January 20 2022 GM - Revision history

Iffadmin: /* Notes */

2022-01-20T15:01:06Z

Notes

← Older revision		Revision as of 15:01, 20 January 2022
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	== Notes ==		== Notes ==

	''~~Notes will~~ be ~~posted here~~''		=== Community Updates ===
			* [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/19/pakistan-woman-aneeqa-ateeq-sentenced-to-death-blasphemous-whatsapp-messages Terrible news from Pakistan], the complainant intentionally dragged her into a religious discussion on Whatsapp so he could collect evidence & take “revenge” after she refused to be friendly with him. Under Pakistan’s draconian cybercrime & blasphemy laws she was sentenced to death.

			=== Topic of Discussion: Pluggable Transports Monthly Meetup ===

			* Russia has started blocking the Tor network. This [https://ntc.party/t/ooni-reports-of-tor-blocking-in-certain-isps-since-2021-12-01/1477 post] gives a good overview of the situation.
			* People were able to circumvent censorship in Kazakhstan by using different network ports. This is an [https://ntc.party/t/network-shutdown-all-around-kazakhstan/1601 overview post] that describes the situation.

			'''How would you describe the current most urgent internet censorship issues in the EU? Where and how is internet censorship taking place?'''

			* In the case of Russia, that was first discovered, I believe, by the Tor support helpdesk suddenly receiving lots of requests from Russia, then corroborating with OONI measurements.
			* For Kazakhstan, the community was made aware of it by a post on ntc.party, though the phenomenon was quickly noticed elsewhere and reported on.
			* In both cases, the forums became a focus of debugging and cooperation, which was important.
			* Again, this coordination happened openly and that's why people were able to jump in and help.
			* Sadly, pretty much every country in the EU deploys some kind of censorship, from blocking of gambling, by sharing websites, political, controversial and other categories of websites. Many times it is hard to find out what is being blocked. A number of countries are publishing blocklists but they do not include all websites. You may have a look at Spain that [https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3447535.3462638 blocks/blocked many websites].

			'''How activists from countries experiencing censorship/internet disruptions get in touch with the community to ask for support:'''
			* Starting a post at [https://ntc.party/ NTC]
			* Tor community support and chat channels
			* [https://ooni.org OONI] chat channels
			* Internews' [https://internews.org/resource/optimashutdownworkflow OPTIMA project] is also working to support the activist->anti-censorship feedback loop in partnership with OONI and others.

			'''In which countries in the world are there legislations prohibiting the use of PTs?'''

			* PTs specifically are rarely targeted, but a lot of countries have broader laws against any encrypting proxy (to cover VPNs, tor, psiphon, etc - with or without PTs), and some countries also have laws on the books outright banning encryption (hi Belarus!), which also theoretically would ban httpS traffic.
			* [https://www.gp-digital.org/world-map-of-encryption/ GP Digital] tracks crypto laws, [https://cyrilla.org/ Cyrilla] is broader on more digital rights laws.
			* There are some resources by VPN companies like [https://www.top10vpn.com/what-is-a-vpn/are-vpns-legal/ Top 10 VPN] and [https://www.comparitech.com/vpn/where-are-vpns-legal-banned/ Comparitech] which give some baselines, but I'd personally double check (given their incentive is to sell VPNs)

			'''Can censorship authorities outmanoeuvre pluggable transports?'''

			* Absolutely, and we see this not infrequently in China, Iran, Russia, etc. - but the anti-censorship community is incredibly responsive and usually gets back around and re-opens options
			* Lots of attacks are simply enumerating PT bridges and blocking them at the IP level, this is why many bridgets and a diversity of bridges are super helpful

			'''Is there a reason the Snowflake "concept" couldn't be executed with obfs4 to avoid this problem?'''
			* It's because the proxies are browser-based, and browsers are restricted in what kinds of protocols they may use. You cannot just make an obfs4 TCP connection from a browser, for example. The browser proxies use WebRTC to the client and WebSocket to the bridge.
			* uProxy did have a model where they obfuscated their network traffic (using e.g. FTE), but in order to make that possible they had a special two-part browser extension. Actually, come to think of it, browser extensions may be less constrained in their network connections, but I'm not sure to what degree.
			* The other limitation is NAT traversal; that is something that is built into WebRTC and its UDP-based protocols, but not so easy to do with TCP-based protocols.
			* TCP --->UDP--->TCP is possible. You basically need to encapsulate the TCP packet with header into the UDP payload.
			* In fact snowflake (and in fact WebRTC itself) embeds a TCP-like reliable stream inside a UDP carrier. But the proxy--client link generally has to be UDP-based at the outside layer, for NAT purposes.

Iffadmin at 08:53, 18 January 2022

2022-01-18T08:53:42Z

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 |}
-Glitter Meetup is the weekly town hall of the Internet Freedom community at the IFF Square on the IFF Mattermost, at 9am EST / 2pm UTC. Do you need an invite? Learn how to get one [[IFF Mattermost|here]].
+Glitter Meetup is the weekly town hall of the Internet Freedom community at the IFF Square on the IFF Mattermost, at 9am EST / 1pm UTC. Do you need an invite? Learn how to get one [[IFF Mattermost|here]].
 == Notes ==
-Come back here after the event for notes.
+''Notes will be posted here''

Iffadmin: Created page with "NOTOC {|class="wikitable" style="float:right; margin-left: 10px; width: 20%; background-color:#A9D743;" | '''Glitter Meetups''' * Glitter Meetup|What are Glitter Meetu..."

2022-01-17T08:57:43Z

Created page with "__NOTOC__ {|class="wikitable" style="float:right; margin-left: 10px; width: 20%; background-color:#A9D743;" | '''Glitter Meetups''' * Glitter Meetup|What are Glitter Meetu..."

New page

__NOTOC__
{|class="wikitable" style="float:right; margin-left: 10px; width: 20%; background-color:#A9D743;"

| '''Glitter Meetups'''
* [[Glitter Meetup|What are Glitter Meetups]]
* [[Community Updates|Notes from Past Glitter Meetups]]
* [[Calendar of Events|Virtual Events Calendar]]
* [[IFF Mattermost|Join the IFF Mattermost]]
|}

Glitter Meetup is the weekly town hall of the Internet Freedom community at the IFF Square on the IFF Mattermost, at 9am EST / 2pm UTC. Do you need an invite? Learn how to get one [[IFF Mattermost|here]].

== Notes ==

Come back here after the event for notes.

January 20 2022 GM - Revision history

Iffadmin: /* Notes */

Iffadmin at 08:53, 18 January 2022

Iffadmin: Created page with "__NOTOC__ {|class="wikitable" style="float:right; margin-left: 10px; width: 20%; background-color:#A9D743;" | '''Glitter Meetups''' * Glitter Meetup|What are Glitter Meetu..."

Iffadmin: Created page with "NOTOC {|class="wikitable" style="float:right; margin-left: 10px; width: 20%; background-color:#A9D743;" | '''Glitter Meetups''' * Glitter Meetup|What are Glitter Meetu..."