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US Funding Stealth Internets to Circumvent Repressive Regimes
snydeq writes "The Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy 'shadow' Internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek to silence them by censoring or shutting down telecommunications networks. According to a report from CBS News: '...by the end of the year the State Department will have spent $70 million on efforts to provide alternate pathways for dissidents to access the Internet and telecommunications services. One group received $2 million to develop an "Internet in a suitcase" that could be easily carried and set up in a foreign country.'"
...or doesn't this seem a little hypocritical in light of how the whole Wikileaks thing has been handled?
.: Max Romantschuk
Or something similar to it.
Use say cheap phone -> phone messaging as an excuse.
Deleted
What would happen if there were, just for arguments sake, dissident Americans........
Pause..
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
is someone making a package for us to circumvent our ever-repressive government in the Demokratik Polize State of Amerika ?
This kinda thing is an act of war?
for anon attacks on foreign governments. It was only a matter of time.
Korma: Good
I assume it also includes a sat uplink. The tricky part must be making it discrete. Ideally it should look just like a briefcase to a casual inspection, even if opened. Electronics built under a false bottom, antenna in the side.
I've read that parts of Anonymous also work on projects in this same vein. And that same facet of Anonymous is who carries out the DDoS attacks and other various distressing things. I wonder if the irony of sharing goals with Anonymous is completely lost on the US government. I expect probably so. Freedom abroad, a slow slide towards facism at home, that'll be the way of it.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
localhost$shadowtubez start
==Welcome to ShadowTubez==
Fight the Power, with the help of the USA!
(Connecting to shadowtubez.us.gov to establish freedom fighter credentials...)
Doh!
So, will we Americans be able to use this shadow internet and mobile phone networks to access what PROTECT IP tries to block?
Umm.. didn't they just say..
This kinda thing is an act of war?
No. This is no more of an attack than facebook, twitter or even TOR are "attacks."
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
America the Land of Liberty*. Freeing the people from oppression**
*Note: Liberty is only available other countries.
**Does not count for people living in America
*discreet
I have five internets in my briefcase right here. Why, just the other day my secretary sent me an internet. Typical government waste. Next thing you know they'll want to build a bridge to nowhere.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
As the article says "The revolution will be broadcast...", but it leaves out "straight to the US govt who will then decide if they want to a)let you carry on in your attempt to self govern (provided the US can profit from it) or b)arrange for a leak of information that will crush you"
This is pure propaganda. The very last thing the US wants is for genuine freedom of information. What it does want is failsafe communication with its own sympathisers, clients and agents. People make comments along the lines of "what about if they start censoring us?" Did you not notice? Will you consider your news media uncensored simply because nobody puts a 2 minute ad on national TV or a full page ad in the NYT explaining that it's already happened? Wake up. Did you not notice that you are never allowed to hear or read your enemies' words directly or in full? You are only allowed to digest small pieces, decontextualised and presented by public relations people masquerading as journalists. You can identify the real journalists if you have a good memory: they are the people who used to ask hard questions, who were also unafraid to cross frontlines and ask hard questions of the enemy, who are no longer welcome, whose access is rescinded and whose names and reputations are slandered and traduced and who are finally ignored. In their place you have the shame and disgrace of "embedded" journalists, people who are a do not deserve to be called journalists and who have made a compact to deceive you. The English language media is now a rather glossy and expensive upgrade of Pravda. Why on earth would the government legislate censorship when it can be outsourced, bought and paid for? This is how free speech and an uncensored media works in a country with free speech enshrined in the constitution and tested and protected in law. How well do you think it will work in projects funded and controlled by the CIA? Does anyone truly believe these projects exists to counter repression? They exist to promote one kind of repression over another.
it's free money for somebody's buddy. Seriously, 'internet in a suitcase'? It's probably one of these
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Is this really any different than trying to deliver an insurgency some form of weapons or armaments? I don't think this lets the US keep its hands any cleaner when interfering.
I'm more curious to see which is more effective - arming the equivalent of some mujahideen or rebels or even just citizens, versus getting them on Facebook. I think we've seen the blowback arming groups can result in. Could spreading rogue Internet connections be a mistake the somehow US regrets in the future? I mean other than roaming data charges.
Internet in a suitcase? I had to immediately think of The IT-Crowd: "and this Jen...", shows her a little box , ".... is the Internet!"
cat
In Rainbows End the Army rains down networking nodes on a site that they want to control. I have been talking about doing this as a 501c. Make off the shelf Meraki style nodes with a mix and match of bands. E.g. 900mHz backbone and 802.11b/g with every 10th or so with a satellite uplink. Make them cheap enough to carpet bomb out of a b52. Give them a solar panel or a easy connect to a car battery or a 110/220. When ever someone tries to "turn off the internet" just drop a new one. The peer to peer cell phone also has a hand in this a Motorola f4 style phone or even a Belkin Skype phone could be dropped at the same time. TerraNet was already covered on /. http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/2007/09/peer-to-peer-mobile-phones-by-terranet.html
I often wonder what would happen if a group of nerds..like ourselves.. decided to start our own root DNS.. I would suspect that it would be shut down by the FCC in short order under some new or trumped up mangled misinterpretation of some law.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/06/01/Pentagon-Cyberattacks-deemed-acts-of-war/UPI-17821306915200/
Try and keep up with the class
I haven't read the article but my issue with what is being said here is that the American tax payer is being forced to foot the bill for this.
It may only be millions in a government spending level of Billions/Trillions but still, is it really something they should be getting involved in to begin with?
What do others here think of this? Are you alright with this?
Russia, maybe, because it outright steals all of their assets and jails owners,
If you take something from me, I get to take it back - even 20 years later. That's what's happening in Russia.
you have to minimize gov power so the corps must concentrate on their economic position relative to competition.
So the corps can fight it out to be the new government.
I can deal with corps by not buying from them,
Yes, if you have a large amount of fertile land and various survival skills, and are prepared to forego the luxuries of modern life, that's no problem.
I can't believe all the negative comments on this. It seams to me that people are so jaded with themselves for not taking responsibility for their own media consumtion that they blame the government for censorship. What the hell is everyone talking about? None of the "down with government" posts are censored here. None of my paranoid friends have mysteriously disappeared. We live in a great country and you should wake up and realize that. maybe wikileaks did have a positive effect. Maybe the government, though reluctant at first is warming up to the fact that free and open communication is the only way to grow this world into a better place. I find this article inspiring and hoe others do too.
no, it will be made with transistors, diodes, SCRs, inductors, capacitors and resistors. The integrated chip-chauvinist powers that be will never recognize it as a digital computational device!
Do you honestly think there is anything else besides a strong central government that can stand up to mega-corps?
I think people with guns can stand up to most megacorps quite nicely.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
Have gnu, will travel.
I can deal with corps by not buying from them...
You really can't though. Really. You not buying those Nike sneaks does not stop the slave factories, and whatever cell phone you bought, some black kid probably had to crawl through a dark whole to get the Rarebit-ium. 'Not actively supporting' is not the same as 'dealing with'...
IAIFARSIJDPOOTV - I Am In Fact A Reality Star; I Just Don't Play One On TV
What kind of honest legal arrangement could make a guy without a fortune to become the owner of big state owned enterprises like oil? Outside Mexico, Russians suffered the worst looting of public property in recent memory. Thankfully, at least their statesmen made something about their previous stupidity and they don't have a fucking crime war destroying the country.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
Creating an alternate up-link and backbone infrastructure isn't that difficult. You can use point-to-point microwave or laser communications to keep the backbone hidden, and a satellite up-link to connect to the wider world.
How do you deal with clients? You can't go around handing out access points in places like Syria or North Korea.
Even if you did, or more likely just relied on people using their existing cell phones and setting up "ghost" APs, you still are just going to get people killed.
In seriously oppressive regimes, they've just been TURNING OFF cellular communications. After that, it is child's play to do some Huff-Duff (HF-DF or High Frequency Direction Finding) in the appropriate bands to track down people with active cell phones.
Hell, North Korea is doing that NOW to track down people with Chinese cell phones who are circumventing the North Korean cell network to get outside info.
Radio signal tracking is old hat and fairly trivial.
Ultra-WideBand (UWB) would be the best, because it would just blend into the background noise, but we're back to the problem of distributing clients.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
They said that if a state launches a massive cyberattack targeting key infrastructure, that can be considered an act of war. Then you stupid anarchist kiddies started screaming "All hacking is an act of WAR! The US is EVIL!".
Scale matters. Intent matters. Targets matter. Shooting someone is not an act of war. Sending an army to a foreign country to shoot millions of people is.
There's no way this can come back to bite America in the ass. No way at all. Just like arming and training the Mujahideen in Afghanistan all those years ago led to those weapons and techniques being used against Americans in recent years, these "stealth internets" can possibly be used against American interests in the future. You can't assume that the people you give these to will be idiots. They'll find a way to use these to set up secure communications channels to use for their own purposes, not just for the purposes America might wish them to be used.
It's not hard to make spread spectrum/UWB networks that are very difficult to detect if you don't have the keys; much less track down. Sending out 2.4GHz routers is just the American version of a suicide vest -- if you try to use it, you are literally broadcasting your location and your intentions. But a true stealth network (maybe not that high a bandwidth, but we're not talking about downloading Transformers 3 in stereo) could be relatively risk-free; especially if the network cards were tamper-resistant.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Unless you are building chips for your hardware by yourself in your underground lab, using tools you also built by yourself - yes they do.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Apparently the US Govt is unaware of Freenet. Which I suppose is a good thing.
So when do we get these stealth internets for here in the US of A?
If you want to control corporations, and I do, you have to minimize gov power so the corps must concentrate on their economic position relative to competition.
HAAAAhahaha irony overload!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I visited those offices on L St mentioned in TFA last week. Where I was attending the Commotion code sprint.
Over the two days we managed to integrate OpenBTS and Serval phones and successfully placed a call from a GSM phone, through an OpenBTS tower, over an automatically configured mesh network running the OLSR routing protocol, to an android phone running Serval's software. Unfortunately we didn't capture this on film before we had to pack up and go our separate ways.
It should be fairly interesting to see where this project is headed.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Remember when Britain would ask citizens of the colonies to house British soldiers, and soldiers could search houses at any time to ensure the colonists were not up to something the Crown would disapprove of?
Then we fought them off, using guerrilla warfare compared to their organized military style, and gained our own independence?
And we set up rules about how we would be governed, and what the governmnet specifically could not do, based on our experience with the British government doing things we didn't like?
Well, fuck all that because now the Us of A can do whatever it likes, whenever it likes, to whomever it likes. Just ask Jose Padilla. Nearly al of the bill of rights are neutered or plain old cancelled. The only one clearly standing is separation of church and state, unless you are a Republican, so that's about 50% gone.
The US government now exists to perpetuate itself, not to govern the people for, by, and of the people. Transparency is gone, accountability is gone, and along with them your guaranteed rights. There is no America, only the same policies that brought down every regime too large for its own good. And we're next.
Surely, China could see this as an act of war, since it can be considered as an attack on its Internet infrastructure ;)
So now all the stuff they are discussing building, will be countered.
This is why this type of work shouldn't be in the media and why people working on these types of projects should not talk to the media.
What good does it do to put in the new york times all the technical details?
it's not that it wouldn't work in the USA, it's more that most people in the USA wouldn't know what to do with it.
A lot of technology is relatively secure on paper, but without training in how to use that technology it's pointless. In general also the internet isn't being shut down across the USA. If that were happening then you'd see just how effectively the technology is.
In this case most of the technology they are relying on requires US satellite or cellphone towers. The enemy can decrypt the cellphone messages, jam the signal, etc but this is expensive and not energy efficient for the majority of regimes. In the USA they'd just jam or shut off the cellphone networks and radio signals making all electronic communication useless, but they wont do this unless Martial Law is declared.
Anonymous might have some of the right goals, some of the same goals, but their way of going about it, by breaking domestic laws, is just fucking stupid.
If they wanted to focus on writing software to promote freedom from oppression I would be able to support them, but when they do some hacks they cross the line.
Such as outing Hal Turner. What good did that accomplish?
DDOSing websites? What good does that accomplish?
And a vast majority of the time the individuals who do these stupid hacks on stupid targets, don't take into account that they could accomplish more against terrible regimes by working with corporations and governments than by going to war with them all.
If someone wants to be involved in human rights based software development it would probably be wise of them not to associate with anonymous. Start something else, or join something less associated with blackhat criminal activity.
So does it have one? If not, it could be dangerous if it falls into the hands of a dissident the USA doesn't agree with. Really, it's a miracle that USA voters let their government get away with so much counter-productive waste of tax payers money. Either promote the Internet to be always on, or put a kill switch on. Don't do both.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
A system of interconnected networks is called an internet, and there can be multiple independent internets.
The Internet is the largest internet currently available all over the globe (one you are using when reading this). That network is unique, and therefore there can't be multiple Internets (capital 'I').
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
We're about five years away from the bad guys having more (real) money than the Federal government.
Only with better encryption and anonymization.
- The oppressive governments aren't likely to shut down voice PTT, as they depend on it too.
- Laptops either come with a modem built-in (older ones) or a USB modem (pretty cheap)
Yes, bandwidth will suck and you're back in the store & forward days. But the mesh layout means no single point of failure.
When US secrets are published, those who publish them are considered terrorists. When Russian secrets are published, the CIA busts open a bottle of champagne, and provides whatever needs necessary to the publisher to get the word out. Thereby, according to the government it's better to be a foreign "freedom fighter" (terrorist to that country, hero to us) than a patriot (terrorist to us). What I wonder is, say your a freedom fighter and you publish USA secrets, maybe they assume you are a terrorist organization?
Seriously, i think julian67 has a valid point.
i've tried several times to find the jihadist sites alluded-to in mainstream-media reports of events such as the release of a new AQ video, or a message claiming responsibility for a particular act of terrorism.
It ain't easy.
Most of the news reports refer to "SITE Intelligence Group" (siteintelgroup.com) as their source.
I've found a lot that *type* of extremist sites, but never any of those which actually distributed / published the material in the respective news report.