Notes from October 19 2017 Vegas team meeting
Notes for October 19 2017 meeting: Georg: 1) Preparing Tor Browser 7.0.7 and 7.5a6 with the updated donation campaign code 2) Working on getting the roadmap updated with all the team dependencies Nick: 0) What a great meeting! 1) Internews PT meeting on monday/tuesday seemed to go okay; I think they're likely to adopt practices resulting in convergence on a stable PT 2.x design. 2) Probably not here today; after 9 days of meetings, I need a break. 3) Network team did a draft roadmap. We included items that depend on, or that will affect, other teams. Arturo: 1) Published a report on censorship in Pakistan in collaboration with Bytes for All: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/pakistan-internet-censorship/ 2) We are migrating our email from runbox to GSuite 3) Updated 4 tests lists: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/241, https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/242 4) We are going to publish tomorrow a blog post about the OONI team gathering 5) Started experimenting with gatsby and contentful for revamping our website: https://github.com/openobservatory/ooni-website/tree/gatsby, found a bunch of bugs in gatsby, may not end up using it. 6) Created a repository containing licenses for OONI software: https://github.com/openobservatory/legal. Does anybody know some good friendly lawyers we could reach out to regarding the licensing of data? 7) Began adding support for the new OONI API to OONI Explorer: https://github.com/TheTorProject/ooni-explorer/pull/119 8) Following discussion with metrics and TBB teams we started adding support for extracting tor related metrics inside of ooni-pipeline: https://github.com/TheTorProject/ooni-pipeline/pull/98 9) My interview for an Italian TV program is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDZNqYiiYfo. I also explain what Tor is and how it works. (retweet if you wish: https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/920941902408626178) 10) Making some progress on OONI Probe 3.0: https://github.com/OpenObservatory/ooniprobe-cli 11) The deployment process of our website has levelled up. When a branch is merged into master, travis will automatically build it and push it to staging. Deploying it is then just a matter of running a simple script (this could be improved) isabela: 1) followed via jitsi some of the workshops and sessions of Montreal meeting 2) worked on responding OTF design proposal (deadline oct 24th) - getting sponsor8 stuff updated and adding modularization proposal to it (deadline next friday 27th) 3) Organizing inter-team roadmap review / dependencies check: https://storm.torproject.org/shared/85fNa4NXH0lxi1SRMrDNTaDQCyJIuNgHiSgfsiz6... Need to know if team leads here agrees with it. [Geko: sounds good to me, Arturo: sgtm, karsten: Oct 23 is reaaaally soon] [alison: I also would like a little more time but overall I think it's a good plan] 4) adam is getting our sponsor4 amendment for a NCE changing the deadline till end of January 5) all day meeting with Shari today here in NYC! Karsten: 1) Recovered from Montreal, worked off some tickets from my inbox, reviewed quite some code, ignored the rest. Shari: 1) talking with fellow travelers about safety in our community 2) working on modularization proposal with Isa and Tommy 3) working on end-of-year blog post and other eoy stuff 4) Tor meeting feedback? Steph: 1) working w hiro to finalize newsletter portal and to make some design changes to the blog 2) working on fundraising campaign, launching monday 3) tidying up comms retrospective, adding to 2018 strategy, incl notes from montreal. will be working in seattle in november with shari and tommy to finalize 4) tommy is taking on compiling positive onion services use cases 5) IFF submissions are due Oct 31 Brad: 1) Working on several follow-up items from Montreal this week 2) Submitted paperwork necessary to open brokerage account for accepting stock donations 3) Held discussions with employees in Montreal about updated time budgets, and have been rolling out the new budgets this week. 4) Compliance reports for Sponsor 8 due 10/31, so please submit Sept. time sheets asap if you haven't already done so. Alison 1) I hope everyone had a good meeting! I did. I was really pleased to see how many people reported feeling happier/healthier at this meeting. 2) I hope to get a post-meeting survey out soon (need to check in with Jon and gunner) 3) September 2018 meeting -- Brazil? 4) The implicit bias session was great. We should do more plenaries like these. 5) We should also do a roadmapping-share session with all teams. 6) Can we talk about how possible it would be to organize childcare at future meetings?
Arturo: 2) We are migrating our email from runbox to GSuite
Really? The anti-censorship team is putting all their email into the mass surveillance system of the current Internet marketing champion, Google, who has charmingly convinced everyone they are Santa Claus? I keep waiting for Google to announce its high priced detective service, that will tell you everything the target is doing, in realtime, and with fully detailed history. They're keeping all the data to be able to do it. They have to be doing it under sealed subpoenas and court orders already. So when can I buy it, e.g. to see what my favorite federal bureacrats are doing? cf: The Transparent Society by David Brin. John
On 21 October 2017 at 22:14:25, John Gilmore (gnu@toad.com) wrote:
Arturo: 2) We are migrating our email from runbox to GSuite
Really? We would rather spend our time developing great software and fighting censorship, than running our own email server. If you would like more context and information on the rationale behind this decision I would be more than happy to address your concerns off list. Ciao! ~ Arturo
Hi Arturo, I am grateful to John for making me aware of this hidden gem in the notes: On 21 October 2017 at 22:14:25, John Gilmore (gnu@toad.com) wrote:
Arturo: 2) We are migrating our email from runbox to GSuite
Can you please provide more details on this plan? Please do not take this decision lightly. In my view, moving Tor's email to Google would damage Tor's reputation beyond repair because you would hand over personal data of the entire Tor community to the world's worst data leech. Tor is already avoided by many because of its close ties to US government agencies. Moving closer to the biggest actor in commercial surveillance would make things much worse. I'm afraid people would no longer feel inclined to run Tor relays – I wouldn't. On Sat, Oct 21, 2017 at 10:46:46PM +0200, Arturo Filastò wrote:
Really? We would rather spend our time developing great software and fighting censorship, than running our own email server.
It is not a big deal to run a mail server, especially if you already have it running. The organization I volunteer for does this, and their financial and human resources are much more modest than Tor's.
If you would like more context and information on the rationale behind this decision I would be more than happy to address your concerns off list.
This is an important decision that should not be taken off-list. Cheers, C: -- Christian Pietsch | academic library hacker volunteering for Digitalcourage e.V., Marktstr. 18, D-33602 Bielefeld, Germany https://digitalcourage.de | https://bigbrotherawards.de How to avoid Google: https://pad.okfn.org/p/google_alternatives
On 22 October 2017 at 12:23:41, Christian Pietsch (christian.pietsch@digitalcourage.de) wrote: On 21 October 2017 at 22:14:25, John Gilmore (gnu@toad.com) wrote:
Arturo: 2) We are migrating our email from runbox to GSuite
Can you please provide more details on this plan? 1. This is pertaining just to the OONI email servers. That is all emails sent to @openobservatory.org 2. Previously we were paying another service to run our email (runbox.com), it ended up being too expensive for us to pay for that service and had reliability issues. 3. We are eligible for the GSuite non-profit plan so it made sense to switch over to using that service. 4. We are a very small development team that maintains already **many** software components and services, email is not a service that we want to take on maintaining and hosting ourselves as we simply don’t have the resources for it. Have a nice Sunday! ~ Arturo
Hi, On 22/10/17 11:39, Arturo Filastò wrote about moving to GSuite. Just to add to this, for those that are still concerned. The OONI website does list a GPG key that can be used to send encrypted emails that are not readable by Google: https://ooni.torproject.org/about/ Setting up a mail server is easy, but keeping a mail server running, keeping a lid on spam and preventing your mail server from ending up in reputation systems as "spammy" is a constant struggle. While it is sad that Google has been chosen, I can well understand the reasoning behind doing so. Thanks, Iain.
Iain R. Learmonth:
Hi,
On 22/10/17 11:39, Arturo Filastò wrote about moving to GSuite.
Just to add to this, for those that are still concerned. The OONI website does list a GPG key that can be used to send encrypted emails that are not readable by Google:
And I am still concerned. How much of the email is PGP encrypted?
https://ooni.torproject.org/about/
Setting up a mail server is easy, but keeping a mail server running, keeping a lid on spam and preventing your mail server from ending up in reputation systems as "spammy" is a constant struggle.
It is really not that hard. And even if some russian spamservice would mark Tor-emails as potential spam, is that reason enough to give it to Google?
While it is sad that Google has been chosen, I can well understand the reasoning behind doing so.
Thanks, Iain.
_______________________________________________ tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
-- Niels Elgaard Larsen
Dear Niels and everyone else who has concerns with the OONI team using GSuite, Thank you for sharing your concerns. As privacy advocates, we very much understand your concerns. I personally understand your concerns, having hosted multiple "How to de-Googlize your life" workshops for the public over the last years and having investigated Alphabet as part of my previous job. However, I'm sure you understand that (for better or for worse) life is full of trade-offs that we all inevitably need to take into account when striving to do our jobs the best that we can. Our job - our as in OONI - is that of enabling people around the world to measure internet censorship. To this end, our small team of only 4 (!) developers design, build, and maintain the following software components: 1. OONI Probe (i.e. multiple free software tests designed to measure internet censorship) 2. Backend for OONI Probe 3. OONI Probe web UI 4. OONI Probe mobile app for Android 5. OONI Probe mobile app for F-Droid 6. OONI Probe mobile app for iOS 7. OONI Probe distribution for Raspberry Pis 8. OONI data processing pipeline 9. Proteus (probe orchestration) 10. OONI Run 11. OONI Explorer 12. OONI API I think it's clear that our small team is building and maintaining a lot of software and services. And over the next year, OONI will be building and maintaining much more software, so the list will go on. In addition to the above, we also ensure that our servers are up and running so that we can provide daily updates on internet censorship based on data collected from more than 200 countries. We also write research reports, do data analysis, and many more activities. And so while we're not particularly happy about GSuite, we see it as a necessary (and temporary?) solution. We simply don't have the resources to maintain an email server (and ensure it's properly secured). We can of course be reached via encrypted PGP email, and many do so. I should probably emphasize that we receive a fair amount of emails from Gmail users. And when it comes to really sensitive communications, we obviously don't use email. All the best, Maria. On 22/10/2017 20:41, Niels Elgaard Larsen wrote:
Iain R. Learmonth:
Hi,
On 22/10/17 11:39, Arturo Filastò wrote about moving to GSuite.
Just to add to this, for those that are still concerned. The OONI website does list a GPG key that can be used to send encrypted emails that are not readable by Google:
And I am still concerned. How much of the email is PGP encrypted?
https://ooni.torproject.org/about/
Setting up a mail server is easy, but keeping a mail server running, keeping a lid on spam and preventing your mail server from ending up in reputation systems as "spammy" is a constant struggle. It is really not that hard.
And even if some russian spamservice would mark Tor-emails as potential spam, is that reason enough to give it to Google?
While it is sad that Google has been chosen, I can well understand the reasoning behind doing so.
Thanks, Iain.
_______________________________________________ tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
_______________________________________________ tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
-- Maria Xynou Research and Partnerships Coordinator Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.torproject.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E
Maria, Please forgive the top post. Do please investgate Topicbox, a service offered by FastMail Pty Ltd, an outstanding Australian email service provider. Topicbox is a team-oriented email product available at a cost of just $10/month for up to 10 team members. Fastmail is a completely open source based service that takes privacy very seriously. Full disclosure, Fastmail is my personal email service provider, but I have no further interest in the company. Topicbox simply sounds like it may suit the OONI teams needs. https://www.topicbox.com/ Rick Maria Xynou wrote:
Dear Niels and everyone else who has concerns with the OONI team using GSuite,
Thank you for sharing your concerns.
As privacy advocates, we very much understand your concerns. I personally understand your concerns, having hosted multiple "How to de-Googlize your life" workshops for the public over the last years and having investigated Alphabet as part of my previous job.
However, I'm sure you understand that (for better or for worse) life is full of trade-offs that we all inevitably need to take into account when striving to do our jobs the best that we can.
Our job - our as in OONI - is that of enabling people around the world to measure internet censorship.
To this end, our small team of only 4 (!) developers design, build, and maintain the following software components:
1. OONI Probe (i.e. multiple free software tests designed to measure internet censorship)
2. Backend for OONI Probe
3. OONI Probe web UI
4. OONI Probe mobile app for Android
5. OONI Probe mobile app for F-Droid
6. OONI Probe mobile app for iOS
7. OONI Probe distribution for Raspberry Pis
8. OONI data processing pipeline
9. Proteus (probe orchestration)
10. OONI Run
11. OONI Explorer
12. OONI API
I think it's clear that our small team is building and maintaining a lot of software and services. And over the next year, OONI will be building and maintaining much more software, so the list will go on.
In addition to the above, we also ensure that our servers are up and running so that we can provide daily updates on internet censorship based on data collected from more than 200 countries. We also write research reports, do data analysis, and many more activities.
And so while we're not particularly happy about GSuite, we see it as a necessary (and temporary?) solution. We simply don't have the resources to maintain an email server (and ensure it's properly secured).
We can of course be reached via encrypted PGP email, and many do so. I should probably emphasize that we receive a fair amount of emails from Gmail users. And when it comes to really sensitive communications, we obviously don't use email.
All the best,
Maria.
On 22/10/2017 20:41, Niels Elgaard Larsen wrote:
Iain R. Learmonth:
Hi,
On 22/10/17 11:39, Arturo Filastò wrote about moving to GSuite.
Just to add to this, for those that are still concerned. The OONI website does list a GPG key that can be used to send encrypted emails that are not readable by Google:
And I am still concerned. How much of the email is PGP encrypted?
https://ooni.torproject.org/about/
Setting up a mail server is easy, but keeping a mail server running, keeping a lid on spam and preventing your mail server from ending up in reputation systems as "spammy" is a constant struggle. It is really not that hard.
And even if some russian spamservice would mark Tor-emails as potential spam, is that reason enough to give it to Google?
While it is sad that Google has been chosen, I can well understand the reasoning behind doing so.
Thanks, Iain.
_______________________________________________ tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
_______________________________________________ tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
-- Maria Xynou Research and Partnerships Coordinator Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.torproject.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E
_______________________________________________ tor-project mailing list tor-project@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project Email had 1 attachment: + signature.asc 1k (application/pgp-signature)
"Iain R. Learmonth" <irl@torproject.org> writes:
On 22/10/17 11:39, Arturo Filastò wrote about moving to GSuite.
Just to add to this, for those that are still concerned. The OONI website does list a GPG key that can be used to send encrypted emails that are not readable by Google:
Meta-data is certainly still readable by Google and it is often the most important bits of information. micah
participants (9)
-
Arturo Filastò -
Christian Pietsch -
Iain R. Learmonth -
John Gilmore -
Karsten Loesing -
Maria Xynou -
micah -
Niels Elgaard Larsen -
Rick