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Bitchat for Gaza – messaging without internet

updates.techforpalestine.org

31–40 of 370 posts

Re: Bitchat for Gaza – messaging without internet

#31

What an awesome piece of technology. I've been wanting to create something similar, just on the technical merits. We have some pretty amazingly capable technology these days, but so much of it relies on IP infrastructure, which is fine when things work and you are either aligned with your government, or live in a society where there are strong checks and balances on government overreach.

Exactly. With Chat Control being revived again in the EU, various VPN bans being proposed in US states, and ID verification rolling out seemingly everywhere, this kind of tech may end up being more useful than people expect. If it works in the extremely adversarial environment of a warzone, it should work fine here.

Re: Bitchat for Gaza – messaging without internet

#35
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the first temporally, but Israel has been killing anyone who looks like they're trying to put a phone within reach of a cell tower. The genocide survivors have last I heard learned that they needed to raise their phones in buckets attached to ropes, so that when they're identified and destroyed, they won't be killed.

most of the gazan population has a cellphone, which has had reception most of the war. So assuming using one puts you in risk is false. About your second story, that sounds implausible, anything more substantial?

Here's an article I found on Google that contains the claim about strikes associated with preventing civilian communication. Note the "physically high places." The story about the buckets fits within that frame. (My original source was an article I saw on HN; unfortunately Google's performance on search queries related to this subject is very poor, so it isn't easy to find again. I should have been saving them...)

> Hassan Saeed Barakat, the father of one victim of the Israeli bombing, told the Euro-Med Monitorteam that dozens of people had gathered to attempt to contact their family members when an Israeli drone launched a surprise missile attack. The attack directly targeted the tent being used as an Internet distribution point, causing the massive and deadly explosion.

> Instead of accessing the Internet via electronic SIMcards, Palestinian civilians have recently been turning to these random distribution points and physically high places to try to access communication networks due to the systematic and widespread destruction of civilian objects by Israeli forces in the Strip. With the destruction of mobile phone network transmission stations, Palestinians are struggling to communicate.

https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/...

Re: Bitchat for Gaza – messaging without internet

#37

The name choice is unfortunate. I read it incorrectly the first time.

Anything with "bit" in (with the T pronounced) is a bit unfortunate for French speakers: https://context.reverso.net/translation/french-english/la+bi... .

"Pour info, j'ai pas la bite qui fouette."

Re: Bitchat for Gaza – messaging without internet

#39
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

most of the gazan population has a cellphone, which has had reception most of the war. So assuming using one puts you in risk is false. About your second story, that sounds implausible, anything more substantial?

Here's an article I found on Google that contains the claim about strikes associated with preventing civilian communication. Note the "physically high places." The story about the buckets fits within that frame. (My original source was an article I saw on HN; unfortunately Google's performance on search queries related to this subject is very poor, so it isn't easy to find again. I should have been saving them...) >…

I am not sure about your source. apart from blaming Israel with falsehoods such as organ theft, it has well known ties to Hamas

https://ngo-monitor.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Kahel-and...

Here its founding team posing next to Hamas leader.

Even if we take it in face value it does not show Israeli repression of Palestinian speech in Gaza, while Hamas has been regularly executing and torturing over speech

Re: Bitchat for Gaza – messaging without internet

#40

A lot of Meshcore/Meshtastic stations popping up lately too all over the world too. Repeaters/Router can, if you put a bit of love in to highly efficient 3.3V generation, forever an a 6V solar cell and a 18650 LiPo. I've tested 60km with a 868MHz LoRa station using a shabby 5dBi omni antenna. Just run out of hills to test more. But not as easy to use as BLE(+BLE Meshing) which is basically integrated into every smart…

I looked into Meshtastic a while ago and they use AES with no authentication tags. Also decryption happens on the LoRa device, which is a lot easier to crack with physical access compared to my phone. Even if you delete the messages it's still possible to decrypt sniffed LoRa traffic if, at some point in the future, one device gets captured.

I'd rather the protocol gets updated so the crypto key can stay on the phone.

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