[tor-project] The Tor Project's priorities for April - June 2022

Gaba gaba at torproject.org
Tue Apr 26 23:40:24 UTC 2022 

Hi!

For visibility in the broader community, I'm sending the priorities we 
have for 2022 and specific projects and tasks we are working on for this 
quarter. There are links where you can read more about the work that 
different teams at Tor are doing.

If you want to read about long term strategic goals for the Tor project 
organization, you can go to this wiki page: 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/team#organization


# The Tor Project Priorities 2022

The Tor network
         Make the Tor network faster for users
         Get Arti to production level
         Improve bad relay tooling
         Support researchers for network experiments
         Improve monitoring and alerting for metrics services.
         Maintain a healthy relay operators community
         Increase adoption of onion services

Trainings and User Research in the global south
         Connect with censored users to improve censorship circumvention
         Research on Tor Browser new features and VPN concept
         Collaborate with other organizations in the Tor ecosystem

New Tor's "VPN" client
         Design safety criteria
         Define MVP for client
         Build the network engine for VPN solution
         Evaluate orbot and leap components and architecture
         Start working on UI

Tor Browser
        Implement feedback from users
        Improve automatic censorship detection during bootstrap
        Enable HTTPS-only mode
        Browser is under control (releases on schedule, automated tests 
pass)

Censorship Circumvention
        Implement new pluggable transport: Conjure & HTTPT
        Scale Snowflake
        Deploy improved bridge distribution system
        Monitor bridge health
        Censorship analysis and response to it

Infrastructure
     User support tools gets improved
     User support
     Documentation keep up to date
     Improve mail services
     Rebuild donate page
     Make it easier for translators to contribute


# Tor's TEAMS PRIORITIES FOR Q2
----------------------------------

## Applications
(Led by Richard. Board 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/applications/-/boards?label_name[]=Q2)

     Implement Tor Browser UX changes that UX team is prioritizing from 
user research and feedback.
     Improve automatic censorship detection during bootstrapping in Tor 
Browser (desktop and Android).
     Evaluate orbot and leap for components and architecture.
     Design VPN safety criteria.
     HTTPS everywhere replacement.
     Go/Rust/Java dependency resolution: how to resolve dependencies 
ahead of time.
     Browser: Browser is under control
     Android Tor Browser releases are on schedule
     Android/Linux Tor Browser Automated tests are passing
     Survey the Browser ecosystem
     Integration: Begin understanding application integration/embedding
     Begin helping Network Team create easy-to-use Arti API
     Document required components for Android app integration


## Community
(Led by Gus. Board 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/community/-/boards?label_name[]=Q2 
and 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/onion-services/-/boards?label_name[]=Q2) 


- assist network health team to maintain a healthy relay operators community
- assist anti-censorship team on connecting with censored users to 
improve censorship circumvention
- improve user support tools and documentation
- lead trainings with communities in latinoamerica and east africa
- look for spikes in tor usage and document process and resources 
available for it.

## Network Health
(Led by Geko. Board 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/network-health/-/boards?label_name[]=Q2)

- s61 O2.1: Reduce the number of slow and extremely slow sessions for 
our users by developing and deploying load balancing improvements.
- s61 O4.2: Find and fix performance-impacting issues and bugs 
discovered from monitoring and scanning.
- Run bad-relay detection scripts
- Bad-relay tooling improvements .
- Fix any sbws critical issues that may come up
- Support for researchers for network experiments
- Consider tickets from other teams
- Support OTF fellow on Relay Operators Community Health Research
- Relay operator meetups.
- Keep moderating and answering the tor-relays mailing list
- Handle EOL relays
- Support mentee from GSoC
- Improve monitoring and alerting for metrics services.
- Deploy a data store for metrics servicesn plan
- Refactor sbws2
- Surprise 'anomaly analysis' on the network as needed
- Think about metrics for the VPN client and their possible privacy 
issues/risks
- Network anomaly detection: use current monitoring infrastructure to 
get some of the anomalies we can catch with it.

# Network
(Led by Alex. Board 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/core/-/boards?label_name[]=Q2)

- S30 2.3.3 - Improve ability for bridgedb/authority to test bridges 
that only expose a pluggable transport.
- S30 2.4.5 - Increase stability and resilience of bridge authority and 
bridgeDB by exploring and implementing decentralization of those services.
- S61 O1.1: Optimize user-facing performance by tuning parameters of 
previously deployed Tor network improvements.
- S61 O2: sbws with congestion control (Tor support to pin exits/Sos 
Rends, or just wait).
- S61 O3.2: Implement promising performance improvements from evaluation 
in O3.1.
- S61 O4.1: Improve and implement network health monitoring and scanning.
- S96 O3.5: Integrate Tor+Snowflake/obfs4 capabilities into mobile 
applications.
- S96 O3.5.1 OnionShare, iOS.
- S96 O3.5.2: OnionShare, Android.
- S96 O3.5.3: Save (Share-Archive-Verify-Encrypt) by OpenArchive .
- S101 O3.2: Enhance Tor to act as a VPN service, rather than an opt-in 
proxy as it does today.
- S119 Arti 1.0.0 - Try to reach "production quality".

# Anti-censorship
(Lead by Meskio. Board 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/boards?label_name[]=Q2)

- S30 O2.3.1 - Develop new and/or improve existing bridge selection and 
distribution strategies based on data collected about successful, 
effective methods per evaluation during O1.1. Conjure/Tapdance 
implementation
- S96 O1.1.1 Prepare the Snowflake system for a surge in operators and 
users.
- S96 O1.2: Increase the number of Snowflake bridges.
- S96 O1.3: Implement bridges with pluggable transport HTTPT support.
- S96 O1.4: Increase the number of active obfs4 and HTTPT bridges.
- S96 O2.2: Deploy improved bridge distribution systems.
- S96 Start Salmon based design
- S96 O2.3: React and steer our response to censorship.
- S96 O4.3: Modify GetTor so that it can distribute Tor Browser via 
messaging apps
- S28 RACE project
- S2125 Automatize bridge rotation for telegram. Continue translations 
of anti-censorship material into russian.

# UX
(Led by Duncan. Board 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/boards?label_name[]=UX%20Team)

Roadmap in 
https://www.figma.com/file/n4ETd0cUkcfj3KyclJQnt3/UX-Team-Planning?node-id=0%3A1

# TPA
(Led by Anarcat. Board 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/tpa/-/boards )

Roadmap in https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/wikis/roadmap/2022

# WEB

It is a collaboration between TPA and Community teams. Board 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/web/-/boards


cheers,
gaba (Tor's project manager)
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