[tor-project] Anti-censorship meeting notes, 2021 November 4

[Cecylia Bocovich]

Hi everyone!

Here are our meeting logs:

http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2021/tor-meeting.2021-11-04-15.59.html

and the meeting pad:

Anti-censorship work meeting pad
--------------------------------

Next meeting: Thursday November 4th 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 ==

     welcome shelikhoo!


== Discussion ==

- change in proxy NAT types

     we had an issue with the slow recovery of "unrestricted" proxy NATs

     opened 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40075

- Confused about the meek client metrics in Turkmenistan

 
https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-combined.png?start=2021-08-02&end=2021-11-04&country=tm

     https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/support/-/issues/40030

     snowflake seems to be blocked

     we have prioritized an easier way to get snowflake connection info: 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40062


== Actions ==

     please fill out the monthly report for september + october

     https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-anti-censorship-monthly-report-keep


== Interesting links ==

     https://github.com/xiaokangwang/VLite


== Reading group ==

     We will discuss "Measuring QQMail's automated email censorship in 
China" on 2021-11-11

     https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3473604.3474560

     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 2021-11-04
Last week:
     - some reviews
     - updates to changelog
     - NSF grant planning
     - wrapping up snowflake for v2 release (snowflake#40063)
     - worked on snowflake + shadow performance work
     - onboarding preparation tasks
     - helped debug snowflake domain name resolution (snowflake#40057)
     - created snowflake#40076 for client network event callbacks
     - monitored snowflake broker prometheus metrics
This week:
     - automate blocking detection for rotating IP bridges 
(censorship-analysis#40020)
     - more snowflake performance work (snowflake#40026)
Needs help with:

arlolra: 2021-08-12

     Last week:

     - Migrate to v3 of the webextension manifest

     Next week:

     - Maybe get back to snowflake-webext #10

     - Write up the pitch for our use case for supporting creating 
PeerConnections in background service workers 
https://github.com/w3c/webrtc-extensions/issues/77

     Help with:

     -


dcf: 2021-11-04

     Last week:

     - rebooted snowflake VPSes 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40073

     - made issues for probetest failures 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40071 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40072

     - looked up issues possibly related to bridge bootstrap failures 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/tor/-/issues/40396#note_2757812

     Next week:

     - will miss 2021-11-11 meeting

     Help with:


agix:2021-11-04

     Last week:

     -

     Next week:

     -Adjust BridgeDB Patch to Gitlab

     -Start with rdsys issue#40 (twitter gettor distributor)

     Help with:

     - at meskio: Is it ok for you if I work on the twitter gettor 
distributor?


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:

     -


maxb: 2021-09-23

     Last week:

     - Worked on 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40054 
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: 2021-11-04

     Last week:

     - Make prometheus alerts for snowflake (snowflake#40072)

     - starting to have an implementation of bridgedb bridge using rdsys 
(bridgedb#40031)

     - copy snowflake technical overview into our wiki

 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/wikis/Technical%20Overview

     Next week:

     - make bridgedb a rdsys distributor (bridgedb#40031)

     - improve bridgestrap manage of the cache (bridgestrap#27)