19:59:16 <gaba> #startmeeting anti-censorship checkin
19:59:16 <MeetBot> Meeting started Thu Jan 17 19:59:16 2019 UTC.  The chair is gaba. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot.
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19:59:18 <gaba> hi!
19:59:30 <gaba> Pad for the meeting is here: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-censorship-2019-keep
19:59:38 <gaba> at the top I added the roadmaps that we have been discussing
19:59:50 <gaba> one for the whole anti-censorship (that can change over time)
19:59:52 <ahf> antonela: what is a PRD?
20:00:01 <antonela> product requirements document
20:00:03 <gaba> and then one for each of the topics that we have more plans about: snowflake, gettor and bridgedb
20:00:14 <nickm> (hi)
20:00:28 <gaba> hi
20:00:29 <gaba> !
20:00:30 <hiro> (hi)
20:00:35 <hiro> window 13
20:00:36 <ahf> antonela: ah!
20:00:41 <hiro> all the times :(
20:00:43 <gaba> all: please feel free to add anything to the pad that you want to get discussed here
20:00:48 <antonela> im just trying to figure out what is the scope ahf
20:00:54 <ahf> makes sense
20:00:59 <Samdney> hi
20:01:12 <gaba> nice antonela: lt's add it to the discussion
20:01:19 <antonela> thanks gaba
20:01:41 <gaba> First, 2nd report. Kat5 is working on it.
20:01:52 <ahf> cool!
20:02:22 <gaba> The idea for this report is to specify the roadmap for anti-censorship and plans for it.
20:02:43 <gaba> the PRD that antonela is working on could be very useful for the gettor part
20:02:54 <kat5> (Though I also included enough background for external people to make sense of things. I hope.)
20:02:56 <gaba> kat5: do you want to say something about this?
20:02:59 <gaba> yes
20:03:27 <gaba> We will need different people reviewing the section that they are doing right now work on and bringing the scope and plan for their work there.
20:03:38 <kat5> Just that I have the structure in place, as well as a bunch of goals that I tool from the roadlist arma1 and gaba made.
20:03:54 <kat5> I would like to fill in specific plans various teams have for completing the work.
20:04:06 <kat5> What gaba said. :-)
20:04:38 <gaba> any question about it? otherwise we move on to the network team
20:04:41 <ahf> cool, i think i have some input about some of the issues we need to address around snowflake for availability of the service (running multiple instances of bridges, etc.)
20:05:45 <gaba> yes, it would be great if you, ahf, can work with kat5 and me on the snowflake part of the report. Right now it is in the same git repo we had for report 1.
20:05:48 * arma1 is around and trying to keep up despite terrible internet connection (too terrible for loading pad e.g.). so, i can answer questions with high latency. :)
20:06:08 <ahf> i'm gonna read the current content tomorrow morning
20:06:15 <gaba> ok
20:06:18 <gaba> moving to the network team.
20:06:19 <ahf> and write an email to kat
20:06:26 <kat5> ahf: great!
20:06:44 <gaba> right now we have only the snowflake and its blockers for deployment in the network team roadmap.
20:06:56 <ahf> yeah
20:07:02 <gaba> and we are going to work on the team's roadmap while in brussels.
20:07:10 <ahf> and maybe help out with the snowflake webextension?
20:07:19 <ahf> i guess it's still in the maybe category
20:07:20 <gaba> I would think we could add bridgedb and talk about other PTs during brussels.
20:07:25 <gaba> yes
20:07:31 <gaba> nickm, any thoughs about it?
20:07:59 <ahf> marionette setup is still on my shoulders i think, i promised GeKo to look into that around christmas
20:08:05 <gaba> cool
20:08:07 <ahf> so we can have an instance u pthe browser team can test
20:08:22 <nickm> gaba: about bridgedb, or what exactly?
20:08:28 <pili> hi, I'm here, sorry I'm a bit late, I was putting the kids to bed and then I forgot about it:)
20:08:42 <nickm> We can take it on if need be: it's not bad code, and it should be fairly maintainable.
20:08:45 <gaba> aobut including bridgedb and other PTs in the roadmap for network team
20:08:57 <gaba> ok
20:09:14 <nickm> "Other PTs" is kinda broad; do you mean developing new PTs, or maintaining the existing set, or something else?
20:09:38 <ahf> we have a task to evaluate some of the reasonably new PT's or come up with a new design, i think?
20:09:48 <gaba> all of that and defining scope and priorities of what we include in the roadmap.
20:09:52 <ahf> the https one, the dns one, and the marionette one i believe
20:09:53 <gaba> yes
20:10:07 <ahf> the dns one might not exist, i can't remember that
20:10:22 <kat5> Which one is the dns one?
20:10:57 <ahf> ticket #15213
20:11:05 <ahf> looks like it doesn't exist yet or the current link to it is 404
20:11:19 <kat5> That's neither on the list nor in the report.
20:11:26 <nickm> evaluate-or-design is stuff we can do.
20:11:52 <ahf> yeah
20:11:54 <gaba> yes
20:11:54 <nickm> And would fit pretty nicely into our skills
20:11:57 <gaba> that is what we have to do
20:12:09 <gaba> mm, I didn't check tickets on PT in track.
20:12:35 <ahf> arma1: you have some knowledge about this section i'm sure. you mentioned a whole list of things when we spoke about this first time
20:13:59 <gaba> ok, anything else network team related?
20:14:27 <ahf> what is our conclusion with the bridgedb part? :-)
20:14:35 <ahf> do we have something we need to do right away, or?
20:14:44 <gaba> not right away, it is a conversation for brussels
20:14:50 <ahf> ack, cool
20:14:53 <gaba> to include in the roadmap
20:15:23 <gaba> metrics team: I spoke with karsten and irl this morning. They can collaborate with people on s19 after march.
20:15:38 <gaba> there are a few tickets - bridgedb related that they can work with others
20:16:03 <gaba> browser team, pili?
20:16:55 <pili> not sure if there's anyone else here from browser team but we can probably start working on the marionette integration in march or whenever ahf is done with his part :)
20:17:00 <pili> whichever comes last
20:17:14 <ahf> cool
20:17:29 <gaba> ok
20:17:38 <ahf> i think in all of this we are missing the "evaluate" marionette part? one part is to run it and get it integrated, but i think there is a thinking/review process that we are missing maybe?
20:18:18 <gaba> yes, this may also go into the brussels discussion for the roadmap, right?
20:18:24 <pili> we're also looking at including #28015 into the roadmap
20:18:24 <ahf> yes
20:18:59 <gaba> ok
20:19:00 <pili> or at least GeKo had indicated to me in the past that this should be one of the easiest of the s19 browser team tasks
20:19:23 <pili> we'll also need antonela for this so it depends on what else she's working on also
20:20:06 * antonela noted
20:20:19 <gaba> ok. UX team
20:21:02 <antonela> worked on snowflake ui for the webextension before christmas, talked with saint a bit about it
20:21:38 <gaba> anything you need there?
20:21:45 <antonela> a developer :)
20:22:15 <gaba> developer for which part?
20:22:42 <antonela> for the web extension part
20:23:37 <Samdney> is there a ticket for this?
20:23:40 <gaba> did you talk with the people from cupcake?
20:23:54 <ahf> antonela: we should take about that in brussels as well i think and try to figure out how much is needed there? also if we want to integrate with cupcake or do something else or?
20:24:01 <antonela> samdney #23888
20:24:05 <arma1> saint is the cupcake person
20:24:09 <gaba> ahh :)
20:24:10 <antonela> gaba, yes sait is the main maintainer
20:24:12 <ahf> i think once the snowflake javascript code is good then doing the UI shim is more easy
20:24:13 <gaba> i was thinking that...
20:24:14 <gaba> yes
20:24:14 <antonela> *saint
20:24:56 <gaba> ok. I'm not totally clear who could be working on that part. Is this somethign the browser team can help with?
20:25:12 <antonela> i tried to hunt devs at the tor browser meeting a few weeks ago
20:25:55 <gaba> mmm
20:25:57 <antonela> no success tho
20:26:14 <gaba> ok. let's check about this after the meeting with pili.
20:26:31 <ahf> if we want to do the UI for ticket #23888 we can do so pretty quickly. if we need to integrate with cupcake i think it's a bigger task
20:26:31 <pili> it's on the roadmap for feb
20:26:40 <pili> not sure who added it to the roadmap though :)
20:27:14 <gaba> ok, roadmap for feb in the browser team?
20:27:18 <gaba> ok
20:27:18 <pili> yup
20:27:21 * Samdney also have experiences with webextension and can maybe assists
20:27:32 <pili> no one is assigned though, so I'll bring it up at the next browser meeting
20:27:45 <gaba> gettor, what is the situation with it right now? pili?
20:27:51 <gaba> thanks pili!
20:28:07 <pili> I want to get it moved to torgit
20:28:09 <gaba> nickm has the reviews for the 2 tickets related to gettor that we have.
20:28:36 <gaba> ok
20:28:42 <pili> I was waiting on a reply from ilv about it but I hear he is super busy so i think we should try to move on without him and just keep him in the loop about what we are doing
20:28:53 <gaba> antonela: related to the PRD on gettor, what do you need?
20:28:55 <pili> hiro: are you ok with this plan also?
20:29:01 <gaba> yes, we need to bring sponsor work into the teams
20:29:01 <hiro> yes I am ok
20:29:14 <hiro> gaba: was the refactor reviewed?
20:29:28 <gaba> let me check which numbers are the tickets that we have
20:29:45 <gaba> do we have a ticket for the refactor review?
20:30:35 <hiro> not that I know of
20:31:01 <gaba> this is one: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/28234
20:31:04 <pili> #28234 and #28091
20:31:06 <antonela> gaba: we should sign together which user needs and user stories we are going to work with, we need to define a timeframe and we should have all the people who will be working on it in the same page about those
20:32:24 <hiro> Personally I'd like to continue where ilv left
20:32:31 <gaba> hiro: nobody is reviewing the refactor but we are reviewing port to python3
20:32:34 <gaba> yes
20:32:54 <gaba> ok, let's make a plan for what antonela is asking us to do
20:33:10 <hiro> I think some of the logic behind gettor and the distribution model is pretty similar to bridgedb especially for some of the twistd task
20:33:12 <gaba> antonela: let's talk outside this meeting and see how to move forward with gettor
20:33:26 <antonela> gaba sure
20:33:37 <hiro> ilv simplify the repo a lot so I think we can implement pretty easily what's missing
20:33:59 <gaba> The issue with gettor is that we need developers and is not clear who is taking it from that perspective. It is not something to get into the network team workload.
20:33:59 <nickm> woo
20:34:31 <hiro> gaba do you mean the review?
20:34:36 <hiro> or the development?
20:35:03 <hiro> because for the development side I have just volunteered
20:35:13 <gaba> ohh!
20:35:15 <gaba> great hiro!
20:35:17 <gaba> development side
20:35:24 <nickm> (that's why I said "woo")
20:35:24 <gaba> sorry I didn't understand that.
20:35:34 <gaba> :))
20:35:42 * gaba happy dance
20:35:43 <gaba> ok
20:36:04 <Samdney> what exactly is the thing with gettor? only the python3 thing or more?
20:36:14 <ahf> hiro: nice!
20:36:16 <ahf> \o/
20:36:33 <hiro> samdney the code base has been stripped :D a lot of previous functionalities need to be re-implemented
20:36:38 <gaba> moving on?
20:36:41 <gaba> community team
20:36:51 <Samdney> ah ok. thanks hiro
20:38:01 <pili> not sure if there's anyone here from community, but we'll try to do this as part of the outreach work
20:38:26 <pili> our only issue is that if we're thinking about china-like scenarios we're not going to find them where we're going :)
20:38:36 * Samdney also belongs to the community team but is not really active there, at the moment.
20:38:52 <pili> hi Samdney :)
20:39:02 <gaba> ok
20:39:12 <kat5> I'm here too, but not part of the outreach efforts.
20:39:21 <ggus> hi, pili
20:39:41 <pili> true... now I'm embarrassed :) hi kat5 and ggus
20:39:49 <gaba> We already talked about team dependencies and we are organizing this with each team.
20:39:49 <kat5> np!
20:40:16 <ggus> i talked briefly this week with a contact from asia, but i really don't know how much work this would demand from community team (see alison's reply to the thread)
20:41:34 <pili> I guess we can try to make a push with the localization angle also
20:41:45 <ggus> for example, https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/28526 many NGOs that we're in touch in global south, it's the first time or very new contact with tor project. asking them to host bridges is like some steps ahead.
20:42:23 <pili> I think kat5 had mentioned she could run with the documentation part at some point also
20:42:30 <gaba> yes, I guess we have different types of organizations in different levels of possible involvemnt with Tor
20:42:59 <kat5> Yep. It's on my list. I don't know how we do the "get some doing it so we can tell how good the doc is" part.
20:43:38 <arma1> i can introduce people from the NGOs to somebody on our side
20:43:44 <arma1> people who want to run the bridges
20:43:53 <arma1> and don't know what to do or why it'll work or how to figure out if it's working
20:43:56 <antonela> ggus, we can talk with technical orgs in colombia to review the doc and have their insights
20:44:01 <pili> we'd need to add it to the list of activities to run with people if we see that they may be interested
20:44:08 <pili> yup, what antonela said also :)
20:44:10 <kat5> Question is who on our side has time to take this on.
20:44:53 <arma1> yep. and if the answer is nobody, then, how come there is nobody at tor whose job is to interact with the NGOs who work towards freedom? :)
20:44:57 <pili> I guess it depends if we're doing it onsite or remotely
20:45:05 <ggus> in many countries that we visited they didn't even have a solid relay community (like >10)
20:45:20 <antonela> yes, there are specific people who can do it but not the majority of course
20:45:21 <ggus> kat5: well, we have a relay advocate person.
20:46:01 <ahf> ggus: would these people benefit in other ways from having access to fast bridges in the countries? do they pay less for national traffic and so on?
20:46:06 <pili> if I could speak with Phoul about adding this to the relay advocacy roadmap for 2019
20:46:27 <pili> no if... don't know where that came from :D
20:47:04 <antonela> we want ngos to run bridges or to distribute them?
20:47:13 <arma1> this isn't really about relay advocacy. hm
20:47:36 <ggus> and what means run bridges (run in their own infra or hosted aorund the world?)
20:47:38 <arma1> antonela: ngos want to help their own people use tor from inside china. they can't rely on random people running bridges because all of those bridges get blocked. so they want to run their own. and have their own people use their bridges.
20:48:05 <arma1> ggus: they could all be on digital ocean as far as i know
20:48:21 <arma1> the model of going to colombia and getting people in colombia to run bridges in colombia is not what this is
20:48:30 <ahf> ah.
20:48:40 <antonela> ngos inside china sharing bridges for china users?
20:48:47 <sukhe> is it also a good idea to ask NGOs to run bridges without helping them at each step of the way and then later providing support for it? (I apologize if I missed something related to this)
20:48:49 <ahf> that sounds a bit scary :-S
20:48:57 <arma1> lantern runs a pile of obfs4 bridges on digital ocean and hetzner, and all of their smarts are on detecting which bridges got blocked and rotating them to a new address
20:48:57 <Samdney> is it legal for a chinese person to run a bridge?
20:49:14 <arma1> sukhe: we're not asking them. they want to do it.
20:49:27 <arma1> sukhe: so yes, helping them and supporting every step is whta this is
20:49:32 <sukhe> arma1: ok
20:49:38 <kat5> sukhe: I think the idea of this ticket is that we'd work with them to provide that support. And improve our docs/recs with their feedback.
20:49:43 <arma1> samdney: yes, but, irrelevant, since the bridges are probably run somewhere else by somebody not in china
20:49:48 <sukhe> kat5: thanks, I  missed the context
20:49:54 <antonela> okey, so this ngo need technical help on setting up the bridges?
20:49:58 * gaba remembers everybody that this channel is logged.
20:50:02 <gaba> reminds*
20:50:13 <kat5> (Thanks gaba)
20:50:22 <arma1> everybody who is still confused, go read #28526
20:50:50 <gaba> ok. Do we have anything else for this meeting? questions, comments?
20:51:42 <gaba> cricri
20:51:55 <hiro> people are reading the ticket :)
20:52:01 <antonela> si
20:52:01 <gaba> hehe :)
20:52:03 <gaba> ok
20:53:09 <ahf> ye
20:53:15 * ahf have nothing else
20:53:40 <nickm> nor I
20:53:40 <gaba> ok, maybe this conversation is one to have between gus, pili, antonela and then we check about it next meeting.
20:53:47 <hiro> question regarding (1) for that ticket. Would it help to have scripts or a way to automate running bridges on certain infra like digital ocean ?
20:53:54 <ahf> are we gonna do these check-ins weekly?
20:53:56 <ggus> hiro: yes!
20:53:58 <ahf> same day, same time?
20:53:58 <hiro> like a pre made image?
20:54:11 <gaba> yes, checkin weekly
20:54:14 <ggus> i think so. but the right person to say this is Phoul, i guess.
20:54:15 <ahf> buenos
20:54:15 <hiro> or there would be different things to consider based on the country?
20:54:16 <gaba> hiro: (1) ?
20:54:28 <hiro> (1) Document for NGOs how to easily run a few private obfs4 bridges. I've seen some guides floating around but nothing both simple and obviously official.
20:54:31 <antonela> hiro: yes, a container? :)
20:54:33 <gaba> ahhh
20:54:39 <hiro> from https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/28526
20:54:53 <ggus> antonela: in digital ocean they have droplets, one click install thing
20:54:54 <arma1> hiro: one option is the container image. another option is that we make "apt-get install tor obfs4proxy" do nearly all of what you need
20:54:57 <gaba> yes, thre are a few tickets about bridgedb deployment
20:55:01 <antonela> ggus ye
20:55:07 <gaba> there is one for debianize bridgedb
20:55:13 <blanu> As a person that runs an NGO that operates obfs4 bridges on Digital Ocean, we would love a pre-made image! Currently we have terraform scripts, but an image is much more convenient.
20:55:16 <arma1> this is not bridgedb
20:55:20 <blanu> A droplet would be ideal.
20:55:24 <gaba> ahh, sorry
20:55:42 <gaba> obfs4 bridges
20:55:45 * Phoul is reading backchat
20:55:46 <gaba> i got confused
20:56:14 <gaba> ok. then we are done for today. thanks everybody!
20:56:19 <pili> hi Phoul, might not actually be something for you after all... unless you're interested! :)
20:56:25 <ahf> isn't DO the company that recently started billing for traffic?
20:56:29 <gaba> #endmeeting