Recently, revolts in Tunisia and Egypt have caused the governments of those nations to shut off access to the Internet, to try to prevent protest groups from communicating.
Also, various politicians in the US have been proposing an “Internet kill switch” that would disable access to the Internet, if our infrastructure is threatened. Of course, there’s no checks and balances on that…
In addition, major ISPs in Canada are forcing smaller ISPs into a nasty “usage based billing” scheme that threatens to ruin the Internet for Canada. Of course, US ISPs are seeing if they can get away with it.
So, in light of that, I think it’d be a good idea to set up infrastructure to work around any potential shutdowns or restrictions – both by the government and by ISPs.The first thing to look at is, what communications methods can we use other than the Internet? Let’s also assume that cellular networks are taken out.
POTS
POTS has been around for quite a while, and is still widespread. However, how resilient is it to government shutdown? Would the government shut it down, or restrict its use? They can certainly eavesdrop on it, although there are encryption methods. POTS-like networks may also be able to be made by laying cable manually, and using surplus equipment.
Interfacing to it is simple, and hardware to do so using a computer is also widespread, and only recently has it started to be dropped from modern computers. It’s slow, though, but for the forms of data necessary for use in a protest, it’s more than adequate. And, back in the BBS days, FidoNet provided an international network run entirely over POTS. So, it could be done again. Security would likely need to be increased, but…
Sneakernet
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.
-Andrew Tenenbaum
Sneakernet is an extremely powerful method for transferring large amounts of data. Latency is dreadful, but bandwidth is very, very high. Conventional shipping networks can be used, as can the proverbial station wagon full of tapes, to avoid the data being delayed or searched – smuggling thumb drives and hard drives like drugs, if things really get that bad.
This one’s also useful if ISPs go insane. Already, buying a 160 GB SSD, filling it with data, and shipping it across Canada, and then THROWING AWAY the SSD when it gets to the other side is cheaper than transferring that same data across Canadian broadband networks.
Potentially, sneakernets could be a powerful tool for disseminating information (or even large files) over both long and short distances. One way that things could work is that groups could publish lists of what files they have available, and accept drives to fill with those files (potentially with files that the offering group wants). Then, once a local group’s admin has the files that they want, they could disseminate those files to the group. Additional files could be added for communication.
Radio
Radio is a dangerous one. Amateur radio is still allowed in the US, but encryption on amateur radio isn’t, and there are content regulations. Not to mention, radio is ridiculously easy to track transmissions of. (To the point that tracking radio transmissions with limited resources is a sport that amateur radio operators participate in.)
However, RECEIVING radio is harder to detect. And, once a transmission goes out, there’s no putting that cat back in the bag. So, for information that needs to go out to a wide audience, even if the sender is put into harm by doing so, radio may be a viable answer.
Also, the less transmit power is used, the less likely the signal will be detected. However, this requires the recipients to be in close proximity to one another. Radio might be a viable option for groups to communicate over short distances, with a sneakernet backbone to the network.
Free Space Optical
Free space optical is a system that uses beams of light to transmit data. As long as the equipment’s disguised, it’ll be difficult to detect, although it requires line of sight, and the range on low cost FSO systems is poor. (RONJA has a range of 1.4 km. Not even a mile.) Still, it could be a useful tool in certain situations.
Now that we have communications media, how can we use them effectively?
FidoNet
I’ll admit that I’m too young to have experienced the BBS era, but FidoNet was a store-and-forward e-mail system that was used back then, and it was expanded to basically act as a Usenet-like service for BBSes participating in FidoNet.
Store-and-forward e-mail can be very useful when there’s limited connectivity, and FidoNet was designed to be flexible to transport over various media. One issue I see with FidoNet, however, is that node number assignments are centralized.
Mesh networking
Mesh networking is usually a pain, but a mesh network could be designed to be aware of all possible communications methods, it might work well. One thing is that mesh networks are usually wireless, which means radio. Also, I’ve had some ideas for how a long distance mesh network could work efficiently without ridiculously large routing tables, but it requires every node to know – and give away – its location. That has some nasty privacy implications. But, still, a store-and-forward aware mesh network could be very interesting, if the efficiency problems could be worked out. (Potentially, a FidoNet like system could actually work well for this – if a node detects that it’s communicating with a node that is closer in the hierarchy to a node it wants to communicate with, it can pass its messages on.)
If a hub-and-spoke model is being used (like a BBS,) and the owner of the hub knows that some users communicate with others outside of the hub directly, the owner could decide to give all of those users copies of the outbound messages, that they can then pass on to other appropriate networks.
Fax
Saw this in another article about this topic that I found when I was researching this. Fax is a relatively efficient, low-tech way to send graphical information, and can work over both POTS and radio.
Shared hard drives
I mentioned this one before, but… a group of people could pitch in to buy a hard drive for storing large files, and send that hard drive around to other groups, to collect files. This could be arranged either using a communications network, or even in person. (As this is the most useful technology for when there’s no government interference, there could even be ways to implement it over the Internet.)
Alright, so now we have ways to communicate, and potentially tools to use once those communication links are established. What can we do now?
Get software ready
Any software that needs to be updated to make this work… if you’ve got the skills to update it, do so.
Get it installed and configured. If the internet kill switch is flipped, you won’t be able to download it later, and you won’t be able to find a forum to help you set it up. (I actually need to do some of this myself…)
Get data ready
Many private sites have required that you contribute as much new data as you download. While that model has some nasty implications, IMO, it’ll almost certainly get used for sneakernet. So, if you can stockpile data, you might have data that other parties want, and can trade for data that you want.
Stock up on hardware
Without the Internet, you won’t be able to go out and order a hard drive, or replacement parts for your computers, and the brick and mortar stores may well take advantage of that – if they’ve even got stock. Make sure you’ve got the hardware you need, on hand.
Practice
Practice using your emergency communications methods. Make sure they actually work. It’d suck to have everything all set up, then go to use it, and find out that it doesn’t work.
Spread the word
The wider you spread the word, the more nodes can be prepared. The more nodes that can be lit up after the Internet goes down, the more effective all of this is at enabling communication.