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

briarproject.org

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

#121

Post by p0w3n3d »

zmgsabst wrote: post #115
killingtime74 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is really a civil war, won't these frequencies just get jammed?

The US is huge — you can’t jam everything everywhere. Talking about just cities, you still can’t jam everything everywhere. But yes, targeted suppression/oppression (depending on your allegiance) will almost certainly use jamming — in fact, I’ve spoken with some Antifa about how they jam EMS frequencies at their events.

This reminds me the way the software was distributed in eastern countries when there was no internet. People went to market to meet other people, and they were peddling/colporting (look up the term in French) cassettes with the software.

The same can happen now - people would walk down the streets to certain places, to become hubs of information, but with no physical contact. Of course those places would be were the jammers would head to.

Actually this sounds like a good theme for book... however as long as I live on this world, I've noticed that if I invent something, there are already two people on the internet who have invented it already, so... please give me the title :)

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

#122

Post by aaravchen »

syntaxing wrote: post #68

Whoa, I was just mentioning in another post how I have my family member install bitchat just in case for emergencies. This is a very interesting alternative. With a travel router, I can significantly expand the chat radius compared to bitchat's purely BLE approach. Edit: Boo, no iOS app

You should definitely read the news about bitchat. It doesnt actually have basically any security or privacy from all the dozens of independent security audit findings. Jack even said it was vibe coded and never audited.

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

#123

Post by aaravchen »

SoulMan wrote: post #36

What about Jack Dorsey's Bitchat . Could be useful in india (especially Kashmir) where govt shut down internet during protest

Check the news from the past year. If you care about security or privacy, Bitchat doesn't actually have either according to !any independent security audits), so I'd stay away.

If you dont care about those things, I'd look at Scuttlebutt (SSB) protocol apps instead.

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

#124

Post by aaravchen »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #58
SoulMan wrote: post #36

What about Jack Dorsey's Bitchat . Could be useful in india (especially Kashmir) where govt shut down internet during protest

Dude. Back in 2014 when briar or something similar came up, we found the app.needed to signed in "online" first then it could be used offline. There were apps used in 2019 but it wasnt enough. The government "banned" 14 appps including element "because use by terrorists" meant anyone using element after the ban got a loud knock on the door by the stazi with 100-300 personnel, fully ready to engage in battle. Have see…

That was Bridgefy that required initial online access to setup. Briar doesn't and never has.

Traceability of Briar users, if not the actual content, is certainly potentially worse than something like what Bitchat claims (don't use Bitchat it's provably not secure or private at all) with it's traffic obfuscation and multihop. However, the lack of multihop also makes it less promiscuous, so someone would have to be monitoring when you came in contact with the transfer source or destination, unlike multihop that just broadcasts to anyone so they can hopefully relay it.

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

#125

Post by aaravchen »

shevy-java wrote: post #84

Just the default web-layout shown here is ... awful. How can people use that? That design is like 1990 ... but worse.

It's a manual for setup (in Farsi, you can click to other languages) that needs to be as accessible as possible to the least technology a literate people in the world as well as the ultra techy. Often people that have extremely limited data connection or no data connection as well. It has to be as simple as possible, and as clear as possible.

Check the main landing page and you can see it's a relatively modern site, they just gave a very restricted target audience the manual needs to be available for.

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

#127

Post by aaravchen »

senectus1 wrote: post #100

I like briar for the fact that i already have the hardware... I like meshtastic for not needing the network related devices for their hardware What I'd like is something that is platform agnostic... I want an app that i can install, a (tor like) server i can setup that will anonymously route and fwd messages and really cheap and easy hardware that will let me pop up mini repeaters on demand. Would also like to be abl…

Briar mentions "mailboxes", where you can stick up collectors wherever you want. It's not as nice as repeaters that would build a multihop mesh network for you, but one advantage of not doing multihop is that you get at least initial insecure identification before any identifiable secure communication is attempted so even if the Military Police are watching you, they won't be able to tell you even have Briar unless they can spoof a device for someone you have as a contact and have a waiting message for (or the BLE device ID of one of your mailbox devices). Those aren't hard to spoof, but learning what they are can be more difficult than if you're broadcasting to anyone that will listen like multihop requires.

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

#128

Post by 2Gkashmiri »

alephnerd wrote: post #105
2Gkashmiri wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude. Back in 2014 when briar or something similar came up, we found the app.needed to signed in "online" first then it could be used offline. There were apps used in 2019 but it wasnt enough. The government "banned" 14 appps including element "because use by terrorists" meant anyone using element after the ban got a loud knock on the door by the stazi with 100-300 personnel, fully ready to engage in battle. Have see…

Why are people downvoting him? He's right (even though if his dream for "Azad" Kashmir came true, it would mean my family is Kishtwar would probably have to leave for Punjab or Himachal with only the clothes on their backs, but the current status quo means he might be detained indefinetly as well) - the DoT, Home Ministry, and State STFs have been rolling out fusions centers since the mid-2010s [0]. The rules are muc…

https://the420.in/delhi-police-upgrades-drdo-netra-surveilla...

https://www.crazyengineers.com/threads/netra-is-indian-gover...

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

#129

Post by LeratoAustini »

p0w3n3d wrote: post #121
zmgsabst wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is huge — you can’t jam everything everywhere. Talking about just cities, you still can’t jam everything everywhere. But yes, targeted suppression/oppression (depending on your allegiance) will almost certainly use jamming — in fact, I’ve spoken with some Antifa about how they jam EMS frequencies at their events.

This reminds me the way the software was distributed in eastern countries when there was no internet. People went to market to meet other people, and they were peddling/colporting (look up the term in French) cassettes with the software. The same can happen now - people would walk down the streets to certain places, to become hubs of information, but with no physical contact. Of course those places would be were the…

To save others the search: Colportage is the distribution of publications, books, and religious tracts by carriers called "colporteurs" or "colporters"

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

#130

Post by hhh »

9dev wrote: post #114
wafflemaker wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Briar comes with ways of sharing it offline, so enough for one person to have it. Most likely how they got it in Iran, as I doubt that critical mass of people had it installed in advance. Most likely doesn't work on iPhones though - no sideloading.

I looked into the iOS issue once, and in the EU at least, it should be possible to add a minimal implementation of the store API to an app, so other iPhones could download the app from an iPhone hosting it. After discovering the amount of pain involved with that API, I quickly discarded the idea though

You can just airdrop iOS apps to people. I don’t think the recipient needs network connectivity to receive it.
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