In the context of the project to support users in target country, project 146, this milestone will track all the work to improve the strength and scalability of existing pluggable transports like Snowflake. The following is the text in the Objective 3 of the project:

To achieve this Objective, we must improve the strength and scalability of existing pluggable transports like Snowflake. Additionally, we must advance the ability of Tor tools to use other pluggable transports and invest in the deployment of new, research-based mechanisms to advance in the censorship arms race.

Activities to accomplish this milestone:

• O3.1 Improve Snowflake’s defenses and infrastructure.
• O3.2, Setup staging servers and CI infrastructure for Snowflake.
• O3.3, Improve standalone Snowflake packages so that they are easier to install with less technical expertise.
• O3.4 Advocate for third-party projects to add the ability to run Snowflake proxies into their products.
• O3.5 Maintain and update the IPtProxy Library.
• O3.6 Integrate new emerging pluggable transports into IPtProxy and Tor-enabled mobile apps.
• O3.7 Deploy new mobile-focused infrastructure for Tor bridges and pluggable transports

Expected outputs:

• Defense system for enumeration attacks against Tor Snowflake.
• Staging servers and CI infrastructure for Snowflake.
• Standalone Snowflake packages.
• Third-party implementations of the ability to run Snowflake proxies.
• Updated pluggable transport and circumvention API support.
• Updated version of IPtProxy.
• As applicable, new emerging pluggable transport support within IPtProxy.
• Orbot infrastructure for bridges and pluggable transports.
• Additional obfs4 bridges.

Indicators we are tracking for this milestone:

• Number of USG-supported tools (desktop clients or mobile apps but not websites) developed or improved and released for public use. The target is 8.
• Number of beneficiaries of USG-supported tool. Number of new downloads per quarter for Orbot, TB for Android and Tor VPN. Target is 20% increase in target country.
• Number of active users of USG-supported tools. Count of number of average monthly unique active users of tools (desktop clients or mobile apps, not websites). Target is 25% increase in average monthly users from target country.
• Number of third-party applications that we have engaged with our Snowflake proxy advocacy plan, as outlined in the project narrative. Target is 4.
• Number of Snowflake proxies. Target is a 20% increase in the average number of Snowflake proxies available.