Activists Are Designing Mesh Networks To Deploy During Civil Unrest (vice.com) 59
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: [O]rganizers and programmers with the Mycelium Mesh Project are [...] designing a decentralized, off-grid mesh network for text communications that could be deployed quickly during government-induced blackouts or natural disasters. Mesh networks, a form of intranet distributed across various nodes rather than a central internet provider, have the potential to decrease our collective reliance on telecommunication conglomerates like Spectrum and Verizon. During a civil unrest situation, government operatives could theoretically disconnect established commercial mesh networks by raiding activists' homes and destroying their nodes or super nodes. The Mycelium Mesh Project is addressing this potential weak link by developing a system that could be deployed at a moment's notice in non-locations, such as on abandoned buildings, tree tops, electric boxes and utility poles.
Nodes would be cheap, run independently of the power grid, and could be produced with materials that can be obtained locally. So far, the collective has successfully sent and received text messages across thirteen miles during field testing around Atlanta, Georgia with nodes powered by rechargeable batteries harvested from disposable vapes. [...] The Mycelium Mesh Project is still in its relatively early stages of development. Messages aren't encrypted -- a necessary feature for activists -- and the model isn't ready for long-range use. But developers are hopeful that their open-source model will promote cooperation amongst like-minded coders. "The network that we all use will work pretty much fine in 99.9% of the cases. But then when it doesn't, it's a real big problem," Marlon Kautz, an organizer and developer with the project, told Motherboard. "The authorities' control over our communications infrastructure can just completely determine what is politically possible in a situation where the future is really up for grabs, where people are making a move to change things in a serious and radical way."
"This is anti-capitalist work, which is non-commercial. We are not trying to start a business," Kautz explained. "We're explicitly trying to take advantage of open source type concepts. So not not only do we want the code that we're developing to be open source, but our entire production model will be."
Nodes would be cheap, run independently of the power grid, and could be produced with materials that can be obtained locally. So far, the collective has successfully sent and received text messages across thirteen miles during field testing around Atlanta, Georgia with nodes powered by rechargeable batteries harvested from disposable vapes. [...] The Mycelium Mesh Project is still in its relatively early stages of development. Messages aren't encrypted -- a necessary feature for activists -- and the model isn't ready for long-range use. But developers are hopeful that their open-source model will promote cooperation amongst like-minded coders. "The network that we all use will work pretty much fine in 99.9% of the cases. But then when it doesn't, it's a real big problem," Marlon Kautz, an organizer and developer with the project, told Motherboard. "The authorities' control over our communications infrastructure can just completely determine what is politically possible in a situation where the future is really up for grabs, where people are making a move to change things in a serious and radical way."
"This is anti-capitalist work, which is non-commercial. We are not trying to start a business," Kautz explained. "We're explicitly trying to take advantage of open source type concepts. So not not only do we want the code that we're developing to be open source, but our entire production model will be."
Mesh networks should be the default (Score:4, Interesting)
[Skipping the usual AC brain farts.]
Why don't we use lots of mesh networks with lots of local caching (especially for viral content) to handle most of the traffic without the big servers and big ISPs?
That was a rhetorical question. The obvious answer is because that would reduce the big profits and also make it even harder to control the flow of information.
Limiting it to civil unrest is the wrong way to think about it. The localized mesh/cache network architecture would also be more robust for every abnormal condition. Mostly water problems around here, violent storms, floods, even a big tsunami a while back.
Re: Mesh networks should be the default (Score:2)
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I sort of agree with you, but I also think that modern computer technologies can address your "technical" concerns. I'll focus on your example of retail stores. Do we need one massive "sales" company that eliminates the retail stores completely? At least that seems to be the objective of Amazon, and it's easy to understand why if the primary objective is to make the single largest possible pile of money all in one place. But why not a system with retail stores that can quickly resupply their shelves from a
Re: Mesh networks should be the default (Score:1)
Re: Mesh networks should be the default (Score:1)
because you choose not to.
Thats pretty much the first thing I do whenever I move somewhere new.
Small mesh. (Score:3)
Watches would make a better form for mesh. Since most "civil unrest" happens in a crowd it would be perfect.
Hot mesh. (Score:2)
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You could track down the individual carrying such a device by triangulating the signal their device emits.
So if the mesh is active you don't even need to see their wrists or into their pockets to become suspicious of an individual. I'm afraid that if you're up against a government that is willing to go through some extensive lengths, this is a good way to put a target on your back.
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If you are in a crowd you don't need a mesh to communicate. You can just talk to each other.
If you want to do more than just talk to each other, a mesh network won't be enough. Bottlenecks immediately become a practical problem.
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See, but that would require people to look up from their device.... unpractical...
Haven't seen Iraq of Afghan related tech? (Score:5, Insightful)
They solved this problem about a decade ago in US military with vehicle mounted wide spectrum jammers. If FBI actually wants to take you offline on pretty much any mesh network, they'll take you offline with hardware that already exists and is rapidly deployable.
This is strictly for Fed-approved "activism".
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Are any federal agencies allowed to broadcast jamming signals in the USA? Not that much would happen if the cops were caught doing it.
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"It's for national security".
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And they can be built for about $300US
Re: Haven't seen Iraq of Afghan related tech? (Score:2)
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Fun part is that this is even easier to disrupt. All you need is a few powerful light projectors like flood lights, and just blink them to drown out light emissions from flashlights .
Re: Haven't seen Iraq of Afghan related tech? (Score:1)
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Further to this, none of these activist-programmers has managed to crack the more recent approach developed by the Russians and Chinese. In
Re:Haven't seen Iraq of Afghan related tech? (Score:4, Informative)
It really depends on how the mesh network is constructed. Jamming works only if the jamming signal is stronger than the real signal. If two smartphones are near enough to each other, they will be able to exchange information. A robust mesh network would allow phones to exchange information, cache it, and then pass it on.
The larger problem would seem to be routing. A mesh network could easily "broadcast" information to everyone with the app. However, directed messages are only going to arrive by coincidence, because there is no stable network configuration. Meanwhile, the message would be clogging up the caches on all the devices that don't know that it has already been delivered. Ask Facebook about the importance of a routing protocol :-)
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Keeping a list of 1M devices could take less than 100 MB of space. If phones kept a list of phones near them and shared that once every 10 minutes, and they could see anything within WIFI range (100-300 feet), you could potentially go 10-20 iterations away and have coverage with anyone within a mile or so. As long as they are all running the app and not in a WIFI desert, I could see this working and not causing excessive chatter. The real trick would be to get everyone and their brother to install the same
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Yes, that was the problem in early 2000s, when US came to Iraq and noticed this specific problem. Except that instead of "mesh networks for messaging" it was "mesh networks for triggering mines planted near the road taking out armoured and soft skinned personnel carriers.
At which point US Army identified this as a novel problem and rapidly developed a number of solutions, most successful of which has been vehicle mounted high power multi-spectrum jammers. Novelty came from significant output power, minituar
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Problem with wide spectrum jammers is that they take out emergency services radio too. The cops won't be able to communicate effectively either.
If law enforcement starts using that tech then protesters will use it too. You can get a jammer on AliExpress that will take out everything from cellular to wifi to GPS to police radios for not a lot of money.
Don't think that possession of such a device being a crime will make much difference. These days just protesting is pretty much illegal if the cops decide they
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Hasn't been a problem for at least 15 years. Modern vehicle mounted multi spectrum jammers developed specifically to combat Iraqi insurgency have specific adaptations to allow for soldier radio communications to get through.
And as hardware is completely illegal for civilians to use and must emit to be of any use, finding and eliminating such jammers is going to be hilariously easy for the police. You literally just follow the signal. "Can't hide it, and when it's found it's eliminated".
This is going to fail hard (Score:2)
This solution requires too much hardware to be cheap. Sorry, it's a great hobby project but a non-starter for deployment.
And really, who's going to carry around some random receiver device with them? It's like a pager, but ugly. WTF?
"An off-grid radio network for digital messaging in a region or metro area using LoRa transceivers and ESP32 microcontrollers. The network consists of solar powered relay nodes which are placed in public spaces and high-up locations. And peer nodes which people carry with them,
Re:This is going to fail hard (Score:5, Insightful)
Ideally, a mesh network would allow you to use devices that you already own like laptops and Android phones. If you want to build a mesh network quickly in an emergency, it better damn well work on whatever devices you have on hand at the time. Requiring a special device for access seriously limits your reach, especially that can be easily spotted and confiscated.
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There are a number of issues with it for sure, but some means of making things like this work is good for democracy. There was a similar project maybe a decade or so ago that could work across the ISM bands and IIRC AM or FM bands. It was more shoebox sized, and I think it relied on standard WiFi for node-to-user communication.
Doing it with an ESP32 is cool progress, but you still have the issue of creating a chain of trust for some random communication much like Facebook.
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That's a cool idea but the range sucks. Getting good range out of anything I have on me is going to require additional equipment anyway.
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Under a hundred bucks if you just buy the stuff off the shelf today, and they could be cheaper. Call them forty or fifty dollars for either the relay node or the handheld device. That's not really all that offensive.
Phones as Mesh Nodes (Score:2)
There's really no good reason that phones couldn't act as mesh nodes with the right software. Then if you have enough people in your crowd with the software, everyone will be able to connect to the group WiFi and send messages. Then combine this with some nodes like described that will connect to a wired connection, and then you have real Internet even if they drop the cellular access, but that's optional if everyone is using a point-to-point messaging app.
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There is a very good reason. They are all backdoored.
Ever wonder why cell phones donâ(TM)t talk to (Score:2)
Because the government likes the ability to shut it down if needed.
Shouldn't this topic be on Face Slapp (Score:1)
Isn't this they way of Right Wing nuts ??
Nice idea in theory (Score:2)
Edgy larping by privileged people (Score:1)
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Wouldn't this be insurrectionism and domestic terrorism if literally anyone else besides the people who are doing this were doing it?
No. One group attempted to stop Mike Pence from certifying the electoral college results. Hence the gallows and crowd breaking into a secure building screaming HANG MIKE PENCE. The other group set fire to a local police precinct. Had you been reading other sources of news besides Fox you'd see that most people involved were not radical leftists. https://www.seattletimes.com/n... [seattletimes.com]
I'll see your Birkenstock mesh network... (Score:2)
And raise you with a very cheap to deploy jamming device that a high school student could build.
What about Amateur Radio? (Score:1)
Amateur Radio was setup to provide emergency response communications. There is etiquette built-in to the organizational structure and communications style. It's hard to imagine useful information (and no misleading info) being passed around during civil unrest, without getting swamped with propaganda.
If you want "everyone" to be able to participate in something like this, base it off bluetooth. It already has the ad-hoc comm messaging profiles built-in. Or maybe an alternate Android OS distro would be able
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Development of HSMM-Mesh stopped YEARS ago... there's no reason to believe it can still provide a secure means of communication, and most of the hardware it supports has long since been obsolete and unable to get.
Just EMP the Whole Area (Score:2)
Nobody gets comms. It still won't level the playing field since you are unlikely to be above the law they way they are.
This is already possible with bluetooth on phones (Score:4, Informative)
Use wifi for range? (Score:2)
Can it be done on WiFi? Much longer range.
Sadly, the phone part of a smart phone is locked away. But can it be accessed?
Re:This is already possible with bluetooth on phon (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually a blue-tooth based store and forward type system might be remarkably difficult to jam. When two stations are right next to each other it is very difficult to jam from far away. It is like two people talking into each other's ears at a loud concert. Sure the speakers are way louder than a person. But two people can still talk if they talk right into each others ears. So the messages might be able to pass from nearby device to device in the jamming zone until they get out.
Would Starlink be an option? (Score:2)
And this recent satellite phone offering ...
https://arstechnica.com/scienc... [arstechnica.com]
More info (Score:2)
It looks like they are using ESP32-type boards and communicating over 900-MHz band LoRa, rather than WiFi or Bluetooth (although it has that, too). Here is an image of the hardware from the project's git repo [0xacab.org]. The board [google.com] (or something like it) can be had for about $15. Antenna, LiPo battery, housing,
Software [0xacab.org] is principally embedded C++, mostly from the Fre
Yeah....no. (Score:1)