_name[]=UX… <https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/boards?scope=all&label_name[]=UX…> -------------------------- Tuesday January 11th 17:00 UTC -------------------------- == What projects are we working on? == S9 - Usability and Community Intervention on Support for Democracy and Human Rights https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&… <https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&…> S30 - Empowering Communities in the Global South to Bypass Censorship https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&… <https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&…> S96 – Rapid Expansion of Access to the Uncensored Internet through Tor in China, Hong Kong, & Tibet https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/24 <https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/24> S101 - Tor VPN Client for Android https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/32 <https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/32> == Announcements == * Tor Browser 11.0.4 Release (desktop only): https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-1104/ <https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-1104/> * New time and frequency for team meetings: weekly @ 1700 UTC == Agenda == 1. Announcements 2. Weekly planning 3. Review Joydeep's monthly status report: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2022-January/003254.html <https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2022-January/003254.html> 4. Reading morning (the one mentioned on FigJam) 5. Q4 Roadmap actualizing == Weekly planning == Duncan Last week (actual): - Set up a new Figma account for Tor Project UX & transferred all existing files over - Started experimenting with new about:tor <about:tor> designs for tor-browser#40752 - Set up onboarding document for our new team-member - Added OKR tracker to UX Planning Board/Roadmap This week (planned): - Onboard new team-member - Make sure the YEC is taken down - Tor Browser 11.0.4 launch support - Review and "actualize" Q4 2021 roadmap - Set up new team kanban - Ticket wrangling for torconnect - Draft script for tor-qa survey Nah Last week (actual): - getting back on track! - reviewing issues This week (planned): - ECC meetings - write and review new project phase S9 - exploring the last VPN survey for new insights and next steps S101 - update User Research portal website - many 1:1 to align and plan user research for this quarter Joydeep (championquizzer) [Community Team work] This week (planned): - user support work (priority this week: users in .ru and .kz) - Gitlab to-do/reviews: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/boards?scope=all&state=opened&as… <https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/boards?scope=all&state=opened&as…> == Open Call for User Research == Find out how to contribute to the UX team: https://community.torproject.org/user-research/how-to-volunteer/ <https://community.torproject.org/user-research/how-to-volunteer/> Thanks everyone! *** Duncan Larsen-Russell Product Manager & UX Team Lead duncan(a)torproject.org <mailto:duncan@torproject.org>

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minutes from the sysadmin meeting
by Antoine Beaupré 12 Jan '22

12 Jan '22

Hi everyone, TPA held its first meeting of the year, and those are the minutes. I'll take the opportunity to wish everyone a happy new year, if you're into that kind of calendar. I know it's not the most obvious thing to do right now, but I wish you can find hope this year. # Roll call: who's there and emergencies * anarcat * kez * lavamind No emergencies. # Holidays debrief Holidays went fine, some minor issues, but nothing that needed to be urgently dealt with (e.g. [40569][], [40567][], [commit][], runner bug). Rotation worked well. [40569]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/40569 [40567]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/40567 [commit]: https://gitweb.torproject.org/admin/tsa-misc.git/commit/?id=33fb8ded635aa62… anarcat went cowboy and setup two new nodes before the holidays, which is not great because it's against our general "don't launch on a friday". (It wasn't on a friday, but it was close enough to the holidays to be a significant risk.) Thankfully things worked out fine: one of the runners ended up failing just as lavamind was starting work again last week. (!) # 2021 roadmap review ## sysadmin We did a review directly in the wiki page. Notable changes: * jenkins is marked as completed, as rouyi will be retired this week (!) * the blog migration was completed! * we consider we managed to deal with the day-to-day while still reserving time for the unexpected (e.g. the rushed web migration from Jenkins to GitLab CI) * we loved that team work and should plan to do it again * we were mostly on budget: we had an extra 100EUR/mth at hetzner for a new Ganeti node in the gnt-fsn cluster, and extra costs (54EUR/mth!) for the [Hetzner IPv4 billing changes][], and more for extra bandwidth use [Hetzner Ipv4 billing changes]: https://docs.hetzner.com/general/others/ipv4-pricing/ ## web Did a review of the 2021 web roadmap (from the [wiki homepage][]), copied below: [wiki homepage]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/team/-/wikis/home * [ ] [Donations page redesign][] - 10-50% * [ ] [Improves bridges.torproject.org][] - 80% done! * [ ] [Remove outdated documentation from the header][] - the "docs.tpo ticket", considering using dev.tpo instead, focus on launching dev.tpo next instead * [x] Migrate blog.torproject.org from Drupal To Lektor: it needs a milestone and planning * [x] [Support forum][] * [ ] [Developer portal][] AKA dev.tpo * [x] Get website build from Jenkins into to GitLabCI for the static mirror pool (before December) * [ ] Get up to speed on maintenance tasks: * [ ] Bootstrap upgrade - uh god. * [ ] browser documentation update - what is this? * [ ] get translation stats available - what is this? * [x] rename 'master' branch as 'main' * [ ] fix wiki for documentation - what is this? * [ ] get [onion service tooling][] into TPO GitLab namespace - what is this? [Donations page redesign]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/22 [Improves bridges.torproject.org] https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/7 [Remove outdated documentation from the header]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/team/-/issues/8 [Support forum]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/26 [Developer portal]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/23 [onion service tooling]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/hiro/roid # Syadmin+web OKRs for 2022 Q1 We want to take more time to plan for the web team, in particular, and especially focused on this in the meeting. ## web team We did the following brainstorm. Anarcat will come up with a proposal for a better-formatted OKR set for next week, at which point we'll prioritize this and the sysadmin OKRs for Q1. * OKR: rewrite of the donate page ([milestone 22][]) * [new lektor frontend][] * [we can donate through the .onion][] * [vanilla JS rewrite][] * OKR: make it easier for translators to contribute * help the translation team to switch to Weblate * it is easier for translators to find their built copy of the website * bring build time to 15 minutes to accelerate feedback to translators * allow the web team to trigger manual builds for reviews * OKR: documentation overhaul: * [launch dev.tpo][] * "Remove outdated documentation from the header", stop pointing to dead docs * come with ideas on how to manage the wiki situation * cleanup the queues and workflow * OKR: resurrect bridge port scan * do not scan private IP blocks * make it pretty [milestone 22]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/22 [new lektor frontend]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/donate-static/-/issues/37 [we can donate through the .onion]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/donate-static/-/issues/36 [vanilla JS rewrite]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/donate-static/-/issues/45 [launch dev.tpo]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/dev/-/issues/6 Missed from the last meeting: * sponsor 9 stuff: collected UX feedback for portals, which involves web to fix issues we found, need to prioritise We also need to organise with the new people: * onion SRE: new OTF project USAGM, starting in February * new community person # Other discussions # Next meeting We're going to hold another meeting next week, same time, to review the web OKRs and prioritize Q1. # Metrics of the month * hosts in Puppet: 89, LDAP: 91, Prometheus exporters: 139 * number of Apache servers monitored: 27, hits per second: 185 * number of Nginx servers: 0, hits per second: 0, hit ratio: 0.00 * number of self-hosted nameservers: 6, mail servers: 8 * pending upgrades: 7, reboots: 0 * average load: 0.35, memory available: 4.01 TiB/5.13 TiB, running processes: 643 * disk free/total: 84.95 TiB/39.99 TiB * bytes sent: 325.45 MB/s, received: 190.66 MB/s * planned bullseye upgrades completion date: 2024-09-07 * [GitLab tickets][]: 159 tickets including... * open: 2 * icebox: 143 * backlog: 8 * next: 2 * doing: 2 * needs information: 2 * (closed: 2573) [Gitlab tickets]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/boards Upgrade prediction graph now lives at: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/wikis/howto/upgrades/bullseye/ ... with someone accurate values, although the 2024 estimate above should be taken with a grain of salt, as we haven't really started the upgrade at all. # Number of the month 5. We just hit the 5TiB of deployed memory, kind of neat. # Another number of the month 0. We have zero Nginx servers left, as we turned off our two Nginx servers (ignoring the Nginx server in the GitLab instance, which is not really monitored correctly), when we migrated the blog to a static site. Those two servers were the caching server sitting in front of the Drupal blog for cost savings. They served us well but are now retired since they are not necessary for the static version. -- Antoine Beaupré torproject.org system administration

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Tails report for December 2021
by sajolida 10 Jan '22

10 Jan '22

Releases Tails 4.25 was released on December 2021 <https://tails.boum.org/news/version_4.25/index.en.html>. * We added a utility to make a backup of the Persistent Storage to another Tails USB stick. * We added a new entry called *Tails (External Hard Disk)* to the GRUB boot loader. Hiring a Project Manager We published a job offer for a Project Manager <https://tails.boum.org/jobs/project_manager/> and reviewed the first 50 applicants. We were very impressed by the quality of the applicants and this gives us a lot of hope for the future of the project. We selected 6 applicants that we will interview in January. We are still reviewing new applications! Please pass the word :) Automatic time synchronization We wrote a prototype to automate the synchronization of the computer's clock before connecting to the Tor network. (#18717 <https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/18717>) This will help people living in Eastern Europe and Asia connect to Tor bridges from Tails. When users decide to connect to the Tor network automatically <https://tails.boum.org/doc/anonymous_internet/tor/index.en.html#automatic>, Tails will connect to Fedora's captive portal detection /without going through Tor/ to automatically correct the clock before connecting to Tor. You can read more about our security design <https://tails.boum.org/contribute/design/Tor_enforcement/#non-tor-traffic> and current implementation plans <https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/blueprints/-/wikis/robust_time_syncing#…> or test the nightly build <https://nightly.tails.boum.org/build_Tails_ISO_18717-time-sync-before-tor/l…> of our prototype. Usability tests of first-time use We did some usability tests of our installation instructions. We recruited 5 activists with interest in privacy technologies and observed them while they downloaded, installed, and started Tails for the first time. We hadn't tested this entire flow since 2015 and so many things happened since then. * 3 of them had a pretty good installation experience of 10-20 minutes, download excluded. This process became much easier since 2015 thanks to the distribution of USB images instead of ISO images. * 2 of them went a very bad route and took more than 1 hour to install Tails despite us rescuing them along the way. The good news is that we could help these people with only changes to the website. You can see the detailed findings and the 19 GitLab issues that we created from these usability tests in this rainbow table <https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/ux/-/raw/master/first-time/rainbow_tabl…> or read a more detailed report <https://lists.autistici.org/message/20211217.014522.68cdc460.en.html>. (#18074 <https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/18074>) We also published our policy for the retention of the user research data <https://tails.boum.org/contribute/how/user_experience/research/> gathered during such activities. Metrics * The Russian translation of our documentation about connecting to the Tor network <https://tails.boum.org/doc/anonymous_internet/tor/index.en.html> was the top growing page on our website, according to Google Search. This happened while Russia started blocking Tor <https://ooni.org/post/2021-russia-blocks-tor/> in December. We are very proud to have released the Russian translation of our entire user documentation in October and released the /Tor Connection/ assistant in July <https://tails.boum.org/news/version_4.20/index.en.html> to make it easier for people to circumvent this kind of censorship. We estimate that 4 times more people are using bridges from Tails since the release of /Tor Connection/, from the /WhisperBack/ reports that we receive from users. * Tails has been started more than 752 953 times this month. This makes 24 289 boots a day on average. -- sajolida Tails — https://tails.boum.org/ UX · Fundraising · Technical Writing

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Changes to UX Team meetings in 2022
by Duncan Russell 10 Jan '22

10 Jan '22

Happy new year everyone! As the User Experience Team here at the Tor Project grows, our team meetings will be changing as follows: UX Team meetings will be moving back to a weekly frequency with a new meeting being held each Tuesday, starting tomorrow. The time for our meetings is changing from 1400 UTC to 1700 UTC to better accommodate the timezones the team is distributed across. A new pad for our meetings can be found here: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-ux-team-2022-keep <https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-ux-team-2022-keep> That means our next UX Team meeting will be held on Tuesday January 11th at 1700 UTC in #tor-meeting, and will repeat weekly thereafter. Due to the increased frequency I won’t be sending individual reminders for each meeting any longer, however the minutes and logs will continue to be emailed round post-meeting like usual. Remember, User Experience team meetings are an open space for discussion around ethical user research, user interface design and the user experience of privacy-enhancing products. See you soon! Duncan *** Duncan Larsen-Russell Product Manager & UX Team Lead duncan(a)torproject.org <mailto:duncan@torproject.org>

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Joydeep's Monthly Status Report for December 2021
by Joydeep Sen Gupta 06 Jan '22

06 Jan '22

Hello and a very happy new year everyone! This is my monthly status report for December, 2021. Helping Tor users in Russia circumvent censorship has been one of the top priorities for last month. On 1st December we began receiving reports from users that some ISPs in Russia have started to block access to Tor [1]. Since then we have received an unprecedented number of help request tickets on frontdesk and I am happy to report that we have been successful in dealing with a vast majority of them (thanks to Gus and Nina as well!) Just to give an idea, we had resolved a total of 1456 tickets between January and November 2021 but 1784 tickets were resolved in the month of December alone. Apart from this, I have also been active on the Tor forum for moderation and answering support queries and on #tor (IRC) and social media. # Frontdesk stats Timeline : 01 Dec 2021 - 31 Dec 2021 Tickets: new: 158 open: 29 resolved: 1784 Breakdown of most frequent tickets (at least 5 RT tickets): 1. 1521 RT Tickets - How to use Tor Bridges in Russia. [2] 2. 41 RT Tickets - Submissions for 'Help Censored Users, Run a Tor Bridge' campaign. [3] 3. 26 RT Tickets - Private Bridge requests. This is not related to the .ru censorship but requests from Tor users in China, Iran, etc. [4] 4. 7 RT Tickets - Tor Browser incompatible with older versions of macOS.[5] 5. 5 RT Tickets - Issues with Tor Browser 11. Most of these issues have been fixed by the latest (11.0.3) update! # Tor Forum Most popular topics (in terms of views) after December 2021: 1. Tor blocked in Russia: how to circumvent censorship. [2] 2. Relays running an unsupported (EOL) Tor version. [6] 3. UI broke after updating [7]. Issues with Tor Browser 11 which have now been resolved by the latest update! If you have any suggestions, questions or want to discuss anything in detail please feel free to get in touch. Thanks, -- Joydeep [1]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/responding-to-tor-censorship-in-russia/1057 [2]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/tor-blocked-in-russia-how-to-circumvent-cens… [3]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/help-censored-users-run-a-tor-bridge/704 [4]: https://support.torproject.org/censorship/connecting-from-china/ [5]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/version-of-tor-browser-compatible-with-macos… [6]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/relays-running-an-unsupported-eol-tor-versio… [7]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/ui-broke-after-updating/535/

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Monthly status report for Nina
by nina13＠riseup.net 06 Jan '22

06 Jan '22

Hi, My role is to support Tor users in Russian. This is my status report for December 2021. I've joined 21 December 2021. Here are the tasks I have accomplished over this period. 1. Introduction to the team. 2. Accounts registration and familiarization with the software and application used. 3. Reading instructions, additional information and tickets closed by the colleagues for better understanding of the problems users may face. 4. Responding to user requests. In total around 600 tickets were closed for the period. 5. Communication with the team on dealing with user issues. 6. Adding three new RT articles in Russian: - How can I help you? - Seven-point basic troubleshooting - How to share your Tor Browser logs 7. Translated the new version of 'How to circumvent Tor censorship in Russia' guide: https://forum.torproject.net/t/tor-blocked-in-russia-how-to-circumvent-cens… Kind regards, Nina

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PieroV's monthly status report
by Pier Angelo Vendrame 06 Jan '22

06 Jan '22

Hi everyone! This is my status report for December 2021. I started on December 1st as a developer on the Applications team. Initially, I spent some time learning how the projects are organized and how to build Tor Browser. Then, I started looking at a crash of Tor Browser on Windows (tor-browser#40721). To do so, I found a workaround to add xul.pdb to the installer (see tor-browser-build#31546) and added what I found on the wiki page about debugging Tor Browser on Windows. We can now debug on Windows with source code rather than relying on the disassembly. Eventually, reverting one of Mozilla's patches solved this issue, tor-browser#40698, tor-browser#40706, and we could roll tor-browser-build#40389 back. Mozilla is investigating this problem further. I also had a look at font problems on Ubuntu and Fedora. It was a regression of Firefox bug #1661532, combined with a new Firefox anti-tracking feature added between versions 78 and 91. We worked on a patch with Mozilla (Bugzilla#1745715), which solved tor-browser#40685 and tor-browser-build#40387. My next task was reorganizing the Tor Browser patch set (tor-browser#40562). We wanted to reorganize patches to make Tor Browser work after a small number of patches and make git bisect easier. I proposed some changes and discussed them with GeKo and Richard. I am pushing a reorganized branch either later today or in the next few days. Finally, my last task was looking at the automatic tests, which have been broken for a while. They work with a manual setup of a Python 2 virtual env (as described in my comments on tor-browser-bundle-testsuite#40033). Tor Browser 11 passes most of them. Some others need to be updated, and some just fail. Before the holidays, I was investigating the latter ones. Thanks, and I wish you a happy new year! Pier

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Monthly status report for irl
by Iain Learmonth 05 Jan '22

05 Jan '22

Hi, This is my monthly status report for work completed in December 2021. I am developing a framework for deploying obfs4 bridges in public and private clouds using orchestration tools, with the specific use case being that bridges must be easily destroyable and creatable such that if they are blocked in target networks they can be quickly deployed to a new unblocked location. Between Sponsor 96 and Sponsor 125, there are currently 39 dynamic bridges running. These bridges are distributed either by moat (Sponsor 96) or by Telegram (Sponsor 125). In next month’s update I hope to have some real numbers on the number of users per-country these bridges are supporting though currently there is no easy way to get this information. Some of these bridges are seeing more than 300 average connected users and load balancing may need to be considered once there is more data available. The initial development focussed on two modules for deploying bridges with Terraform on two cloud providers, one using an Openstack API: * https://github.com/sr2c/terraform-hcloud-tor-bridge * https://github.com/sr2c/terraform-openstack-tor-bridge Two new modules have since been added to support the creation of a torrc configuration file natively within Terraform and to generate a ContactInfo string that is compliant with ContactInfo Information Sharing Specification version 2: * https://github.com/sr2c/terraform-null-torrc * https://github.com/sr2c/terraform-null-contactinfo Over the winter holiday, we worked to keep our pool of Telegram bridges updated with accessible bridges, deploying new bridges as required and decommissioning old bridges as they are no longer used. Thanks to others I worked with in the Tor team that gave up some of their holiday time to keep the free and open Internet accessible to those that wouldn’t otherwise have access! This month I plan to generate metrics on the use of these dynamic bridges to inform how many we should be running and provide insight into country-level blocking. The Terraform modules will also continue to see improvements as I move away from the “provisioner” hack and instead use cloud-init to provision the bridges more reliably. Thanks, Iain. -- Iain Learmonth (he/him) SR2 Communications Limited Phone: +44 (0)1224 900 202 | Email: irl(a)sr2.uk<mailto:irl@sr2.uk>

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