[Tails-dev] Support meek in Tails

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Author: iry
Date:  
To: tails-dev
New-Topics: Re: [Tails-dev] Support meek in Tails
Subject: [Tails-dev] Support meek in Tails
Hi Tails Developers!

In Tails document, it says:

> Tails allows you to use bridges of the following types:
>
> bridge obfs2 obfs3 obfs4 ScrambleSuit


I am curious about why meek is not available in Tails. My guess is
Tails prefers running meek as a standalone application, which is not
the case so far? https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=76400
7

I am asking this because meek is really important from at least two
aspects:

First, it is the only Tor pluggable transports usable in China.

Just imagine that a user in China has started Tails using a USB/DVD
(not a VM which is not recommended). They can not use obfs4 to
circumvent the Tor censorship. A possible way to get Tails connect to
the Tor network is to download a third-party censorship circumvention
tool through the clearnet and then configure Tor to use that tool. (If
a dependency is required for that software, things get even more
complex). This complexity has prevent users from using Tails in the
recommended way.

Second, a coming feature that allows users to get Tor Bridges from Tor
launcher/anon-connection-wizard relies on it.

isis said in the tickets
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/15967:

> This API won’t be publicly accessible though, it’ll be reachable
> through the API for #22871, and even then it’s only reachable
> through a special meek reflector as part of #16650.
>
> Is anon-connection-wizard what Tails uses now? I’d be happy to
> support Tails as well (but I’d strongly prefer the connection to
> go through the meek reflector).


I am wondering if this is a problem can be solved by sticking to
Tor-launcher without switching to anon-connection-wizard?

Could you please share your insights on the problems? I am looking
forward to a further discussion.

Thank you very much!

Best,
iry