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Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?

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Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?

#71
Berty Tech is working on an offline first protocol, to provide privacy, censorship resistance with an resilient mesh network. Full open source of course, by a dedicated NGO based in France. Using BLE, gomobile, ipfs...

Feel free to join the community, and contribute, www.berty.tech https://github.com/berty

Cheers peers!

Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?

#72
How about [1] "Power-line Networking". It's basically the act of using A/C power-lines for a computer network.

They work okay in home networks, but due to the noise of the active A/C power-line they don't scale that far.

Perhaps they could work in long distances at low bit-rates with high redundancy error-correction to account for the noise. Sending email and text messages...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-line_communication

Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?

#73
There is no plausible solution for multitude of reasons listed in other comments.

What I suggest, perhaps as last ditch effort, is look in the opposite direction: attacking the remaining Beltelecom and mobile layer2/3 connectivity in the country.

The only reason the limited networking is still up and running is not some residual generosity of the regime. It is because traditional PSTN and long range special comms services are all routed via IP trunking these days. Disrupting these will also disrupt operations level communication between KGB, police and presidential security units that are squashing the protests.

(Жыве Беларусь!)

Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?

#74
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>One really dangerous thing about it is that once you send something it just won't disappear. That thing is called Internet..Information never goes away, not even in the real world.

It's not that black and white. Some communicators for example delete messages after a specified time and don't archive by default. It's not perfect, and it's not supposed to be. But it still raises the bar a bit - if your peer is not compromised, you can at least hope the history goes away. Same could be done with "permanent" message by rotating shared encryption keys and discarding old ones for example, so you can b…

>It's not that black and white. Some communicators for example delete messages after a specified time and don't archive by default. It's not perfect, and it's not supposed to be

If something is not secure you can forget it by default, there is NO information system than can securely delete and protect it's delivered end user information, no DRM no Snapchat nothing, the consumed and delivered message can always be seen.

Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?

#76
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would disagree with your last statement. I have a lot of friends from Belarus, and at least from IT sector, they are really eager to continue protests simply cause they are scarred what can happen if current government will stay

At this point, it's very difficult to know if the people who want protests to stop (even if they hate their government) are more numerous than the people who want the protests to continue and grow until the government can be replaced (with, from what I know in Belarus, is extremely unlikely - given that there's zero opposition prepared to take over the Government). But at least for now, things seem to be calming down…

Russia will take over or get involved. Do not kid yourself that they won't. Belarus has a direct border to Russia. They'll probably use protests to install a pro Kremlin government just like they did in Ukraine before Euromaidan sent him fleeing to Russia.

Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?

#77
My advice to Belarus protesters would be : don't protest. You are the useful idiots of some foreign powers that want to weaken Russia by making Belarus the same failed state as Ukraine.

Look at what happened to Ukraine a few years ago and look at the state where it's at now. Do you really want that for your country ?

Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?

#78
post #75

Seems like we need starlink wifi hotspots ... Imagine dropping those in instead of leaflets.

It would be probably easily trackable by army and police. Unless you propose setting them in random places anonymously or move often (setup the antenna on the car)

Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?

#79
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that black and white. Some communicators for example delete messages after a specified time and don't archive by default. It's not perfect, and it's not supposed to be. But it still raises the bar a bit - if your peer is not compromised, you can at least hope the history goes away. Same could be done with "permanent" message by rotating shared encryption keys and discarding old ones for example, so you can b…

>It's not that black and white. Some communicators for example delete messages after a specified time and don't archive by default. It's not perfect, and it's not supposed to be If something is not secure you can forget it by default, there is NO information system than can securely delete and protect it's delivered end user information, no DRM no Snapchat nothing, the consumed and delivered message can always be see…

First, that's why I wrote "hope" and mentioned it's not perfect. But "the consumed and delivered message can always be seen" is just incorrect. IF both sides destroy either the message or the encryption keys for it, then no, it can't be seen. (Just the metadata about it being sent)
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