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Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

theguardian.com

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Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#141

Post by jamiek88 »

commandlinefan wrote: post #79
generalizations wrote: post #3

Time to start building long distance (100+ mile) mesh nets. Alternately, I wonder if there's any way to lay down fiber long distance that doesn't require govt authorization...and doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

I wish - but if that was going to happen, it would have happened already. By the time enough people wake up to the necessity of an uncensorable communications network to make it feasible, it will be too late to make it happen.

technical solutions to political problems are always doomed.

It always, always, comes down to the the rubber hose decryption.

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#142

Post by aerostable_slug »

nradov wrote: post #107
generalizations wrote: post #3

Time to start building long distance (100+ mile) mesh nets. Alternately, I wonder if there's any way to lay down fiber long distance that doesn't require govt authorization...and doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

Grass roots wireless mesh networks are a nice concept in theory but no one has ever made them work well at scale. It's just a very challenging technical problem with nodes moving around around, going offline, intermittent radio interference, etc. So the routing tables constantly change. And unless people are willing to buy specialized hardware such as towers and antennas, the range between nodes can't be more than ab…

That's only if you assume you need lots of bandwidth. RIOT TOMORROW CAPITAL NOON or FREE FEARLESS LEADER HELD AT $BLACKSITE would be easily transmitted over any number of mesh networks, including the ones used for utility billing in many countries.

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#143

Post by commandlinefan »

jamiek88 wrote: post #141
commandlinefan wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish - but if that was going to happen, it would have happened already. By the time enough people wake up to the necessity of an uncensorable communications network to make it feasible, it will be too late to make it happen.

technical solutions to political problems are always doomed. It always, always, comes down to the the rubber hose decryption.

Still better than what we have now.

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#144

Post by wizofaus »

Melatonic wrote: post #129
mikepurvis wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they need line of sight? I assume the dish would still work with some kind of blanket or plastic shroud over it, provided it was kept in the acceptable temperature range. Or even just being painted to camouflage into the roof it was mounted to. There'd be reasonable aesthetic reasons to do these things, from a deniability standpoint. Though I guess that doesn't help if you're under a regime where accessing an unau…

Yea I imagine there is a fairly easy solution to this problem. And if there is not - I guarantee you creative people in India are going to figure it out!

But there's no solution to the problem of people voting in governments that think frequent internet shutdowns are OK?

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#145

Post by DarkSucker »

pelasaco wrote: post #77
ElementaryElk wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not associated with the project and don’t follow it super closely, but I think this is the idea behind the briar project (at least for messaging) https://briarproject.org

There are many projects similar with Briar, they all have the same limitations: "The range of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi is around 10 metres, depending on obstacles. Clearly this isn’t enough for communicating across a city or even a large building. So when Briar receives a message from a nearby contact, it stores the message and can later pass it on to other contacts when they come within range (for example, when you move…

BRIAR's how it works page depicts Wi-Fi and Tor also, so range isn't necessarily an issue.

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#146

Post by wizofaus »

acuozzo wrote: post #45
ryandrake wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protests happened before the Internet. Before telephones, even. Neither are a requirement for people to communicate and organize.

> Protests happened before the Internet. Before telephones, even. US Population, 1870: 38,558,371 US Population, 2020: 331,449,281

That's not even necessarily the main issue - it's that the cultural norms around how information was spread pre-phone/internet have now been lost, so there's realistically no good way to get a message out to a huge number of people without access to modern communications technology. In a world where flyers or word of mouth or bill posters were the only forms of communication people naturally paid much more attention to them and their patterns of movement and interaction within the community enabled their effectiveness. Shutting off all electronic communication access is orders-of-magnitude more limiting than, say, a twitter ban (which I've argued before barely qualifies as a restriction on free speech).

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#147

Post by mixcocam »

nradov wrote: post #107
generalizations wrote: post #3

Time to start building long distance (100+ mile) mesh nets. Alternately, I wonder if there's any way to lay down fiber long distance that doesn't require govt authorization...and doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

Grass roots wireless mesh networks are a nice concept in theory but no one has ever made them work well at scale. It's just a very challenging technical problem with nodes moving around around, going offline, intermittent radio interference, etc. So the routing tables constantly change. And unless people are willing to buy specialized hardware such as towers and antennas, the range between nodes can't be more than ab…

https://guifi.net/en

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#148

Post by hotpotamus »

Melatonic wrote: post #131
hotpotamus wrote: post #39

I run infrastructure for a company that provides medical records services to medical organizations located exclusively in the US and have to deal with the usual scans/exploit attempts that come with running services on the public internet. Somedays I think it's just bonkers that anyone in China or Russia or wherever is allowed to contact my servers. I know that the internet is a "network of networks" to use an older…

Why do you not just block everything outside of the US?

Well, I don't really know how to is a reason, but I suppose a surmountable one. The other thing is that I can't guarantee that all my customers' don't employ people outside the US.

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#149

Post by candiodari »

throw10920 wrote: post #122
mminer237 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it. You have to get the consent of every owner of property for a connecting 100+ miles. You pretty much have to either have an uninhabited wasteland or eminent domain to do that. Plus, you have to hire people to do hard manual labor for 100+ miles. You can try to just lay it on preexisting poles without permission some places, but who knows how long that will stay up. And ultimately, fiber is something anyone…

You wouldn't be able to get a high-speed mesh network, sure, but LoRa[1] (or something LoRa-like - it's proprietary) provides in the range of kilobits per second across tens of miles. RONJA[1] trades throughput for range, with 10 megabit throughput over 0.8 miles). Sure, you won't be able to even really download images through LoRa, but it'll do for textual communications in case of an emergency e.g. natural disaster…

Or you just use free-space optics. If you use lasers you can even (in theory) use DWDM and get xxx separate connections of 25, even 40 Gbps each. Line of sight is required but at some point someone will get it working with satellites. I believe line-of-sight >100km 400 Gbps links have been done.

Oh and once you get past ~900km the fact that via the satellite you have a straight line with ~100% the speed of light (as opposed to 2/3 speed of light with fiber) the satellite connection to LEO is actually faster than fiber. In practice it's less since there are no zero-delay zero-loss regen stations. Every 300km the signal needs to be converted to electrical and back, which adds (a lot) of latency. With satellites this isn't done, saving further time. And all of that is ignoring that when putting fiber of the surface of the earth you cannot just follow a straight line, so you have to add distance for avoiding other people's property too.

And perhaps relevant to an internet shutdown article: laser free-space optics cannot be located unless you're directly in the path of the laser. These links cannot be "denied" to anyone with sky access.

It's just reliably aiming a beam at a moving satellite that's currently beyond our technology.

Currently 40-50gbps to a satellite is the practical limit.

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