Semper WiFi

Roblimo writes "Armed Forces personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan increasingly use the Internet to communicate with their familes back home, but there are not nearly enough computers and connections for them. Lt. Phillip Geiger, Medical Officer with the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines, suggested using a privately-funded, long-range WiFi network to help troops stay in touch. The idea has grown from there, all funded privately with cash and equipment donations. Joe Barr has the details on NewsForge (which, like Slashdot, is part of OSTG)."

Comments

Troops

[Klar]

Things like this are great. Troops fighting for us deserve to be able to communicate with their friends and family to keep them sane. This really reminds me of the http://www.gmail4troops.com/ project. If you have an extra gmail invite around in you inbox, why not give it to someone who could use it to receive video and pictures from loved ones.

"Better than MARS" FAQ

[dogfart]

MARS stands for Military Auxiliary Amateur Radio System. It's a long standing ham radio network designed to assist military personnel with contacting the folks back home (among other things military-like).

FAQ is at http://public.afca.af.mil/LIBRARY/MARS1.HTM . Another article explaining the Air Force MARS is http://www.asc.army.mil/mars/history.htm

Re:"Better than MARS" FAQ

[Just Some Guy]

MARS was a godsend when I was on a "cruise" to Somalia in '94. For those too lazy to read up on it, it basically worked like this:

1. You'd type out a phone number and a short message (limited to something like 64 words) to a loved one and save it to a floppy in a special format.
2. Give said floppy to the guy onboard who was running our end of the MARS network - basically, one of your shipmates entertaining his off-duty hobby.
3. He'd batch up all of the outbound messages and blast them out via packet modem.
4. Your message would be routed through HAMs until it reached one in your local area code, who would call your recipient on the phone and read the message to them.
5. If they wanted to reply, the HAM would transcribe their message, route it back to the stateside MARS station, and broadcast it back to the ship.
6. The shipboard MARS guy would print out a few pages of messages, cut the page into strips (one per message), and send them out via the intra-ship mail envelopes.

The total turnaround time from when you first typed your message to when you received the response was on the order of 48 hours. Compared with a roughly two-month turnaround on snail mail, it just practically like making the phone call yourself.

Did I mention that this was completely free of charge for both of the end parties involved? I've never actually met a MARS operator, but if I do, first drink's on me.

As a side note, MARS is directly responsible for me working with computers. I was a surgery tech on ship, but I knew enough programming to write a little BASIC app to run on our 8086 laptop to let anyone type their message, apply the appropriate constraints on it (checking for word length, number of words, etc.), and correctly save it to a floppy. People in the department would wander by, type their little message, and get a nice surprise two days later. My coworkers were happy enough to tell my boss, who was good enough to point out that while I didn't seem to like being a surgery tech, I definitely liked programming, and I should get out of the Navy and go to college to study CompSci. Ken Schnapp, in the unlikely chance that you read Slashdot: thanks, man!

Old Computers

[stateofmind]

If you have older computers lying around, fix 'em up and donate them to local families who have family in the war.

The military has special sites setup for where the families can get free webmail, inet access, etc..

I took two old P3-450s and gave one to my wife's friend and another to the local Marine Reserve base, that they can pass out to other family members.

Josh

Re:Call me ignorant perhaps..

[pedestrian crossing]

"Semper Fidelis" (or Semper Fi) is the Marine Corps motto...

Re:Call me ignorant perhaps..

[julesh]

It's a pun on this

Re:11,000 dead civilians in iraq

[staticx0085]

However, US soldiers who enrolled (i.e. all US soldiers in Iraq), did so willingly...they're hired killers and they're this administration's accomplices in starting this illegal war and invasion of a sovereign country.

Wow, you really are ignorant. Given the choice, most people wouldn't risk their lives overseas just to "see some action." Most of these people are doing it because they have no other choice. It certianly doesn't pay well, especially for the risks involved. Maybe you're somehow not aware of current tuition costs, but I know of alot of people who cannot even afford to go to a state or community college. Going into the military for a few years then having them pay your tuition is a great way to go to college and be able to get a job that is better than being in the military. Consider yourself lucky that you didn't have to take this route and don't condemn other people who have no other options. You can disagree with the war in Iraq, but the troops did not make those political decisions.

No Need For Alarm

[geomon]

As this poster and this AC have pointed out, this is non-operational, family information trafficing between a small base (probably known to the enemy) and the US for the expressed purpose of letting loved ones know that they are alive and, for the time, okay.

This is not a situation where military details will be disclosed or data stolen from the hard drives of military planners laptops (they have to go to Los Alamos for that - groan).

This is an initiative to send equipment to troops who need to keep their families apprised of their condition.

Clue Bat

[Anonymous Coward]

As a communications professional (worked with radio, satellite, data, voice, crypto) and military member who has spent 2 years in the Middle East, I want to respond to a few things.

(1) Just as a note, pay for use phones are already at several Middle East locations courtesy of AT&T.

(2) I would be concerned about soldiers discussing sensitive info with their family. This happens anyway but even telephone and unclass network signals are encrypted by the military before being blasted out over open airways. This wireless setup would make the information much more accessible to baddys. No, they can not be trusted to police themselves. Trust me, I'm a net admin, I see the bad (from an OPSEC standpoint) stuff people send their families all the time. I don't even want the enemy to know innocent stuff like my mailing address,phone number or wifey's e-mail addy. Hello blackmail/family threats! Most places I've been we burn anything that is personnlly identifiable.

(3) re: "Well, some people went into the military because it was the best choice for them. They're not blood-thirsty or enjoy killing."
How naive... in every war our soldiers have dehumanized the enemy. What makes you think this one is different? If I had a nickel for every time I've heard "I can't wait to kill a f'in raghead". Also, as a previous poster noted, all of these people are volunteers. If they truly did no believe in the cause, there are many ways out. They weigh the odds and consequences and at the end of the day, they choose to go and kill/be killed.

(4) Military people aren't as poor as those who mismanage their money would have you believe. I'm a lowly E-5 and I get ~ 50k a year, mostly tax free. Not bad for a highschool graduate. Those who complain about how poorly their paid are usually poor managers of the money they get. I guarantee everyone house a roof over their head, food in their belly, a car, and a TV. That's not poor.

(5) Someone mentioned the old style "read the GI's mail" censorship of WWII. I've sent hundreds of letters from the desert and never heard of any of them arriving opened or censored.
I don't think this still happens.

(6) Someone said: "Governments spend unbelievable ammounts of money on military equiptment, can't some of it be appropriated to communications?
I thought 'battlefield' communications would be very good - I am utterly mystified how a country can have so many troops in a place and not have a solid redundant communciation netwrok that could be accessible to the troops."
Trust me, the US military has an incredible communications infrastructure. They also have the common sense to devote 99.9% of this infrastructure to fighting the war rather than talking about Tim's tooth ache. I'm much more interested in transporting high resolution UAV footage to the battle center than I am in sending pics of someones kids. Even so, there is plenty of bandwidth available for moral e-mail use. Lets face it, text is pretty small. The problem is abuse of the system. For every guy that just e-mails his family and gets the occasional picture, there are three who download porn, forward stupid video clips, and propogate chaind "get prayer back in school" petitions to 10,000 other users. At every place I've been the biggest reason the network is slow is because people abuse it!

(7) No offense, but I've been living this life for 8 years and I can say that 99% of the posters on slashdot are speaking out their a** when it comes to military comms.

Deployed

[NastyGnat]

As a soldier here in Iraq I'll put in my 28 dinars ...

First of all wireless is not all that uncommon here. Though I will admit of the two marine bases I've been on one of them didn't have squat. I didn't take my laptop to the other. As far as it being restricted, nobody is reading over our shoulders to see what we say. They must be using some kind of proxy as we know some soldiers got caught looking at porn. However, when I was in Kuwait the cybercafe there actually charged for the time but provided computers with games installed. Several soldiers there got together and played everquest late at night.

The article very accurately describes our problem with the Morale systems. To top it off most of the soldiers here are computer illiterate. I've managed to "war Drive" a little bit and have found a third party willing to let us hitchike on their wireless. Someone asked me if I'm stealing it. No, they are completely aware we are on their system. They think I'm a friggen genious cause I got the viruses off their computers and helped them with several other computer problems. It's a win-win situation and one of the only true luxuries we have here.

What these people are doing for the marines is great. I can tell you they've got the worst living conditions I've seen in theatre and they certianly deserve better than what the MWR facilites have to offer. I'd be tickled s***less if we could find someone to do the same for us here on our post. Our families are trying to raise money to help us be self sufficient with our internet but it is a slow process when we are from such a rural area back home. Until then we'll do what we do best and improvise.

As far as the comment about Abu Ghraib. As any soldier will tell you there are several things you should know.
First, what was done there is WRONG and a disgrace.
Second, if found guilty they will receive quite the punishment. The UCMJ is fair but cross it and you are in for a world of hurt.
Third, photos and videos are encouraged for reasons just like this. Many times it may help with intelligence. Videos may help later to review tactics and create new plans. We have to think on our feet and keep looking to see what we are doing wrong and right. If it weren't for those photos Abu Ghraib might have been worse.
Finally, put on your tinfoil hats, there was probably someone directing them do to what they did. I wouldn't look so happy about if I was ignorant enough to follow those orders but the same people that are brainwashing the prisoners are likely as influential on the soldiers there trying to do their duties.

Last but not least I did get my gmail account. :) The reason invitations are going unused is simply because most soldiers aren't geeks and aren't even aware this exists. Most of em probably don't even know what google is. If internet explorer came up on MSN then that's what they search with. I've had to write a friggen internet policy here for our troops to help guide them away from all the spam and spyware and viruses. Hopefully I'll get alot of them converted over to something like firefox before we leave and hopefully they'll be more responsible internet uses when I'm through with them...

Anyway... If anyone has any questions about anything over here feel free to contact me. I'll only say what I can that doesn't endanger anyone else but I'm pretty open to comments. If anyone cares to help us over here feel free to contact us. In the mean time I'll thank the slashdot community for pointing out this article and I'll see if they can't work up some kind of deal for us.

For the contractor in Fallujah, keep your head down man! I'm also glad to hear I'm not the only nerd in Iraq!!