15:59:06 <itchyonion> #startmeeting tor anti-censorship meeting
15:59:06 <MeetBot> Meeting started Thu Dec 15 15:59:06 2022 UTC.  The chair is itchyonion. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot.
15:59:06 <MeetBot> Useful Commands: #action #agreed #help #info #idea #link #topic.
15:59:06 <itchyonion> here is our meeting pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-anti-censorship-keep
15:59:06 <itchyonion> feel free to add what you've been working on and put items on the agenda
15:59:16 <meskio> hello
15:59:24 <itchyonion> hello
16:00:56 <meskio> it looks like we don't have much to discuss today
16:01:28 <meskio> I guess are all looking for the new years break :)
16:01:35 <itchyonion> hehe looks like it
16:02:37 <shelikhoo> yes!
16:02:46 <shelikhoo> I am looking forward to it as well
16:02:52 <meskio> a reminder: we'll have another meeting next week, but after that we have two weeks of break for new years without meetings
16:02:52 <itchyonion> I think this is the last weekly meeting of the year
16:03:12 <meskio> me too, I'm having a hard time to finish everything I want to finish so I can properly rest over the break
16:03:30 <itchyonion> oh i thought we don't have it next week.
16:03:37 <meskio> itchyonion: no, next week is still going
16:03:42 <itchyonion> ok, good to know
16:04:04 <meskio> but I expect most people to don't be around anymore, so might be very quiet meeting
16:04:37 <shelikhoo> yes, I will be on my vacation...
16:04:48 <shelikhoo> (should it proceed as planned)
16:05:09 <itchyonion> Enjoy your time off!
16:05:09 <meskio> :)
16:05:16 <shelikhoo> yes! thanks!
16:05:17 <itchyonion> Should we call it done?
16:05:36 <ggus> hello o/
16:05:40 <shelikhoo> hi~
16:05:42 <itchyonion> hello
16:06:04 <itchyonion> ah actually I'm wondering what's the status on the Iran VPS?
16:06:19 <ggus> itchyonion: it should be back online
16:06:20 <meskio> I think is back, but haven't checked
16:06:22 <itchyonion> Is there any update since Tuesday?
16:06:35 <itchyonion> ok cool
16:06:36 <cece[m]> hi everyone
16:06:43 <meskio> hello cece[m]
16:06:46 <itchyonion> hello
16:06:48 <ggus> hackerncoder: around?
16:07:04 <meskio> everybody: cece[m] is the outreachy intern, working on gettor, I mentioned last week
16:07:13 <ggus> welcome, cece[m]!
16:07:38 <hackerncoder> Yes hi
16:07:55 <meskio> cece[m]: we keep notes of the meeting here: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-anti-censorship-keep
16:08:11 <meskio> but today is pretty calm, everybody is looking for the holidays :D
16:08:20 <cece[m]> thank you very much 🙂
16:08:46 <ggus> meskio: shelikhoo: do you know what's the status of snowflake test on logcollector? hackerncoder was checking and it seems there was some issue in the russian vantage point?
16:08:47 <shelikhoo> oh no... iran vps's connection to cloudflare is not working i/o timeout
16:09:13 <cece[m]> meskio: same here
16:09:14 <shelikhoo> I think it is the iran one that is having issue
16:09:18 <meskio> shelikhoo: maybe cloudflare is censored in Iran :P
16:09:38 <shelikhoo> and snowflake in russia is down as well
16:09:41 <shelikhoo> oooo
16:10:14 <shelikhoo> https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/connectivity-measurement/bridgestatus/-/blob/dcd157e608be92294a1bc3dd51c9bdbf444edb0f/recentResult_russia
16:11:12 <meskio> I was looking at metrics.tpo and there doesn't seem to be much users of snowflake in russia
16:11:18 <meskio> or maybe 0
16:11:38 <meskio> but the number of tor users haven't gone down at all
16:11:59 <meskio> so everybody have their own way to find bridges
16:12:29 <meskio> circumvention settings is recommending snowflake in russia, I wonder if we should change that
16:12:47 <shelikhoo> yes, but we should try to find a way to fix this in the near future
16:12:59 <shelikhoo> before they find a way to block obfs4...
16:13:07 <ggus> i think that during the protests in iran, many users in russia migrated from snowflake to obsf4, because the bridge was too overloaded/slow
16:13:35 <ggus> meskio: +1
16:14:05 <meskio> cool, I'll make the change
16:14:18 <itchyonion> What does the second column (number) represent in the bridgestatus lines? Success rate?
16:14:30 <meskio> yes, we should investigate if snowflake is blocked in russia, but not sure if we can realistically do that before january
16:14:33 <shelikhoo> it is bootstrap percentage
16:14:42 <itchyonion> ah ok
16:14:46 <shelikhoo> should be 100 when tor works
16:16:38 <meskio> BTW, there are still more than double of users connecting to Tor directly than over a bridge
16:16:50 <meskio> ~100k direct connections, ~40k bridges, ...
16:16:56 <meskio> I mean in russia
16:18:05 <shelikhoo> yes. I think one of the reason for that they only block tor on residential network
16:18:14 <shelikhoo> not on IDC network
16:18:18 <meskio> yep
16:18:23 <ggus> it depends on where they deployed tspu
16:19:36 <ggus> fyi: today the tor project lost the appeal to 'unblock tor' in russia. rks lawyers will appeal again: https://roskomsvoboda.org/post/tor-ne-proshel-apelliatsiyu/ (in RU)
16:21:05 <meskio> does unblock tor mean the website?
16:21:22 <meskio> or are did we manage to ask legally to unblock the tor network?
16:23:39 <meskio> ggus: -^?
16:24:43 <ggus> meskio: we didn't manage to ask legally to unblock the tor network because they never confirmed doing that. the process is about tor website and app stores
16:26:00 <ggus> sooo gettor may get more russian users in the nearby future
16:26:11 <shelikhoo> I think this is mostly a
16:26:19 <meskio> uff, I see
16:26:37 <meskio> the snowflake block might be https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/censorship-analysis/-/issues/40030
16:26:56 <shelikhoo> I think this is mostly a symbolic legal flight?
16:27:12 <shelikhoo> but it should worth it
16:28:48 <meskio> +1
16:28:56 <itchyonion> Anything else on this topic?
16:29:08 <ggus> meskio: shelikhoo: i think i will close this ticket: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/support/-/issues/40050 and then we can open a new again about the snowflake block in russia? or should we keep it open until we defeat tor censorship in russia like a historical artifact? :D
16:30:16 <shelikhoo> I think we could add the date or a year to ticket and create a ticket for next round of censorship
16:30:30 <meskio> +1
16:30:31 <ggus> i like this idea
16:31:09 <shelikhoo> otherwise someone would need to read a lot of info just to find the censorship event that person actually wants to know
16:31:56 <ggus> i will add the roskomsvoboda link and then i will close it
16:33:35 <shelikhoo> yes.
16:33:46 <meskio> I think we can continue this investigation in censorship-analyssis#40030
16:34:24 <meskio> this all on this topic for me
16:34:37 <shelikhoo> EOF for me
16:34:59 <itchyonion> Anything else we want to discuss today?
16:35:05 <meskio> not from me
16:35:59 <ggus> not from me
16:36:16 <hackerncoder> not from me
16:37:15 <itchyonion> #endmeeting