16:01:19 <hellais> #startmeeting OONI gathering 2016-10-24
16:01:19 <MeetBot> Meeting started Mon Oct 24 16:01:19 2016 UTC.  The chair is hellais. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot.
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16:01:21 <hellais> ahoy
16:03:04 <agrabeli> hellos
16:03:11 <anadahz> hi
16:04:01 <darkk> hi
16:04:17 <nuke_> Hi!
16:05:36 <hellais> ok so let's get started with this
16:05:58 <hellais> #topic Talk about potentially calling NetProbe simply “ooniprobe” prior to release
16:06:33 <hellais> so I was thinking a bit about this and also in light of discussions had with people at the OTF summit I thought I would bring this up now before we do the first "official" public release
16:06:50 <hellais> I get the impression OONI is in a way at this point a fairly strong "brand"
16:07:05 <hellais> in the sense that people recognize is and have a general understanding of what it does
16:07:30 <hellais> our original reasoning behind not using ooniprobe in the name of the android/ios version of it was that we thought it could lead to people getting into trouble for using ooniprobe
16:08:04 <hellais> but I think that in light of the fact that there is an informed consent procedure that talks about OONI everywhere and in light of the fact that it's fairly trivial for somebody to link back netprobe to ooniprobe
16:08:21 <hellais> it doesn't really make sense to confuse people more with another name of a product to remember
16:08:34 <hellais> since in the end it's the same thing, but just for mobile devices
16:08:37 <hellais> thoughts?
16:09:30 <nuke_> 99% agree. 1% don't. that net explain what the app does maybe in this case would be useful to explain it better in the description
16:10:58 <darkk> Reminds me of Firefox and Chrome being the Web Browsers... And Internet Explorer having meaningful readable name :-)
16:11:34 <hellais> lol
16:11:35 <darkk> I mean, NetProbe may be another traceroute/ping/wi-fi channels tool as well
16:12:42 <hellais> I think that if we were to be of the "meaningful name" camp we would have picked a name that is actually more meaningful than "NetProbe". I don't think probe really tells much to most non native english speakers and the net in it could imply sort of anything
16:13:31 <agrabeli> I vote for netprobe being renamed to ooniprobe
16:13:50 <agrabeli> I agree that ooniprobe is a brand, and having another name for its mobile version is too confusing
16:13:53 <nuke_> Don't forget that an app name can be longer up to 255 (maybe Apple is less)
16:14:03 <hellais> In the end I think that if we come out with an app that is called ooniprobe we will end up getting more users from the ones that already know ooniprobe, rather than getting users that don't know ooniprobe and just stumble upon netprobe and think it's useful to them due to it's name
16:14:04 <darkk> also, we may reuse nice octopus with the torch for the icon in case of "ooni" brand reuse :)
16:14:10 <agrabeli> also, as pointed out by hellais, the documentation on netprobe talks about OONI anyway
16:14:20 <nuke_> There are a lot of apps which uses the form "name - short description"
16:15:08 <hellais> nuke_: yeah, we can use that extra text wisely to add some more context to the app name and be even more explicit
16:15:39 <hellais> ooniprobe - discover your network
16:15:48 <darkk> that's `nmap`
16:15:51 <agrabeli> When editing the informed consent documentation for NetProbe, I found it quite "disturbing" that we're saying: NetProbe runs ooniprobe tests which are hosted by OONI, which is hosted by TPI :p
16:16:13 <hellais> ooniprobe - detect signs of internet censorship (maybe too explicit and could get people in trouble)
16:16:14 <sbs_> too much indirection?
16:16:19 <agrabeli> Check NetProbe tests descriptions here --- ah! they're ooniprobe tests :p
16:16:39 <agrabeli> sbs_: ya
16:16:57 <darkk> I love `network interference` working as it may be non-censorship. ISP Ad injection is not censorship, but it annoys a lot.
16:17:03 <darkk> *wording
16:17:16 <darkk> but it's probably too technical
16:17:29 <sbs_> darkk: I wonder exactly that
16:18:43 <hellais> anyways let's not get too much into the weeds of this. I think we can defer to some other time what we put after $SOFTWARE_NAME
16:18:55 <darkk> +1
16:19:09 <anadahz> I guess in a similar way that orbot is not named tor we could also use a different app name if one is more applicable.
16:19:22 <hellais> but if we are all in agreement I would say we at least aim to do s/netprobe/ooniprobe/ pre-release
16:19:23 <anadahz> I will prefer though to use ooniprobe
16:19:49 <hellais> anadahz: I think orbot is named that way mainly due to trademark issues
16:20:01 <yulax> you *could* run debian in a chroot with the "lil debi" app on fdroid. then run ooni from there.
16:20:09 <sbs_> hellais: I actually like netprobe but have not read the beginning of the discussion yet
16:20:25 <hellais> sbs_: ah yeah right, let me give you a paste of it.
16:20:44 <nuke_> So should I rename in ooniprobe (all lowercase)?
16:20:48 <sbs_> hellais: I am home actually just now
16:21:08 <sbs_> will read the log in 3..2..1..
16:21:15 <hellais> sbs_: https://paste.debian.net/889344/
16:21:18 <hellais> ah
16:21:43 <sbs_> hellais: stories of delayed trains 😁
16:21:48 <hellais> yulax: yeah that is actually a good idea. I haven't tried installing ooniprobe with lil deb on android tbh. I can imagine the scapy depedencies creating some problems.
16:22:21 <darkk> BTW, may netprobe be confused with some other netprobe? Anything else like https://resources.itrsgroup.com/Netprobe/general/netprobe_user_guide.html
16:23:06 <darkk> Sorry. I've been speaking about ping/traceroute... I have not seen https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=georgios.chapsalis.netprobe&hl=en :)
16:23:08 <yulax> hellais: depndencies are not a problem since it is a debian image, essentially its ovn install
16:23:15 <agrabeli> darkk: haha good point
16:24:09 <darkk> whoa, another RPi-based netprobe http://www.netprobes.info/
16:25:20 <hellais> lol
16:25:27 * sbs at home (hello!)
16:26:25 <agrabeli> darkk: wow lol
16:28:32 <hellais> for the sake of time I would say we move onto the next topic and maybe we can address a final the decision towards the end of the meeting after everybody has caught up to speed on this.
16:28:44 <hellais> #topic Discuss this weeks' priorities
16:28:55 <sbs> for the records, I've read the whole discussion on the rename now and I understand the rationale of it
16:29:13 <sbs> the rename is probably a move that reduces the energy
16:29:53 <hellais> sbs: great! So it seems like we have consensus on this. rename it is!
16:30:38 <hellais> I guess from the dev front the priorities for this week are mainly around getting some skeleton of a airflow based pipeline going and some sort of API for the measurement interface.
16:31:02 <hellais> with darkk we discussed some of these. I don't know how much of this should be discussed in here.
16:31:39 <hellais> does somebody not have clear what their priorities should be and would like to discuss them here publicly?
16:32:34 * darkk thinks that the pad should have authorship marks next time
16:33:13 <hellais> darkk: yeah +1 on authors next to items
16:34:11 <darkk> I suspect anadahz of being the author of that line due to metadata I have. (highlights anadahz)
16:34:53 <anadahz> darkk: which?
16:34:56 <agrabeli> darkk: I was the author of the 2nd item - I added it since an email was sent today asking what this weeks' priorities were
16:35:19 <agrabeli> darkk: and thought that this could be an opportunity for any clarification needed
16:36:55 <darkk> anadahz: Sorry, I thought of email with `Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2016 05:28:00 +0000` and have not imagined that level of indirection
16:37:31 <agrabeli> anyhow, if no one wants to discuss this weeks' priorities now/here, we could proceed to the next item of the agenda
16:39:24 <hellais> I guess we can do this off-the-record later perhaps
16:39:28 <hellais> #topic Coordination of EG report publishing -- darkk@
16:39:47 <darkk> is there any clarity regarding coordination of the report release between OONI, TorProject & Anonymous Egyptian Media (I'm unsure if I can name it, probably agrabeli has the details) ?
16:41:29 <agrabeli> darkk: I don't think we'll be pursuing a media strategy from the Tor Project, if that's what you mean
16:41:49 <agrabeli> darkk: We'll be co-publishing with the Egyptian media org on the same day
16:42:05 <darkk> Speaking of TorProject I meant publishing @ blogs.tpo
16:42:55 <darkk> agrabeli: will you be coordinating the emission? Should me or anadahz help you? How?
16:43:32 <agrabeli> darkk: I was recently introduced to a media org (not sure though if this is the same media org that would be co-publishing), but I haven't heard back from them yet
16:43:42 <anadahz> agrabeli: I think it makes sense to coordinate with blogs.tpo since the report mentions the Tor blockage in Oct.
16:44:09 <agrabeli> darkk: It would be great if you and/or anadahz could help ensure that it's cross-posted on the same day, though we can all coordinate on this internally (I have relevant contacts)
16:44:23 <agrabeli> anadahz: Are we sure that Tor was blocked?
16:44:43 <darkk> metrics data confirm users' reports
16:44:53 <hellais> I am a bit skeptical of whether or not we have evidence of tor blocking
16:45:18 <agrabeli> anadahz: I've been editing the report, and it looks like we are mostly relying on metrics data. It might have been the case that tor usage was decreased in the cases that relays were dependent on digitalocean that was throttled
16:45:25 <darkk> IMHO, simple network outage will not raise the number of bridge users
16:45:26 <hellais> I think what is more likely happening is that a bunch of tor relays (including a lot of guards) are running on digitalocean due to their free unmetered bandwidth and therefore blocking digital ocean leads to a drop in tor users
16:46:02 <hellais> what could have happenned is that DA was blocked in egypt (or throttled or whatever) a bunch of users noticed it and switched to using bridges.
16:46:03 <darkk> DigitalOcean case was sort-of closed on 1st of September and IMHO it's different one
16:46:24 <anadahz> hellais: agrabeli the tor blockage didn't happened on the time range wthn DigitalOcean connections were throttled.
16:46:58 <hellais> I don't think it's enough to look at tor metrics data (that also just show a drop in users) to imply that blocking is for sure happening.
16:48:14 <hellais> To my knowledge we have no strong evidence of tor blocking happening a part from the drop in users from metrics.
16:48:31 <darkk> we can probably try to rule out DigitalOcean hypothesis using OONI data, but I'm unsure if we have explicit measurements regarding tor being blocked
16:49:20 <hellais> I think it's fine to mention this in the blog post as something unusual that has happenned, but without making any strong claim of it being a case of blocking of tor, because we don't reallt know
16:49:39 <anadahz> If we are in doubt we should not include the tor blockage.
16:49:52 <anadahz> hellais: agree
16:51:07 <agrabeli> another question re the egypt report: It looks like we only have traffic samples showing HTTPS throttling. In this case, we drop all mention to SSH and OpenVPN throttling, right?
16:55:21 <anadahz> yes if we don't have PCAPs or other evidence of SSH, OpenVPN throttling we should not make a strong mention of it.
16:56:23 <anadahz> darkk: I recall that we had some PCAPs, do you think that are not relevant/showing OpenVPN throttling?
16:56:37 <darkk> OpenVPN is probably OK to drop as there were known measurements mistakes (measurement "protocol" worth amending)
16:57:16 <darkk> anadahz: I'll check, but there were some VPN-over-VPN mistakes made and I'm unsure if I'll be able to sort those things out.
16:58:06 <darkk> I'll double check existing pcaps after the meeting, but I don't remember anything besides plaintext OpenVPN logs & syslog citations
16:58:13 <hellais> darkk: I would say we don't invest any more time into this report.
16:58:29 <hellais> I think what we have is good for a ooni blog post and we should wrap this up and publish it there
17:01:21 * darkk multitasked to the archive for a couple of minutes
17:01:34 <darkk> yep we have only syslogs citations regarding OpenVPN
17:01:55 <hellais> we have a lot of stuff on our plate now as we are approaching the end of the month and we should focus on those. When we will have more time available we can do a more in depth analysis of egypt (and maybe when we also have more probes deployed there and an on the ground partner)
17:03:55 <anadahz> hellais: darkk agreed let's not spend more time on this
17:04:12 <agrabeli> anadahz: darkk : so to answer your initial questions: I'm editing the report and will be done with the edits tonight. We can do a pull request tomorrow and aim to publish by the end of the week. We can coordinate with Egyptians for the specific publication date, once we have agreed upon that internally.
17:04:15 <darkk> lack of good SSH data is another missing thing. Do we have a checklist for alike stuff? If we don't, it makes some sense to write it down and discuss while in Berlin.
17:05:35 <darkk> I mean, yeah, all these measurements should eventually land into the ooniprobe itself, so the code will be the checklist.
17:05:35 <anadahz> agrabeli: I suggest we do a pull request of the report some hours before the publication in the website.
17:05:47 <agrabeli> anadahz: yep
17:07:43 <darkk> hellais: do you consider valuable mentioning to blogs.tpo team that we've looked at the metrics data a bit and let them decide if it is worth publishing there? Some people at #tor were actually asking about tor being block in the Egypt on the 2nd of October
17:08:33 <hellais> darkk: what more can we provide with tor people that is not already documented in the trac ticket and can be infered from looking at tor metrics data?
17:09:08 <darkk> good question. yeah, nothing :)
17:09:46 <hellais> heh
17:10:02 <hellais> well if we get some better Tor tests we may be able to collect some good data about this in the future.
17:10:07 <darkk> well, there is even no trac ticket :)
17:10:54 <hellais> yeah my bad I was confusing it with this ticket: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/20348
17:12:02 <hellais> (If anything a good thing to do would be to summarise these findings similarly to the above ticket on trac)
17:12:12 <hellais> do we have anything else to discuss before we adjourn?
17:15:14 <hellais> I shall take that as a no? :^)
17:15:34 <hellais> ok well thank you all for attending. Have fun!
17:15:37 <hellais> #endmeeting