Live data from Hacker News

Briar keeps Iran connected via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when the internet goes dark

briarproject.org

141–150 of 390 posts

Re: Briar keeps Iran connected via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when the internet goes dark

#141
post #98

Perhaps Americans should start preparing with Meshtastic / Meshcore, just in case....... ..,..the Emperor seems hellbent on bringing martial law into effect.

Do you think the govt will not force Google to revoke developer certs once developer verification is in place to prevent sideloading or not order Google/Apple to forcibly uninstall them ? These are great tools in American toolkit if it wants to do a regime change in other countries. Their effectiveness within America are questionable.

The government isn't going to hand to do that, that's already what Google's planning to do anyway. They'd just have to tell Google to take down certain apps so they're no longer on the Google "approved" list, which would deactivate them on your device during next network connection (like most Google "services" on Android, I'm sure these too would bypass the system VPN as well) as well as making them unavailable from the sole allowed download source. You know, like they did with ICE Block already.

Re: Briar keeps Iran connected via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when the internet goes dark

#142
post #8

Perhaps Americans should start preparing with Meshtastic / Meshcore, just in case....... ..,..the Emperor seems hellbent on bringing martial law into effect.

The military can very easily find and eliminate repeaters very quickly and almost certainly would.

Why would they bother? Super low bandwidth unencrypted communication they can triangulate if they really need to sounds like a perfect thing to let keep running and just monitor. Then you can triangulate just the "seditious" people who incriminate themselves.

Re: Briar keeps Iran connected via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when the internet goes dark

#143
How does Briar work when a government shuts down the internet?

It mentions Bluetooth and Wifi. My guess is that it tries to find other Briar devices connected to the same Bluetooth and wifi hotspot but what if the users are not on the Bluetooth/wifi? Does it share ALL messages encrypted with every Briar user in the hope later they come in contact with the final user?

Re: Briar keeps Iran connected via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when the internet goes dark

#144
You could route by annonimized habbit. Knows a social construct called market every day at 8:00, means i can route via the social constructs permanent residents, e.g. a trader, who stores it and is closer onion of habbits wise to the goal. He knows a social organism called bus7 who is composed of one permanent changing on daily basis, many transient but always by habbit part of that moving org. These drive by a home router who knows the family, recipients he sees every day. If you are patient you can route via habbits of social organisms. Takes half a day of wait and burst hop to get there though. No idea how to annonymise that routing. No idea how to handles one offs like tourist travels for data smuggling.

Re: Briar keeps Iran connected via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when the internet goes dark

#145

Take heed, Americaneez -- and prepare, because this may be in your future sooner than prediction markets would have you believe [1]. LoRa mesh networking seems like the runner-up, but vague reports indicate (Meshtastic) doesn't handle crowds well. I think Bitchat can use Meshtastic, so a LoRa radio paired with a phone could be a base for not just texting individuals, but community messaging. 1: https://polymarket.com…

Not to side track too much from this discussion, but I looked at that PolyMarket event: "US civil war before 2027?" Currently, it is priced at 91.3 USD cents for No. If you bet 100 USD, the payout for No will be 109.43. That is very good return -- ~9.5% for 12 months of lending (as PolyMarket required full payment at the time of trade). That is twice the (retail) risk free rate at the moment. I am actually tempted to…

If you haven't been paying attention to American politics, there are currently widespread protests due to a woman being shot by ICE last week. It looks like the current administration may be seeking violent unrest in the hopes of delaying elections.

Re: Briar keeps Iran connected via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when the internet goes dark

#146

How does Briar work when a government shuts down the internet? It mentions Bluetooth and Wifi. My guess is that it tries to find other Briar devices connected to the same Bluetooth and wifi hotspot but what if the users are not on the Bluetooth/wifi? Does it share ALL messages encrypted with every Briar user in the hope later they come in contact with the final user?

Okay I saw the link below: https://briarproject.org/how-it-works/

So it seems it's more effective for blog posts because everyone is sharing the same blog post.

I'm not sure what happens with direct messages.

Re: Briar keeps Iran connected via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when the internet goes dark

#147
post #98

Perhaps Americans should start preparing with Meshtastic / Meshcore, just in case....... ..,..the Emperor seems hellbent on bringing martial law into effect.

Do you think the govt will not force Google to revoke developer certs once developer verification is in place to prevent sideloading or not order Google/Apple to forcibly uninstall them ? These are great tools in American toolkit if it wants to do a regime change in other countries. Their effectiveness within America are questionable.

There are fully hardware based meshtastic devices: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/realizing-meshtastics...

The Government can't revoke the certs on those.

Re: Briar keeps Iran connected via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when the internet goes dark

#148
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The military can very easily find and eliminate repeaters very quickly and almost certainly would.

Why would they bother? Super low bandwidth unencrypted communication they can triangulate if they really need to sounds like a perfect thing to let keep running and just monitor. Then you can triangulate just the "seditious" people who incriminate themselves.

I guess if you were relying on the meshtastic network as a backbone network replacement, which I'm not sure much of anyone is even currently setup for and I've heard isnt really feasible with the naive meshtastic toy implementation, you could be sending encrypted traffic. But then you have to have pre-shared encryption keys for participants and it will significantly lose it's usefulness for adding new adopters.

Re: Briar keeps Iran connected via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when the internet goes dark

#149
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The military can very easily find and eliminate repeaters very quickly and almost certainly would.

Isn't stopping abuses of the power of the military the reason for the 2nd Amendment? Why don't the people in Minnesota go open carry and let ICE agents think twice before drawing their weapons on people?

Because the pro 2nd amendment people with "Don't tread on me" tattoos are going to "Tread on me harder, daddy!".

Re: Briar keeps Iran connected via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when the internet goes dark

#150

Take heed, Americaneez -- and prepare, because this may be in your future sooner than prediction markets would have you believe [1]. LoRa mesh networking seems like the runner-up, but vague reports indicate (Meshtastic) doesn't handle crowds well. I think Bitchat can use Meshtastic, so a LoRa radio paired with a phone could be a base for not just texting individuals, but community messaging. 1: https://polymarket.com…

Not to side track too much from this discussion, but I looked at that PolyMarket event: "US civil war before 2027?" Currently, it is priced at 91.3 USD cents for No. If you bet 100 USD, the payout for No will be 109.43. That is very good return -- ~9.5% for 12 months of lending (as PolyMarket required full payment at the time of trade). That is twice the (retail) risk free rate at the moment. I am actually tempted to…

> Am I missing something obvious?

The low volume places a rather disappointing cap on your profits.

Post reply on HN