[tor-reports] OONI team status report for February 2016

[Arturo Filastò]

# What we did in February 2016

* Worked on changing the data format for ooni-probe to support submitting reports in JSON:
https://github.com/TheTorProject/ooni-probe/pull/456

* Worked on adding support for accepting JSON formatted reports in collector backend:
https://github.com/TheTorProject/ooni-backend/pull/62

* Worked on a new test for detecting DNS inconsistencies and better identifying the reason for blocking of sites called “web_connectivity”.
This new test is going to be replacing the DNS Consistency, TCP Connect and HTTP_Requests test.

The specification for the test is here:
https://github.com/TheTorProject/ooni-spec/pull/48

The client implementation for it is here:
https://github.com/TheTorProject/ooni-probe/pull/457

The backend implementation is here:
https://github.com/TheTorProject/ooni-backend/pull/62

* Implement pipeline tasks for compressing reports for publishing:
https://github.com/TheTorProject/ooni-pipeline/commit/20d72b74afb7b525533b1b3d3fd272cef98dff3c

* Resume publishing of reports on https://ooni.torproject.org/reports/ though we ran into some issues with not enough
storage space on the staticiforme.torproject.org website.
After discussing possible solutions with weasel we will probably end up using a subdomain of ooni.torproject.org or of ooni.io
and hosting the reports on our own servers since Tor project infrastructure is currently under-capacitated.

* Re-designed the API for measurement-kit to make it easier for the user of it to handle the lifecycle of objects and avoid use-after free related issues.

* Did a presentation at the Nexa lunch seminar: https://nexa.polito.it/lunch-38

* Worked on integrating Tor into measurement-kit.

* Written prototype implementation of "web_connectivity" for measurement-kit.

* Held 5 weekly dev meetings:
http://meetbot.debian.net/ooni/2016/ooni.2016-02-01-16.59.html
http://meetbot.debian.net/ooni/2016/ooni.2016-02-08-16.59.html
http://meetbot.debian.net/ooni/2016/ooni.2016-02-15-16.59.html
http://meetbot.debian.net/ooni/2016/ooni.2016-02-22-17.00.html
http://meetbot.debian.net/ooni/2016/ooni.2016-02-29-17.10.html

* Attended the Tor developer meeting in Valencia

* Worked on UI improving to the ooni-explorer:
https://github.com/TheTorProject/ooni-explorer/issues/36

# What we plan to do in March 2016

* Merge and test JSON data format of reports

* Release version 0.2 of measurement-kit

* Update measurement-kit to use JSON data format

* Release and deploy JSON supporting collector

* Finish polishing the ooni-explorer

* Make a public release of the ooni-explorer with an announcement

~ Arturo