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minutes from the sysadmin meeting (OKRs edition)
by Antoine Beaupré 25 Jan '22

25 Jan '22

Hi, At our first meeting of the year, we didn't have time to complete the web team OKRs and prioritization for the first quarter, so we scheduled another meeting to do this. Here are the minutes. We might have more of those emails in the weeks to come, as we have a bunch of brainstorms and planning sessions coming up. Let me know if this is too noisy... # Roll call: who's there and emergencies anarcat, kez, lavamind, linus joined us. # 2022 Q1/Q2 web OKRs gaba and anarcat previously established a proposal for a set of OKRs for the web team, which were presented during the meeting, and copied below: ## Proposal * OKR: make the donate page easier to maintain and have it support .onion donations ([milestone 22][]) * [new lektor frontend][] * [vanilla JS rewrite][] * [we can donate through the .onion][] * OKR: make it easier for translators to contribute (almost done! not ambitious enough?) * translators can find their own copy of the website without help * bring build time to 15 minutes to accelerate feedback to translators * allow the web team to trigger manual builds for reviews * OKR: improve documentation across the organization * [launch dev.tpo][] (Q2) * "Remove outdated documentation from the header", stop pointing to dead docs * we have a plan to fix the wiki situation so that people can find and search documentation easily [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 ## Progress update The translation CI work is already going steadily and could be finished in early Q1. We are probably going to keep prioritizing the donate page changes because if we postpone, it will be more work as updates are still happening on the current site, which means more rebasing to keep things in sync. ## Things that need to happen regardless of the OKRs We have identified some things that need to happen, regardless of the objectives. This key result, for example, was part of the "documentation" OKR, but seemed relevant to all teams anyways: * teams have less than 20 tickets across the three lists (backlog, next, doing), almost zero open (untriaged) tickets We also need to support those people as part of sponsored work: * s9 usability - Q1/Q2 * support web maintaince based on the UX feedback * Work on torproject.org usabilty issues based on user feedback * Work on community.torproject.org usabilty issues based on user feedback * Work on dev.torproject.org usabilty issues based on user feedback * phase 6 may bring more TPA work but we need to make the schedule for it with TPA * s30 - anti-censorship - Q1 * bridges.torproject.org - Q1 * s61 network performance - whole year * support the work on network simulation * s96 - china censorship - whole year * support snowflake scaling * support rdsys deployment * support moat distribution * support HTTP PT creation * support monitoring bridge health * support creation and publication of documentation * support localization * s123 - USAGM sites - Q1/Q2 * support the project on onion sites deployments * most of the work will be from February to April/May * new onion SRE and community person starting in February Non-web stuff: * resurrect bridge port scan * do not scan private IP blocks: kez talked with cohosh/meskio to get it fixed, they're okay if kez takes maintainership * make it pretty: done Some things were postponed altogether: * decide if we switch to Weblate is postponed to Q3/Q4, as we have funding then We observed that some of those tasks are already done, so we may need to think more on the longer term. On the other hand, we have a lot of work to be done on the TPA side of things, so no human cycles will be wasted. # Prioritise the two set of OKRs Next we looked at the above set of OKRs and the [2022 TPA OKRs][] to see if it was feasible to do *both*. [2022 TPA OKRs]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/wikis/roadmap/2022 Clearly, there was too much work, so we're considering ditching an OKR or two on TPA's side. Most web OKRs seem attainable, although some are for Q2 (identified above). For TPA's OKRs, anarcat's favorites are mail services and retire old services, at least come up with proposals in Q1. lavamind suggested we also prioritize the bullseye upgrades, and noted that we might not want to focus directly on RT as we're unsure of its fate. We're going to prioritise mail, retirements and upgrades. New cluster and cleanup can still happen, but we're at least pushing that to Q2. We're going to schedule work sessions to work on the mail and upgrades plans, specifically, and we're hoping to have an "upgrade work party" where we jointly work on upgrading a bunch machines at once. # Other discussions No other discussion took place. # Next meeting TPA mail plan brainstorm, 2022-01-31 15:00 UTC, 16:00 Europe/Stockholm, 10:00 Canada/Eastern -- Antoine Beaupré torproject.org system administration

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Community Team meeting notes - January 19 2022
by gus 24 Jan '22

24 Jan '22

Hi, Here's our meeting log: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2022/tor-meeting.2022-01-19-12.59.log… And our meeting pad: ## Community Team Meeting pad Weekly meetings, every Monday at 14:00 UTC, in #tor-meeting at OFTC (channel is logged while meetings are in progress) ## Goal of this meeting Weekly checkin about the status of Community Team work at Tor. ## Links to Useful documents * Looking for volunteers: https://forum.torproject.net/t/looking-for-volunteers-to-contribute-to-the-… ## Discussion * (update) user support on Telegram: * Deployment: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/40578 * Planning: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/support/-/issues/40059 * Tor translations in Chinese (S96 work) * Community Team OKrs, 1:1 and team organization ## Updates Joydeep: Last week: - Tor Browser 11.0.4 support - Reviewed one pending Gitlab ticket This week: - RRF meeting (done) - Tor Browser Alpha 11.5a2 support and testing - Montly L10n Hackathon Help with: - Gus: This week: - Sponsor9/30 training materials - Dynamic bridge health in Russia: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/support/-/issues/40054 - Writing Bridges campaign wrap up blog post: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/relays/-/issues/24 - Outreachy mentorship work - Meeting with ux team about user feedback collection - Meeting with sajolida to discuss S30 work in Mexico Help with: - Something you need help with. Miko: Last week: - Competitive Audit (and Report) https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/relays/-/issues/29 - blog post to understand motivations and gamification better: https://mikoing.wordpress.com/2022/01/15/what-is-fun-kids/ Next week: - Relay Operator Survey analysis report Help with: - Call for ideation - freely send your ideas about how to incentivise relay operators for their great contributions! No ideas, too wild! Nina: Last week: - Tickets from Kazakhstan (shutdown) - Bridges request and basic troubleshooting around them - Translations - articles, website - Support on #Tor User Support This week: - RRF meeting - User support on multiple channels emmapeel: Last week: - still landing from NYE, lots of backlog This week: - there are problems with our translation.git bot - translation websites previews - move to weblate - l10n hangout Help with: - I need help from tpa to fix the translation previews. -- The Tor Project Community Team Lead

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Network Team - Upcoming 0.3.5.18 tor.git release - January 2022
by David Goulet 21 Jan '22

21 Jan '22

Greetings everyone! This week, the network team will release (likely on Friday) tor 0.3.5.18 (from tor.git, not arti ;) which will also be the very last version of the LTS 0.3.5.x series. On February 1st 2022, 0.3.5.x will be end-of-life and so this will close the chapter of this LTS in favor of the 0.4.5.x series as the latest LTS. You can find our release schedule here: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/team/-/wikis/NetworkTeam/CoreTorRele… (Keep in mind that it is a best effort and not everything on that page is set in stone.) As a reminder, 0.4.7.x is still in alpha stage as we are finalizing network congestion control which is quite large and complex. We will only release a stable when we consider it ready for which we are very hopeful to be well within the first half of 2022. Keep an eye out! Upcoming version: - 0.3.5.18 @network-team: It is _now_ a good time to start reviewing changes/ files: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/tor/-/tree/release-0.3.5/changes Last, we've asked the directory authorities to recommend this new version some minutes ago. Cheers! David -- 4+F4wjk7FBUF50LsbGBE3Mdsr5O7ugc/Fs02hg+sIf4=

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Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2022-01-20
by Cecylia Bocovich 20 Jan '22

20 Jan '22

Hey everyone! Here are our meeting logs: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2022/tor-meeting.2022-01-20-15.59.html And our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday January 20th 16:00 UTC Weekly meetings, every Thursday at 16:00 UTC, in #tor-meeting at OFTC (channel is logged while meetings are in progress) == Goal of this meeting == Weekly checkin about the status of anti-censorship work at Tor. Coordinate collaboration between people/teams on anti-censorship at Tor. == Announcements == == Discussion == resume posting weekly meeting notes? no strong feeling either way, but cohosh will resume because our discussion notes are worth saving Kazakhstan shutdown shutdown ended 2022-01-11, and nothing new noticed since then China "Anti-Fraud" Webpage Redirection Censorship https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/censorship-analysis/-/iss… Reply from censored planet: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/censorship-analysis/-/iss… currently have no access to an affected vantage point RIPE Atlas? want to be able to test a large custom list of domains, to find out (1) which are being blocked, and (2) whether the blocklist is the same in different networks in China snowflake bridge load balancing migration next week? https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… dcf can set up a server with adequate resources and the same keys change DNS to use this staging server while we make configuration changes on the main server change DNS back when finished eclips.is (Greenhost) is having issues, a VPS with similar resources is $100–200 / month, not a problem if only used for staging for a week or so whom to contact about changing snowflake.torproject.net DNS records? snowflake.bamsoftware.com and snowflake.freehaven.net are already CNAMEs for snowflake.torproject.net, so we only need to change the one https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/ good idea to set a short TTL before making the change still don't now what to do about onion key rotation, short of patching tor, or hacking LastRotatedOnionKey in the state file Copy TLS keys in addition to Tor's keys Reading group? 2022-02-03 == Actions == == Interesting links == https://fightcensorship.tech/ Icarus Project, an online repository for documented Internet censorship circumvention techniques and methods https://internews.org/resource/optimashutdownworkflow/ The OPTIMA Internet Shutdowns Advocacy Workflow == Reading group == We will discuss "Meteor: Cryptographically Secure Steganography for Realistic Distributions" on 2022-02-03 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3460120.3484550 https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/686 https://meteorfrom.space/ Questions to ask and goals to have: What aspects of the paper are questionable? Are there immediate actions we can take based on this work? Are there long-term actions we can take based on this work? Is there future work that we want to call out, in hopes that others will pick it up? == Updates == Name: This week: - What you worked on this week. Next week: - What you are planning to work on next week. Help with: - Something you need help with. cecylia (cohosh): last updated 2022-01-20 Last week: - commented on snowflake metrics churn - lots of reviews - look at obfs4 vulnerability - documented reachability probe tests for shell - gave shell access to probe site in china - created MR to close NAT check peer connections snowflake-webext!25 This week: - more reviews - finish documenting and cleaning up shadow simulation scripts - use these snowflake + shadow scripts to do more performance testing Needs help with: dcf: 2022-01-20 Last week: - tried to reproduce the snowflake webextension disabling screen lock https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - did brief code inspection of probetest https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - disabled our standalone snowflake proxies to free up more CPU https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… - set up another load-balanced snowflake bridge, this time with the same identity keys https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… https://forum.torproject.net/t/tor-relays-how-to-reduce-tor-cpu-load-on-a-s… - noticed and posted about upstream obfs4 vulnerability fixes https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/anti-censorship-team/2022-January/00… https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/anti-censorship-team/2022-January/00… Next week: - do the load balanced snowflake bridge installation again, this time on a production-capable host Help with: agix:2021-01-13 Last week: - Busy with work on Censored Planet Next week: - Continue work on gettor-twitter Help with: - arlolra: 2022-01-20 Last week: - [added 2022-01-20 by dcf] ALPN support for pion DTLS https://github.com/pion/dtls/pull/415 Next week: - Figure out where in pion/webrtc ALPN should be configured and used - Maybe add Chacha20Poly1305 to pion/dtls https://github.com/pion/dtls#planned-features https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… Help with: - maxb: 2021-09-23 Last week: - Worked on https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… re: utls for broker negotiation - Had conversation with someone about upstream utls http round tripper https://github.com/refraction-networking/utls/pull/74 - Too busy with work :/ Next week: - _Really_ want to get a PR for utls round tripper meskio: 2022-1-20 Last week: - metrics bridge distributor metrics for rdsys (rdsys#67) - don't distribute private bridges in rdsys (rdsys#84) - plan with TPA the test deployment of bridgedb (tpa/team#40581) - add country list to circumnvetion API (rdsys#83) - review snowlfake's event bus (snowflake!67) - telegram bot weekly rotation of bridges Next week: - select the type of bridges distributed by each distributor (rdsys#63) - test deployment for the new rdsys/bridgedb setup (rdsys#12) Shelikhoo: 2022-01-20 Last Week: - [Merge Request Awaiting] Add SOCKS5 forward proxy support to snowflake(snowflake!64) - [Merge Request Awaiting] Multi-arch docker image support with Dockerfile refactor for probetest(probetest!1) - [Merge Request Awaiting] Add callbacks in the client for key events during snowflake connections(snowflake#40076) - [Merge Request Pending] Privacy preserving stats in Snowflake standalone proxy(snowflake#40079) - [Discussion] Implement metrics to measure snowflake churn(snowflake#34075) - [Discussion] Proposal: Support for Dynamic IP obfs4 bridges with unattended proxy information update(aka "Subscription") - [Discussion] Proposal: Push Notification Based Signaling Channel - [Investigate] Is there a better moat/snowflake SNI than cdn.sstatic.net? (snowflake#40068) - [Investigate] Multi-instance Load Balanced Tor - Snowflake Deployment - [Investigate] China "Anti-Fraud" Webpage Redirection Censorship(censorship-analysis#40026) Next Week: - [Discussion] Designing the Container Layout for rdsys - [Discussion] Implement metrics to measure snowflake churn(snowflake#34075) - [Discussion] Proposal: Push Notification Based Signaling Channel - [Discussion] rdsys Deployment Environment - [Merge Request] Add callbacks in the client for key events during snowflake connections(snowflake#40076) - [Discussion] Proposal: Centralized Probe Result Collector HackerNCoder: 2021-12-16 This week: Last/done: Setup web mirror on tor.encryptionin.space Next: Get (new VPs with) new IP and setup new web mirror on new domain hanneloresx: 2021-3-4 Last week: - Submitted MR for bridgestrap issue #14 Next week: - Finish bridgestrap #14 - Find new issue to work on Help with: -

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UX team meeting notes, January 18th
by Duncan Russell 19 Jan '22

19 Jan '22

Hello, Thanks to everyone who made it to today's UX Team meeting! We’re looking forward to seeing you all again in a week’s time on January 25th. Here are the minutes: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2022/tor-meeting.2022-01-18-17.59.log… <http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2022/tor-meeting.2022-01-18-17.59.log…> Today we introduced or newest team-member, announced Tor Browser’s 11.0.4’s release, and discussed our tentative plan to deprecate the UX team mailing list in favor of the forum. *** == 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 18th: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2022/tor-meeting.2022-01-11-16.59.log… <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 18th 18:00 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 == * The UX Team welcomes our newest member: Nico (nicob)! * 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/> == Agenda == 1. Announcements 2. Weekly planning 3. UX mailing list deprecation == Weekly planning == Note: Please highlight anything you'd like to discuss below in **bold** Duncan Last week (actual): - Onboarded new team-member - Made sure the YEC is taken down on desktop and web - Tor Browser 11.0.4 launch support - Reviewed the Q4 2021 roadmap - Set up new team kanban - Split out torconenct design into three tickets: - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/29590 <https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/29590> - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/40780 <https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/40780> - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/40782 <https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/40782> - Started a script for the planned tor-qa survey This week (planned): - Finish nicob's onboarding - Continue torconnect ticket wrangling - Get up to speed on the VPN project - Contribute to review of Tor QA practises - Review remote user research methodology for S9 Nah Last week (actual): - ECC meetings - meetings to brainstorm and align new project phase S9 - exploring the last VPN survey for new insights and next steps S101 - started to brainstorm use case and features for VPN - updated User Research portal website - many 1:1 to align and plan user research for this quarter This week (planned): - Collect user feedback on community forum: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/research/-/issues/45 <https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/research/-/issues/45> - Report user feedback on community forum: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/research/-/issues/46 <https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/research/-/issues/46> - bring more use cases and features for VPN - think on ways to collaborate our User Research with other groups, and meeting with Sajolida to explore new paths in the same subject - (if have time) work on User Research Plan for volunteers Nicob Last week (actual): - First day and onboarding! - Read through mid-point deliverable of Brand Analysis from Berkeley Group - Explored design concepts for donate page banner This week (planned): - More onboarding? - Exploring design concepts for blog post: Vanguard of Browser Privacy - Begin researching/exploring visual direction for comms 2022 - Design new wordmark & lockup for Tor browser - Read through Berkeley Group final deliverable 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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UX team meeting moved to 1800 UTC on Tuesday, January 18th
by Duncan Russell 15 Jan '22

15 Jan '22

Hi everyone! Our next User Experience Team meeting will be held one hour later at 1800 UTC on Tuesday January 18th in #tor-meeting.* https://pad.riseup.net/p/1D8sK8Zy74b_0qclC97I-ux-team-monthly-2020-keep <https://pad.riseup.net/p/1D8sK8Zy74b_0qclC97I-ux-team-monthly-2020-keep> This should be a one-off, and we’ll be back to our usual time of 1700 UTC from Tuesday January 25th onwards. 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 [*] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/team/-/wikis/home <https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/team/-/wikis/home> *** Duncan Larsen-Russell Product Manager & UX Team Lead duncan(a)torproject.org <mailto:duncan@torproject.org>

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Community Team meeting notes - 2022-01-10
by gus 15 Jan '22

15 Jan '22

Hello, Here are our meeting logs: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2022/tor-meeting.2022-01-10-14.00.log… And our meeting pad: ## Tor Community Team meeting pad Next meeting: Wednesday, January 19, 2022 - 1300 UTC ## Goal of this meeting Weekly checkin about the status of Community Team work at Tor. ## Links to Useful documents * Looking for volunteers: https://forum.torproject.net/t/looking-for-volunteers-to-contribute-to-the-… * Internet shutdown in Kazakhstan: - Metrics: https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-country.html?start=2021-10-1… - https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-combined.html?start=2021-10… ## Discussion * Gamification project update: - main ticket: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/relays/-/issues/26 - Survey status - Next steps: survey report and scheduling interviews * Internet shutdown in Kazakhstan: - New Support guide: https://forum.torproject.net/t/internet-shutdown-in-kazakhstan-how-to-circu… - https://www.reddit.com/r/onions/comments/s04xvp/sos_from_kazakhstan_need_br… * Tor user support in Telegram: - What's the scope? - Onboarding, testing phase, public launch * Bridges campaign: - Status - network growth: - 2021-11-17: 1252 bridges - 2022-01-10: 2289 bridges - TODO: - Write a blog post wrapping up the campaign - Keep testing bridges till EOY - Delivery the first reward on January ## Updates Name: Last week: - What you worked on last week. This week: - What you are you planning to work on this week. Help with: - Something you need help with. Gus: This week: - Writing Bridges campaign wrap up blog post - Bridge Campaign: contacting bridge operators to confirm that their bridges are working. - Meeting about ECC and Onion-SRE positions - Monitoring Telegram bridges reachability in Russia: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/support/-/issues/40054 - Russia: contacting operators to rotate their bridges' IP addresses. Working on a template. - Sponsor9: writing up new project phase (June 2022 - June 2023). - Setting up telegram support channel with nina - Outreachy: Wrapping up relay operator survey with miko Joydeep: This week: - Backlog of frontdesk tickets - Gitlab to-do/reviews: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/boards?scope=all&state=opened&as… Nina: This week: - Responding to user queries (from Russian and KZ); - Translation if necessary; - Adding new article on access to the onion services resources. Hepl with: - Help with resolving some tickets. Miko: This week: - Starting data analysis on UX survey for relay operators gamification project https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/relays/-/issues/27 - Sharing a competitive audit report on Tor's competitors and other volunteer-based gamification strategies active - Setting up UX interviews with Tor Relay Operators who opted in Help with: - Looking for suggestions for good gamification examples to include in the audit report Next week: - Gathering feedback on competitive audit report and UX survey analysis emmapeel: This week: - Come back from vacations, check on translations status - move to weblate - translations preview if possible with lavamind -- The Tor Project Community Team Lead

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Tor Browser meeting moved to 2022-01-18 @ 1500 UTC
by Richard Pospesel 14 Jan '22

14 Jan '22

Hi everyone, Given the holiday on Monday, we'll be moving the weekly Tor Browser meeting to Tuesday the 18th (same time, same place). Meeting pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-tbb-keep best, -Richard

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

14 Jan '22

Hello, OONI's December 2021 status report is shared below. *# OONI Monthly Report: December 2021* Throughout December 2021, the OONI team worked on the following sprints: * Sprint 53 (1st-5th December 2021) * Sprint 54 (6th-19th December 2021) Our work can be tracked through the various OONI GitHub repositories: https://github.com/ooni Highlights are shared in this report below. *## Published report on Tor blocking in Russia* We published a report documenting the blocking of Tor in Russia based on OONI data. Read the report here: https://ooni.org/post/2021-russia-blocks-tor/ Our report shares OONI data and analysis on the blocking of the Tor network and Tor Project website on some AS networks in Russia. Wired also published a story on Tor blocking in Russia, sharing OONI data and findings: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/russia-block-tor-censorship *## Year in Review: OONI in 2021* In December 2021, we published our annual end-of-year post, "Year in Review: OONI in 2021", which shares: * OONI highlights from 2021 * Exciting OONI activities by community members in 2021 * Upcoming OONI projects in 2022 You can read this post here: https://ooni.org/post/ooni-in-2021/ Warm thanks to our amazing community for making our work possible! We thank every OONI Probe user out there, and we're excited for 2022! *## Published blog post about OONI Probe integration into iThena* iThena (https://root.ithena.net/) is a distributed computation and measurement project based on the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) platform. In December 2021, we published a blog post where we discussed how iThena helped boost OONI censorship measurement coverage worldwide by integrating OONI Probe into their platform. This blog post is available here: https://ooni.org/post/2021-ithena-boosts-ooni-measurement-coverage/ *## Published guest post by The Bachchao Project* In October 2021, we participated in the Bachchao Project’s 2-day event (“India, Let’s Build the List”) where we helped facilitate sessions for communities in India to update the Citizen Lab’s test list for India. In December 2021, we published the Bachchao Project’s guest blog post about the event on the OONI website: https://ooni.org/post/2021-event-india-test-list/ *## OONI Probe Mobile* We released OONI Probe Mobile 3.5.0 for Android ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/releases/tag/v3.5.0) and iOS ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-ios/releases/tag/v3.5.0) This release includes the following improvements: * Automated testing for instant messaging app tests (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Signal, Telegram) * Automated testing for circumvention tool tests (Tor, Psiphon, RiseupVPN) * Automated testing requires at least 20% of battery level * OONI Probe CLI updated to 3.13.0 * Bug fixes Following this release, OONI Probe mobile app users can run all OONI Probe tests (excluding the bandwidth-intensive performance tests) automatically on a regular basis. We expect that this will not only help boost OONI measurement coverage further, but it will also be helpful in ensuring that social media apps and circumvention tools (both of which are frequently blocked around the world) are more regularly tested. We started making improvements to how we do testing of the OONI Probe apps by doing integration testing of all components inside of a mono-repo ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1926) We also worked towards addressing OONI Probe technical debt ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1808) *## OONI Probe Web* We now have a working prototype of OONI Probe Web ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-web) that implements the full functionality. Features of OONI Probe Web currently include: * Informed consent onboarding process ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-web/pull/1) * Communication with the check-in API for receiving test-list targets; * Submission of measurements to the testing collector ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1494) Unlike the OONI Probe apps, OONI Probe Web is limited to website testing. The prototype includes a feature that enables users to determine if they would like to limit their testing to a specific number of URLs. *## Integrating tor into OONI Probe* We completed the integration of tor into OONI Probe Mobile and OONI Probe Desktop (https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1867) It is now possible to use go-libtor when it's available. We switch between using go-libtor or searching for the tor binary in the path by using build constraints. The branch that integrates this work is the following: https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/pull/614 We also integrated tor into OONI Probe Desktop ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-desktop/pull/261) and into OONI Probe CLI ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1872, https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1866) *## Expanding censorship measurement methodologies* We released OONI Probe CLI 3.13 ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/releases/tag/v3.13.0) through which users can now run our new DNScheck experiment ( https://github.com/ooni/spec/blob/master/nettests/ts-028-dnscheck.md) This release (along with our 3.13-beta and 3.14-alpha releases made in December 2021) includes a series of other improvements to our experiments and measurement methodologies (https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/releases) as well as updated dependencies. *## OONI Measurement Aggregation Toolkit (MAT)* We continued to make improvements to the OONI Measurement Aggregation Toolkit (MAT). In particular, we improved the usability of the one-dimensional charts, we fixed a tooltip rendering issue, we resized the panels for the charts and table, we fixed issues with non-measurement-start-day based charts, we fixed the sorting order of the table, and we worked on other UI improvements (https://github.com/ooni/explorer/issues/624) We also added support for displaying the various blocking types (DNS, TCP/IP, HTTP-failure, HTTP-diff) as an axis value in the MAT charts. Improvements to the MAT can be viewed through commits made in the following pull request: https://github.com/ooni/explorer/pull/622 *## OONI backend* In December 2021, we continued to make progress on migrating our backend infrastructure to Clickhouse (https://github.com/ooni/pipeline/pull/371) To this end, we worked on: * Switching more tables over to Clickhouse and improving test coverage; * Implementing Clickhouse in our fastpath data processing pipeline; * Implementing the Clickhouse feeder; * Updating JSONL table in Clickhouse from feeder; * Updating CI to test Clickhouse; * Splitting the platform in tiers; * Adding a deletion flag on the uploader; * Re-importing the JSONL table and rebuilding the fastpath table with the domain column. We also worked on the following backend activities: * Implemented an integrated API/fastpath multi-host dashboard; * Added backend support for Tor Snowflake experiment feature extraction ( https://github.com/ooni/pipeline/pull/372) * Added backend support for extracting Tor Snowflake runtime metrics and exposing them via a new API endpoint (https://github.com/ooni/api/pull/274) * Handled upcoming VM reboots; * Continued to monitor OONI measurement coverage from unattended runs on OONI Probe Mobile and Desktop. *## Established new partnership with Zaina Foundation* In December 2021, we established a new partnership with Tanzania's Zaina Foundation (https://zainafoundationtz.org/) Over the past year, we had already been collaborating with Zaina Foundation, who facilitated OONI training for women human rights defenders in Tanzania, conducted usability studies for OONI Probe and OONI Explorer, and translated OONI Probe to Swahili. We are therefore thrilled to have now formalized our partnership with Zaina Foundation, and we’re excited for our ongoing collaboration over the next few years. To highlight Zaina Foundation’s important work, we published a new page on the OONI Partners page: https://ooni.org/partners/zaina-foundation/ *## OONI website### New Donate page* In December 2021, we published a new Donate page on the OONI website: https://ooni.org/donate/ Through this page, we aim to encourage donations in support of OONI’s work. *### Edited various OONI webpages* We edited and updated the copy of several web pages on the OONI site. In particular, we edited the About page ( https://github.com/ooni/ooni.org/pull/1041) we updated the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section (https://github.com/ooni/ooni.org/pull/1042) and we restructured and edited the Nettests section ( https://github.com/ooni/ooni.org/pull/1043) We also *## Hosting an OTF Information Controls Fellow* As of December 2021, we started to serve as the host organization for Open Technology Fund (OTF) Information Controls research fellow, Gurshabad Grover (https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/1471454369866719237) During his 1-year research fellowship with us, Gurshabad aims to uncover how ISPs, through their technical decisions, can exacerbate or minimize the effects of state-ordered censorship. *## Community activities### PiProbe* Our Venezuelan partners, Venezuela Inteligente, created a new OONI Probe distribution for Raspberry Pis, called “PiProbe” ( https://github.com/VEinteligente/PiProbe) On 15th December 2021, they presented PiProbe to collect feedback from the OONI team and broader community. *## Userbase* In December 2021, 39,609,318 OONI Probe measurements were collected from 2,785 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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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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