[metrics-team] Draft: Publishing bridge contact information

[Karsten Loesing]

Hi metrics team,

here's a draft for starting with our roadmap item: "Re-process bridge
descriptor tarballs to retain “contact” lines in server descriptors and
“fingerprint” lines in statuses (M; 0% done)"

Does this draft look okay for the (much bigger) tor-relays@ list, or am
I missing something important?

All the best,
Karsten


Subject: Publishing bridge contact information
To: tor-relays@

Hello relay and/or bridge operators,

you might already know this: we're publishing sanitized versions of
bridge descriptors on Tor Metrics.

https://metrics.torproject.org/collector.html#bridge-descriptors

We're using these sanitized descriptors to visualize interesting facts
about Tor bridges, among other things:

https://metrics.torproject.org/bridges-ipv6.html

We're now considering to drop one step in the sanitizing step, which is
to remove contact information. The result would be that we'd keep
contact information in sanitized descriptors in the exact same way as
the bridge operator put it into their torrc file.

https://metrics.torproject.org/bridge-descriptors.html#contact

https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/20983

Possible advantages are:
 - Relay Search would support searching for bridges by contact information.
 - People who keep a watching eye on the Tor network could reach out to
bridge operators to inform them that they're running an outdated tor/PT
version, or that running bridges and exits together is not cool.
 - If somebody ever revives OnionTip/TorTip, bridges could participate
and receive donations for running a bridge. Or t-shirts, who knows. Note
that I'm not promising either here, but without contact information,
neither would even be possible.

Possible disadvantages are:
 - If somebody runs a relay and a bridge, both with the same contact
information, a censoring adversary might guess that the bridge might run
on a nearby IP address as the relay. However, they could as well assume
that for all relays and block or scan the IP space around all known relays.
 - Bridge operators might be surprised to see their contact information
in a public archive. We do have a warning in torrc.sample.in
(https://gitweb.torproject.org/tor.git/tree/src/config/torrc.sample.in#n133),
but maybe nobody reads the fine manual.

Your opinion counts here. Is this a good or a bad idea, and why?

I'll keep this discussion open for a week and not start changing
anything during that time. If you want to state your opinion, please do
it on this list by Wednesday, February 14.

Thanks!

All the best,
Karsten

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 528 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/metrics-team/attachments/20180207/b9ae20b8/attachment.sig>