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Community Council activity summary, April 2020-August 2020
by Taylor Yu 13 Nov '20

13 Nov '20

Hi all, Here is a brief summary of the Community Council's activities from April 2020 through August 2020. The 2019 and 2020 Community Councils overlapped in the month of August. April 2020 The Council talked about longer term plans for the Council's role in the future. May 2020 The Council started planning for the upcoming Community Council election cycle. Some exploration of how to make the handover to the new Council go more smoothly because we won't have an in-person meeting for the foreseeable future. June 2020 The Council reviewed an existing community health concern in the light of new information, and began to draft a statement for internal communication. The Council reviewed existing practices in choosing to reject bad relays. Given the shortage of volunteers, made a one week extension for the call for volunteers for the next Community Council. More reminders in more places about Code of Conduct the Community Council, and other related documents. July 2020 The Council took action regarding a past Code of Conduct violation by a community member. The Council took action regarding an existing community health matter. The Council began the process of elections for the next year's Council. August 2020 The Council began the transition process to the 2020 Council. The Council continued to take action regarding an existing community health matter. --- end of summary --- This summary will also be posted on the Council's wiki page. This will be the last update from the 2019 Community Council. If you have any feedback about this summary format, or any other feedback to the Council, please contact us at tor-community-council(a)lists.torproject.org.

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Network Team meeting moved from Monday to Tuesday next week
by Alexander Færøy 12 Nov '20

12 Nov '20

Hello folks. Because of the State of the Onion event on Monday the 16th of November, we are moving the Network Team meeting 24 hours ahead to Tuesday the 17th at 17:00 UTC on #tor-meeting on OFTC. All the best, Alex. -- Alexander Færøy

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Tor Browser roadmap for the rest of 2020
by Gaba 12 Nov '20

12 Nov '20

Hi! The Tor Browser team is meeting on November 12th at 15UTC in #tor-meeting in irc.oftc.net We are going to discuss and define the roadmap for the Tor Browser until the end of the year. The pad for the meeting will be: http://kfahv6wfkbezjyg4r6mlhpmieydbebr5vkok5r34ya464gqz6c44bnyd.onion/p/TB-… cheers, gaba -- pronouns she/her/they GPG Fingerprint EE3F DF5C AD91 643C 21BE 8370 180D B06C 59CA BD19

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User Experience team monthly meeting notes, November 10th
by Antonela D 11 Nov '20

11 Nov '20

Hello! Today's meeting includes a draft of the UX team roadmapping for 2021. Open IRC meetings happen monthly usually every first Tuesday of the month 1400 UTC in #tor-meeting on OFTC. The next meeting is on December, Tuesday 8th 1400 UTC in #tor-meeting on OFTC. Here are the minutes for the meeting of November 10th: Log: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2020/tor-meeting.2020-11-10-13.58.log… Here are the minutes for the meeting of October 13th: Log: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2020/tor-meeting.2020-10-13-13.59.log… Here are the minutes for the meeting of September 1st: Log: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2020/tor-meeting.2020-09-01-13.59.log… Here are the minutes for the meeting of August 4th: Log: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2020/tor-meeting.2020-08-04-13.58.log… -------------------------- Tuesday November 10th 14:00 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&… []=Sponsor%209&label_name[]=UX S30 - Empowering Communities in the Global South to Bypass Censorship https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&… []=Sponsor%2030&label_name[]=UX S84 - Onion Guides https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&… []=Sponsor%2084 == Announcements == * Tor Browser 10.0 Release - https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-100 * Tor Browser for Android 10.0 Release - https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-1003 == Agenda == - 2020 SOTO - 2021 UX Roadmap - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1crkol5UqZ_UTIKDVDMOA8xeapbJw9doexi_… - Open floor HSV3 Client Auth - user feedback https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/ux/2020-November/000519.html TB 10 Search - regression? https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2020-November/045666.html == Open Calls == For Design & User Research == Usage of Tor Bridges We'll be interviewing users to collect feedback about Tor Bridges Usage. If you are interested in participating with your community as an interviewee or researcher, please ping me directly: antonela[]torproject.org. My keys https://www.torproject.org/static/keys/antonela.txt -- Antonela Debiasi UX Team Lead torproject.org @antonela E2330A6D1EB5A0C8

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Anti-censorship meeting notes, 5 Nov 2020
by Cecylia Bocovich 09 Nov '20

09 Nov '20

Hey everyone! Here are the meeting logs: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2020/tor-meeting.2020-11-05-16.00.html and our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday November 5th 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. == Links to Useful documents == Our anti-censorship roadmap: Roadmap: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/boards The anti-censorship team's wiki page: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/home Past meeting notes can be found at: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/ Tickets that need reviews: from sponsors we are working on: All needs review tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/merge_requests?s… Sponsor 30 https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/4 https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/7 https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/5 https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/6 Sponsor 28 must-do tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/10 possible tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&… Anti-censorship related tickets that we want other teams to fix: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-anti-censorship-tickets-keep <-- it will be moved into gitlab with TPO labels <-- do we still need this? The label is 'for anticensorship team' Public bug-reporting pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-anti-censorship-bugs-keep == Announcements == We're adding a new default bridge. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/40212 == Discussion == == Actions == == Interesting links == "Towards a Scalable Censorship-Resistant Overlay Network based on WebRTC Covert Channels" https://www.gsd.inesc-id.pt/~nsantos/papers/barradas_dicg20.pdf == Reading group == We will discuss "The use of TLS in Censorship Circumvention" on 2020-11-12 https://tlsfingerprint.io/static/frolov2019.pdf 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. phw: This week (2020-10-29): Reviewed Snowflake patches, rdsys patch, grant budget, and S30 report. Lots of rdsys and Salmon refactoring. Made good progress on cohosh's idea of making Salmon more privacy preserving by not storing a social graph on the server side. Experimented with statsd/graphite for metrics. Seems very promising. Took a look at the recent censorship in Tanzania. Next week: Finish refactoring Salmon and start working on cohosh's "social graph reduction" idea. Help with: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgestrap/-/issues/3 cecylia (cohosh): last updated 2020-11-05 Last week: - submitted merge request for snowflake#40012 - worked on a patch for guardian project efforts to make a snowflake library (snowflake#40018) - made slides for sponsor 28 PI meeting - attended sponsor 28 PI meeting - switched from a docker-based to network namespace solution for probetest service (snowflake#40013) This week: - finish debugging snowflake#40013 - continue work on snowflake#40018 - follow up on progress towards a telegram bot for gettor - pick up snowflake multiplexing work again (snowflake#25723) - sponsor 28 PI meeting - write probetest survival guide Needs help with: - review of snowflake!16 juggy : This week: - Got very basic "suggested readings" list up and running here : https://jugheadjones10.github.io/anti-censorship-reading/ Next week: - Keep studying BridgeDB to write architectural overview Help with: - Open issues here (https://github.com/jugheadjones10/anti-censorship-reading ) for papers/resources/readings that you think might be useful for newcomers arlolra: 2020-10-29 Last week: - Next week: - getting back up to speed - follow ups to #33365 - start on #31201 Help with: - dcf: 2020-11-05 Last week: - reviewed broker firewall changes for Snowflake probetest https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… Next week: - review broker metrics cache https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… Help with: Antonela: 2020-08-27 This week: - Wrapping Babatunde's research on the use of circumvention tools during internet censorship in Africa. Wrapping Personas for s30 with it. For september: - We are planning interviews with users in China to run our bridges discovery issues script in real time. We discussed to include TBA + snowflake as a task for users to run over a week or two and report back. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/research/-/issues/4 - I still have bridges.tpo to lektor issue open - More work on UX/UI for TB 10.0/10.5 - Review Salmon related tickets (im late with it!) agix:2020-11-05 Last week: -Made some good progress on understanding rdsys code (a lot of debugging) -Gather ideas for Pluggable Transports/HTTPT/Issues/#4 Next week: -Continue work on rdsys ticket Help with: - hanneloresx: 2020-10-22 Last week: - Took break to focus on work Next week: - #32117: Look at CAPTCHA success rate for users from the US across different types of bridges Help with: - thymbahutymba: 2020-04-02 Last week: - CI/CD pipeline for multiarch docker images, which has a problem with the apt tor version even though the apt repository have been changed into the Dockerfile. Next week: Help with: HashikD: 2020-10-16 This week: - Finished work on #19 Next week: - Network checks Help with: -

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Tor L10n Hackathon ∙ November 6th, 7th and 9th
by Antonela Debiasi 05 Nov '20

05 Nov '20

Hi, During November 6th, November 7th and November 9th, the Tor Project and Localization Lab will host the first edition of Tor Project's localization hackathon, the Tor L10n Hackathon. https://blog.torproject.org/tor-l10n-hackathon A hackathon is an event where a community hangs out and works together to update, fix, and collaborate on a project. The L10n Hackathon is a remote and online event. In this localization hackathon, we're going to work exclusively on the localization of our latest resource, the Tor Community portal. https://community.torproject.org/ The Community portal is organized into sections: Training, Outreach, Onion Services, Localization, User Research, and Relay Operations. Each section helps users understand how they can get involved in each activity to build and strengthen the community supporting the Tor Project. At this time, we will ask technical folks to be available and open for any technical questions that might arise from translators when localizing our available material. You can join us in #tor-l10n to answer these questions. You can find the event's schedule here: https://wiki.localizationlab.org/index.php/TorL10nHackathon Given our global mission, it is critical to offer these resources in local languages. Thanks in advance for your collaboration! Gus, Erin and Antonela -- Antonela Debiasi UX Team Lead @antonela E2330A6D1EB5A0C8 https://torproject.org

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Next Tor Browser Release Meeting - 03 November 2020
by Matthew Finkel 02 Nov '20

02 Nov '20

Hello everyone, The next Tor Browser release meeting will be held on 03 November at 1900 UTC in #tor-meeting. Please add discussion items on the pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-browser-release-meeting-keep If we do not have any discussion items for the meeting by 1700 UTC on 3rd Nov, then the meeting will be cancelled. Thanks, Matt

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Anti-censorship team monthly report: October 2020
by Cecylia Bocovich 02 Nov '20

02 Nov '20

Hi everyone, Here is a report of what we've been up to in October 2020: == Snowflake == * Made it possible for the bridge to count user bandwidth more accurately. The bridge bandwidth graphs are now closer to reality. Released in version 0.4.2 of the Snowflake WebExtension. https://bugs.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowfl… * Made Snowflake proxies self-test their NAT characteristics more robustly, by making a test connection. Released in version 0.5.0 of the Snowflake WebExtension. https://bugs.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowfl… * Increased the frequency of Snowflake proxy polling, to keep pace with the increasing number of clients. https://bugs.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowfl… * Updated bug-reporting instructions at snowflake.torproject.org. https://bugs.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowfl… * Fixed a crash in the Snowflake client caused by a race condition. https://bugs.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowfl… == Rdsys == * We keep refactoring the code base to avoid technical debt. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/20 https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/19 https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/18 * We made progress on the Salmon distributor. We're now working on an experimental improvement that makes Salmon store client state in Tor Browser instead of on the server. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/21 https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/15 * Experimented with metrics collection for rdsys and bridgestrap. The combination of StatsD and Graphite is promising -- at least for internal metrics. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/rdsys/-/issues/14 == Bridgestrap == * Re-implemented the way bridgestrap tests bridges. Instead of spawning a Tor process each time bridgestrap tests a bridge, it now re-uses its Tor process and relies on the SETCONF controller command to fetch a bridge's descriptor. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/bridgestrap/-/issues/3 == Miscellaneous == * Studied the potential Tor interference that took place during the election in Tanzania. An unusually high number of connections to directory authorities and default bridges timed out but users were generally still able to use the Tor network: we saw a sharp increase in both directly connecting and bridge users: https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-country.html?start=2020-08-0… https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-country.html?start=2020-08-… * Added "First Contribution" label to several issues. If you're interested in contributing, take a look at the following issues: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/issues?scope=all…

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User experience team monthly meeting on November 10th
by Antonela D 02 Nov '20

02 Nov '20

Hi! The November's User Experience team meeting will be on November 10th in #tor-meeting*. During this meeting, we will discuss the 2021 Roadmap for the user experience team and its impact across different teams. We will also review the 2020 State of the Onion presentation. Also, we will have some space for an open floor so feel free to list yourself in the pad. https://pad.riseup.net/p/1D8sK8Zy74b_0qclC97I-ux-team-monthly-2020-keep Remember, the User Experience team meetings are willing to cultivate an open space for discussions around ethical user research, user interface design, and user experience, meanwhile building privacy-enhancing products. I hope to see you around! Peace and love, A [*] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/team/-/wikis/home -- Antonela Debiasi UX Team Lead torproject.org @antonela E2330A6D1EB5A0C8

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Anti-censorship meeting notes 2020 Oct 29
by Cecylia Bocovich 30 Oct '20

30 Oct '20

Hey everyone! Here are the meeting logs: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2020/tor-meeting.2020-10-29-15.58.html and our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday October 29th 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. == Links to Useful documents == Our anti-censorship roadmap: Roadmap: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/boards The anti-censorship team's wiki page: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/home Past meeting notes can be found at: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/ Tickets that need reviews: from sponsors we are working on: All needs review tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/merge_requests?s… Sponsor 30 https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/4 https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/7 https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/5 https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/6 Sponsor 28 must-do tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/10 possible tickets: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&… Anti-censorship related tickets that we want other teams to fix: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-anti-censorship-tickets-keep <-- it will be moved into gitlab with TPO labels <-- do we still need this? The label is 'for anticensorship team' Public bug-reporting pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-anti-censorship-bugs-keep == Announcements == Please add your October highlights to our monthly report pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/-mFSnGRKoOGCIq0pByRz Found a student who's interested in working on: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/emma/-/issues/4 == Discussion == == Actions == == Interesting links == "Towards a Scalable Censorship-Resistant Overlay Network based on WebRTC Covert Channels" https://www.gsd.inesc-id.pt/~nsantos/papers/barradas_dicg20.pdf == Reading group == We will discuss "" on 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. phw: This week (2020-10-29): Reviewed Snowflake patches, rdsys patch, grant budget, and S30 report. Lots of rdsys and Salmon refactoring. Made good progress on cohosh's idea of making Salmon more privacy preserving by not storing a social graph on the server side. Experimented with statsd/graphite for metrics. Seems very promising. Took a look at the recent censorship in Tanzania. Next week: Finish refactoring Salmon and start working on cohosh's "social graph reduction" idea. Help with: cecylia (cohosh): last updated 2020-10-29 Last week: - talked to guardian project about their efforts to integrate snowflake - sponsor 28 evaluations (x_x) - more revisions to and deployed snowflake#40013 - published snowflake-webext!7 on addon stores and website - helped out with snowflake mobile bug (snowflake#40018) - implemented cached broker stats (snowflake#40012) - modified a script to plot default bridge connections from Tanzania (https://gitlab.torproject.org/-/snippets/67) This week: - follow up on progress towards a telegram bot for gettor - pick up snowflake multiplexing work again (snowflake#25723) - roll out and monitor snowflake web deployment - sponsor 28 PI meeting - clean up and write tests for snowflake#40012 Needs help with: - firewall feedback for snowflake#40013 (dcf) juggy : This week: - Got very basic "suggested readings" list up and running here : https://jugheadjones10.github.io/anti-censorship-reading/ Next week: - Keep studying BridgeDB to write architectural overview Help with: - Open issues here (https://github.com/jugheadjones10/anti-censorship-reading ) for papers/resources/readings that you think might be useful for newcomers arlolra: 2020-10-29 Last week: - Next week: - getting back up to speed - follow ups to #33365 - start on #31201 Help with: - dcf: 2020-10-29 Last week: - Azure CDN bookkeeping - made a patch to remove an unnecessary error log from Snowflake proxy https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… Next week: - review broker firewall changes https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow… Help with: Antonela: 2020-08-27 This week: - Wrapping Babatunde's research on the use of circumvention tools during internet censorship in Africa. Wrapping Personas for s30 with it. For september: - We are planning interviews with users in China to run our bridges discovery issues script in real time. We discussed to include TBA + snowflake as a task for users to run over a week or two and report back. https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/research/-/issues/4 - I still have bridges.tpo to lektor issue open - More work on UX/UI for TB 10.0/10.5 - Review Salmon related tickets (im late with it!) agix:2020-10-29 Last week: -Implemented feedback on #5 (rdsys) -Got more familiar with rdsys Next week: -Get feedback from my univesity professor regarding tackeling Pluggable Transports/HTTPT/Issues/#4 in my master thesis -More familiarization with rdsys Help with: - hanneloresx: 2020-10-22 Last week: - Took break to focus on work Next week: - #32117: Look at CAPTCHA success rate for users from the US across different types of bridges Help with: - thymbahutymba: 2020-04-02 Last week: - CI/CD pipeline for multiarch docker images, which has a problem with the apt tor version even though the apt repository have been changed into the Dockerfile. Next week: Help with: HashikD: 2020-10-16 This week: - Finished work on #19 Next week: - Network checks Help with: -

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