[tor-project] Anti-censorship team meeting notes 05 March 2020

[Cecylia Bocovich]

Here is our meeting log:

http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2020/tor-meeting.2020-03-05-17.59.html

And our meeting pad:

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

Next meeting: Thursday March 5th 18:00 UTC

Weekly meetings, every Thursday at 18:00 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:
https://dip.torproject.org/torproject/anti-censorship/roadmap/boards

    Our roadmap consists of a subset of trac tickets. For 2020 Q1, the
trac keyword is anti-censorship-roadmap-2020Q1

    The anti-censorship team's wiki page:
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/AntiCensorshipTeam

    Past meetings' notes can be found at:
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/

    GetTor's roadmap:
https://dip.torproject.org/groups/torproject/anti-censorship/gettor-project/-/boards

    Tickets that need reviews:
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/query?status=needs_review&component=%5eCircumvention&col=id&col=summary&col=component&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&col=milestone&col=reviewer&order=priority


    Projects from sponsors we are working on:

    https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/sponsors/Sponsor30

    https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/sponsors/Sponsor28


-------------------------
---   March 5th 2020   --
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== Announcements ==

    Snowflake got a mention on privacytools.io:
https://www.privacytools.io/browsers/#addons

    Tor participating in Google Summer of Code, ideas page:
https://community.torproject.org/gsoc/


== Discussion ==

    - We want to run a session during IFF to get people to circumvent
censorship. We were thinking of getting people to connect to a censored
network, e.g by providing a router that censors in different way; and
try to access the internet or some sites or something. We would need
some advice/help to set something like this up -- Pili & Gus

    - Source code from 2017 experiment (few hundred users, Windows only,
simulated censorship with a local firewall, used an instrumented Tor
Browser to record mouse clicks):

    - https://github.com/lindanlee/PETS2017-paper

    - see experiment/firewall.bat and experiment/gen-firewall

    - see the screenrecording directory

    - see the session/pre/videos directory for videos and detailed notes
of a pre-study

    - see the setup directory for other setup notes (don't remember what
exactly)

    - paper: https://censorbib.nymity.ch/#Lee2017a

    - Source code from 2015 experiment (5 users, one on one, no
censorship, just browser usability):

    - git clone
https://www.bamsoftware.com/repo.eecs.berkeley.edu/tor-ux.git/ (see
README and tasks.html)

    - videos: https://people.torproject.org/~dcf/uxsprint2015/

    - blog post: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/ux-sprint-2015-wrapup



== Actions ==

== Interesting links ==

    https://ooni.org/post/2020-iran-blocks-farsi-wikipedia/

    "Over the last days, between 2nd to 3rd March 2020, OONI
measurements collected from 6 different networks in Iran showed that
access to the Farsi edition of Wikipedia (fa.wikipedia.org) was
temporarily blocked by means of DNS tampering and SNI filtering."

    "The Farsi edition of Wikinews (fa.wikinews.org) has remained
blocked ... It’s worth highlighting that the mobile version of the Farsi
language edition of Wikipedia (fa.m.wikipedia.org) remains accessible,
as does the English version of Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)."


== Updates ==

Name:
    This week:
        - What you worked on this week.
    Next week:
        - What you are planning to work on next week (related to
anti-censorship work).
    Help with:

         - Something you may need help with.



Hiro: (last updated before 2020-01-09)
    Started restoring Twitter Responder.

        When retrieving tweets I need to check for new tweets only
otherwise Gettor will end up responding to old back log and already
answered messages. <-- is this #27330 ?

    Next Week:
      - Work on gettor specs <-- Is this #3781?
      - More with review of strings and website content and translation

phw:
  This week (2020-02-20):

    Will be gone until our Mar 12 meeting.

    Merged and deployed BridgeDB's Python 3 port (#30946).

    Retired scramblesuit, obfs3, and fte from BridgeDB.

    Refactored email distributor check tool for #12802.

    Wrote OONI patches for new default bridge.

    Reviewed #23225.

  Next week:

    Write a summary of our current BridgeDB distribution mechanisms and
brainstorm new ones

  Help with:



Gaba: ()
   Last week ():

    This week (planned):


cecylia (cohosh): last updated 2020-03-05
Last week:
    - implemented snowflake throughput check (#32938)
    - updated snowflake webextension and badge with new translations
    - wrote a patch for gitlab issues with gettor (#33034)
    - added a go module to snowflake (#33330)
    - grant edits
    - responded to GSoC emails
    - looked at old pcaps for clues about why some proxies fail

This week:
    - maybe continue work on throughput check (#32938)
    - tbb patch for #33330
    - implement update notification for proxy-go instances (#32677)
    - Aggregate and write up a report of snowflake throughput changes
(#32545)
    - revise GetTor message body (#9036)

Needs help with:
    - review of #33034 (hiro?)
    - review of snowflake tickets #32938 and #33330


arlolra: 2020-02-13

    Last week:

    - merged the client part of #19026

    Next week:

    - maybe the proxy parts of #19026

    - pick another task?

    Help with:

    -


dcf: 2020-03-05

    Last week:

    - turned off the unused snowflake-reg-test.appspot.com reflector
(#33429)

    - posted a workaround for snowflake-turbotunnel packages updating
themselves (#33336)

    - helped diagnose a snowflake stall when there are multiple SOCKS
connections (#33519)

    Next week:

    - review go.mod for snowflake (#33330)

    - review snowflake throughput tests (#32938)

    - work on a fix for multiple SOCKS connections (#33519)

    - maybe make new packages with 9.5a7 when that's out

    Help with:


cjb: 2019-03-05
   Last week:
    - went ahead with removing the bridgeauth-side change from #31011 so
that ticket can be split out
   Next week:
    - poke at golang snowflake proxy Android app
   Help with:

agix:2020-03-05

    Last week:

    - Still on #31426

    - Fixed #31528

    - I have summarized the errors and difficulties I encountered when
setting up BridgeDB and noted some small fixes and suggestions for
improvement

    Next week:

    - Continue on #31426

    - Checkout the BridgeDB Port to Python3

    Help with:

    - I changed the references in #31528 but responses like "Uh, oh
spaghettios!" have already been translated into different languages. How
should I handle that?

    - Just to clarify, what is the preferred way for you guys to submit
a fix? Should I just push my branch or submit a patch as an attachment
on the ticket?