[tor-relays] Help Turkmens to bypass Internet censorship: run an obfs4 bridge!

[gus]

Hello, just a quick update:

Some friends from Turkmenistan told me that they don't think this new
round of online censorship is related to the upcoming elections,
because it's just a "formal" event. In general, they said, shutdowns and
internet disruptions are motivated by other events like:
 - when Russian Duma speaker arrived in TM
 - the wedding day of the president's grandson

Anyway, today we tested some of bridges that you shared with us and I replied
back saying which ones worked and which ones didn't.

Thank you for running a bridge!,
Gus

On Wed, Mar 22, 2023 at 04:25:05PM -0300, gus wrote:
> Dear Relay operators community,
> 
> The parliamentary elections in Turkmenistan are coming up very soon on
> March 26th[1], and the Turkmen government has tightened internet censorship
> and restrictions even more. In the last few months, the Anti-censorship
> community has learned that different pluggable transports, like
> Snowflake, and entire IP ranges, have been blocked in the country.
> Therefore, running a bridge on popular hosting providers like Hetzner,
> Digital Ocean, Linode, and AWS won't help as these providers' IP ranges
> are completely blocked in Turkmenistan.
> 
> Recently, we learned from the Anti-censorship community[2] and via Tor user
> support channels that Tor bridges running on residential connections
> were working fine. Although they were blocked after some days or a week,
> these bridges received a lot of users and were very important to keep
> Turkmens connected.
> 
> How to help Turkmens to access the Internet
> ===========================================
> 
> You can help Turkmens to access the free and open internet by running an
> obfs4 Tor bridge! But here's the trick: you need to run it on a
> residential connection -- you won't need a static IPv4 --, and it would
> ideally be run on more robust hardware than just a Raspberry Pi
> (although that can help, we have found they can get overloaded).
> 
> You can set up an obfs4 bridge by following our official guide:
>     https://community.torproject.org/relay/setup/bridge/
> 
> After you setup a new bridge, you can share your bridge line with the
> Tor support team at frontdesk at torproject.org, and we will share it with
> users.
> 
> A complete bridge line is composed of:
> 
>     IP:OBFS4_PORT FINGERPRINT cert=obfs4-certificate iat-mode=0
> 
> Check this documentation to learn how to share your bridge line:
> https://community.torproject.org/relay/setup/bridge/post-install/
> 
> Just sharing your bridge fingerprint is not the best, but it's fine.
> 
> You can read more about censorship against Tor in Turkmenistan here:
>   - https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/censorship-analysis/-/issues/40029
>   - Snowflake blocked:
>     https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/censorship-analysis/-/issues/40024
> 
> Thank you for your support in helping to keep the internet free and open
> for everyone.
> 
> Gus
> 
> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Turkmen_parliamentary_election
> [2] https://ntc.party/c/internet-censorship-all-around-the-world/turkmenistan/17
> https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/80
> 
> -- 
> The Tor Project
> Community Team Lead



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-- 
The Tor Project
Community Team Lead
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