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You know the scene -- all hell is breaking loose. Parliament has been dissolved. The military is being held at bay, for the moment. The "democratically appointed" leader insists he won't step down, but once-small protests are gaining momentum every day. The People have had enough -- they want change and are calling for free elections. Then, clashes -- the protests turn violent. Amidst the tear gas, black smoke and bullets, cell communication is intentionally cut or degraded in an attempt to limit the flow of information from the area. The use of Twitter is almost cliche during such times at this point - we virtually expect it. But Twitter is not without some shortcomings in this use-case. More systemically, we've also seen the service interrupted by host governments. So, what might a system/app look like that was purpose-built to ensure that the voices of the people on the ground COULD NOT be silenced -- regardless of cell service interruptions and IP blocking? Ideas / Useful tech / challenges to consider: - how to ensure info is coming from people in the affected area (versus hashtags where any rear end in a top hat can comment) - Multipeer Connectivity Framework (e.g. device-to-device comms in the absence of outbound internet connectivity) - Caching messages on devices so that, if any one device gained connectivity, it could start pushing out all received messages - Peer-to-peer servers to defeat IP blocking (?) - Use of an event-specific blockchain (? i know very little about this) to record which/when messages have been received by the network It's an interesting problem when you figure whatever the app is, it has to have utility both as a tool to be used on-scene (e.g. tactically) and to share the larger story with the overall world.
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May 29, 2014 07:12
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 06:38 |
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Mikhail Kalashnikov invented this app in 1947.
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May 29, 2014 07:30
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You are looking for a technological solution to a managerial problem.
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May 29, 2014 07:35
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ham radio E: actually, semaphores
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May 29, 2014 08:02
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As long as the ruling power is in a place where they can control ISPs, it's not really possible. On paper, you could have this series of wireless routers that could act as links to each other in a chain of devices that act as access points to a 'private' Internet, but most people don't have the expertise to configure their devices for that, and it'd take a tremendous organizational effort to actually put something like that in place, and it'd probably have to be in place before poo poo hit the fan, and it'd be really slow, even with something like BGP in place because there are going to be hardware bottlenecks and they are going to be brutal. If you had money, you could distribute a series of pre-configured wireless devices that are setup to do this very thing, all connected to some centralized backend, or even better yet, a distributed system (which makes a complex task even more complex). Give one to as many people as possible and hope everyone is close enough that you have something that resembles a robust network. Even then, people aren't going to be able to type 'Twitter.com' into their browser and get to twitter, so we run into a 'end-user complexity' problem as well. Even if you had some private DNS setup, you still need to tell people what to put in an address bar to do things. Realistically, it'd all just be accessible by IP. Ham radio is unironically a pretty good answer. Canine Blues Arooo fucked around with this message at 15:40 on May 29, 2014 |
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May 29, 2014 15:33
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If you have your own wireless box, it can just automatically route you to a homepage. You see this at hotels a lot.
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May 29, 2014 16:09
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Thanks for the answers, everyone. The beauty of Multi-peer Connectivity Framework is that it DOESN'T need outbound internet connectivity (check out the app "FireChat") ... so why not have each device (with an app like FireChat) cache all messages it receives and then, later, if any one of those devices connected to the internet, start uploading all the messages to the rest of the world?
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May 29, 2014 16:22
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tridens posted:Thanks for the answers, everyone. This only works if they actually can have access to the Internet at some time. If a government doesn't want you to have access at all, then you are still SOL.
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May 29, 2014 17:27
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Canine Blues Arooo posted:This only works if they actually can have access to the Internet at some time. If a government doesn't want you to have access at all, then you are still SOL. Obviously... The point was directed at the line of thought that was trying to figure out how to provide internet access to everyone on-scene; I'm just pointing out that THAT (e.g. having everyone connected in real-time) wouldn't be necessary if the system used MCF w/message caching. HAM is probably right on, and would be a great solution to the question of "How does someone 'access the Internet at some time'"? (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMPRNet) tridens fucked around with this message at 17:42 on May 29, 2014 |
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May 29, 2014 17:40
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Radio signals like HAM or Wifi can be triangulated. If I was an oppressive regime, I'd make extensive use of that. Thanks for broadcasting your position, dissidents. (Ham's also pretty easy to jam.)
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May 30, 2014 17:57
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FrozenVent posted:Radio signals like HAM or Wifi can be triangulated. If I was an oppressive regime, I'd make extensive use of that. Thanks for broadcasting your position, dissidents. True, you may want to look into less easily jammed communication methods like the ones described in IETF RFC 1149.
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May 30, 2014 19:24
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My app is called Bottle Full Of Kerosene With A Rag In It.
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May 31, 2014 01:17
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Frozen Horse posted:True, you may want to look into less easily jammed communication methods like the ones described in IETF RFC 1149. Actually jam is very effective at delaying RFC 1149 carriers 
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May 31, 2014 08:27
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Really, the only thing I can think of is having an easy-to-log-onto VPN that routes to a secure server inside a country favorable to the protests.
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May 31, 2014 19:44
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tridens posted:
This is only useful if you are revolting in some third world shithole (in which case don't revolt, it is likely to make poo poo worse). If you try this in a developed country: congratulations you have just informed the intelligence agencies of all your plans, locations and handed them proof with it. Good job. e: Anything low threshold enough to be used by common people is going to be spied on and datamined. You can avoid this if you only want to communicate with people you already trust from before SHTF but not for the kind of "spontaneous organisation" you seem to be going for. NihilismNow fucked around with this message at 20:09 on May 31, 2014 |
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May 31, 2014 20:03
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You could try GNUnet.
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May 31, 2014 23:14
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Clearly the answer is the Onion Network.
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Jun 1, 2014 03:13
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Have you heard of the DEEP WEB OP?
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Jun 1, 2014 03:42
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Guys, this is serious; if the next uprising doesn't have an unblockable app, how will western slacktivists be able to retweet all their stuff to feel like they're helping?
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Jun 1, 2014 04:40
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I disagree that implementing this kind of easily compromised thing is useless, even if the oppressive regime / NSA knows what you're doing, and intercepts your communications, if they are spontaneous organization things the action should be over and done before they can mobilize, or if it's a full on revolutionary thing, the information should get out fairly quickly. The issue however with the idea of this sort of spontaneous communication for organizing is that packet caching then waiting for Internet access is a terrible way to quickly communicate during protest action. You might not be back to Internet-land until you're off the front-line, and then all your information is useless. AMPRNet would be a good option for when the Internet is turned off, but requires a level of sophistication to get it running and a lot of work to keep it from being triangulated on and shut down immediately.
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Jun 1, 2014 05:14
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Paramemetic posted:I disagree that implementing this kind of easily compromised thing is useless, even if the oppressive regime / NSA knows what you're doing, and intercepts your communications, if they are spontaneous organization things the action should be over and done before they can mobilize, or if it's a full on revolutionary thing, the information should get out fairly quickly. The issue however with the idea of this sort of spontaneous communication for organizing is that packet caching then waiting for Internet access is a terrible way to quickly communicate during protest action. You might not be back to Internet-land until you're off the front-line, and then all your information is useless. Even if the opposing intelligence agencies do not have the the resources to collect the ringleaders with black vans they can certainly still mess with your system. Spread misinformation, fear, sow discontent within the various factions. Since by design you (hopefully) will not know who you are communicating with other than some anonymous handle you will also not know who are regime sockpuppets.
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Jun 1, 2014 09:40
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Anything robust enough to resist regime interference likely would require quite a bit of money and expertise to make. Which means the only people interested in making it, and capable of making it would be intelligence agencies interested in toppling regimes they don't like. And you'd be pretty naive to think that they wouldn't install backdoors and/or ways of logging communications to prevent rebellions from turning against them (if they didn't, I'd think that they were stupid).
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Jun 1, 2014 16:27
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NihilismNow posted:This is only useful if you are revolting in some third world shithole (in which case don't revolt, it is likely to make poo poo worse). If you try this in a developed country: congratulations you have just informed the intelligence agencies of all your plans, locations and handed them proof with it. Good job. You incorrectly assume that 'system/app' is meant to be solely a messaging app for tactical, intra-protestor communications (e.g. coordination of plans, etc.). Twitter is what it is b/c it allows the world to listen to (and amplify) what's going on on-the-ground. Such a component (as stated in the opening post) would HAVE to be one of the roles of this as well. I'll leave strictly tactical comms to the already-popular protestor apps such as Zello.
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Jun 1, 2014 16:56
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Ferdinand the Bull posted:Really, the only thing I can think of is having an easy-to-log-onto VPN that routes to a secure server inside a country favorable to the protests. Agree 100%. It seems that the two issues here are: 1) defeating IP blocking and 2) providing some means of continuity-of-service if cell/wifi connections are sporadic (intentionally or otherwise). For #1, VPN is absolutely the answer ... perhaps have a partnership/license with GoldenFrog so to have your app come bundled their VPN tech ... if a user was in an area where it was needed, they'd just turn on VPN and be fine. For #2, I continue to think using the Multipeer Connectivity Framework (e.g. bluetooth communications to form a mesh network) along with some bit torrent like approach to retrieving messages in a swarm makes the most sense. tridens fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Jun 1, 2014 |
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Jun 1, 2014 17:00
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tridens posted:
Twitter has phone numbers you can SMS when they take down internet i believe so this problem is solved then? If you want to get really fancy i suppose you could offer forwarding SMS services after the original twitter SMS numbers gets blocked. Not sure what good outside attention is supposed to be. Hasn't helped much in the revolutions/civil wars of the past few years. Nothing quite so impotent as western indignation when it is not backed up by bombs (or money, or weapons).
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Jun 1, 2014 17:04
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MassaShowtime posted:Have you heard of the DEEP WEB OP? Yes -- and I do think including the machinery to use TOR might have a place. On the flip side of that coin, using that tech would probably be more relevant if the app was for fixed-broadcasting locations and/or sensitive, tactical planning comms ... which, as I just pointed out to another user, isn't really the idea here.
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Jun 1, 2014 17:07
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NihilismNow posted:Not sure what good outside attention is supposed to be. Hasn't helped much in the revolutions/civil wars of the past few years. Nothing quite so impotent as western indignation when it is not backed up by bombs (or money, or weapons). Touché there. I would say that one failing of Twitter is that it makes discovery of newsworthy events (short of said event trending amongst the incredible amount of senseless social chatter) very difficult. But, you're right -- even with NBC making an occasional report about massive explosions in Syria and outright invasion of Crimea, doesn't seem to do much sometimes.
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Jun 1, 2014 17:10
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It's also important to remember that countries around the world have been taking notes- one of the big reasons social media was so useful was that the use of it in protests was fairly new and the governments were caught offguard. Probably won't be the case in the future.tridens posted:Touché there. I would say that one failing of Twitter is that it makes discovery of newsworthy events (short of said event trending amongst the incredible amount of senseless social chatter) very difficult. But, you're right -- even with NBC making an occasional report about massive explosions in Syria and outright invasion of Crimea, doesn't seem to do much sometimes. The problem is that countries react due to the interests of those in power- not because of a youtube.
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Jun 1, 2014 18:37
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tridens posted:Twitter is what it is b/c it allows the world to listen to (and amplify) what's going on on-the-ground. Such a component (as stated in the opening post) would HAVE to be one of the roles of this as well. I'll leave strictly tactical comms to the already-popular protestor apps such as Zello. FrozenVent posted:Guys, this is serious; if the next uprising doesn't have an unblockable app, how will western slacktivists be able to retweet all their stuff to feel like they're helping? Called it.
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Jun 1, 2014 18:57
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You need to go back to the first 2 responses. There is a reason broadcast media is the first target in civil unrest.
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Jun 2, 2014 12:19
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This might do ... esp the comment about coming bundled with VPN http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/11/bittorrent-experiments-with-decentralized-private-chat-service/
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Jun 12, 2014 00:04
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 06:38 |
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Try gleaming the cube
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Jun 12, 2014 03:28
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