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German Hackers Propose Uncensorable Global Grid — With Satellites

Posted by timothy on from the das-klingt-aber-gut dept.

braindrainbahrain writes "The members of the Stuttgart Hackerspace have taken it upon themselves to launch their own space program. The immediate goal of the Hacker Space Program is to create an uncensorable internet in space beyond the control of terrestrial entities using a network of ground stations and communications satellites. In the longer term (think the year 2035), they'd like to put a hacker astronaut on the moon!"

46 of 262 comments (clear)

  1. I Wonder... by mrozone · · Score: 5, Funny

    Can a Hot Pocket be cooked in space?

  2. Prediction: Bad people will use it by Tekfactory · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Someone will shut it down, that's why we can't have nice things.

    1. Re:Prediction: Bad people will use it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      > I posit that there is nothing inherently bad with any speech

      Excellent. Let me know your credit card numbers. I'm sure you won't mind if broadcast them to the entire internet - it's just speech. Also, there's no such thing as "imaginary property". You suffer no loss from my telling them to everyone - you are still in possession of the numbers after I do, so this is not theft.

    2. Re:Prediction: Bad people will use it by MightyYar · · Score: 2

      Let me know your credit card numbers.

      I'm fairly confident that if it was impossible to keep credit card numbers a secret, people would come up with a new system. Perhaps we would all be better off and more secure if people could freely list credit card numbers.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    3. Re:Prediction: Bad people will use it by Electricity+Likes+Me · · Score: 2

      Ideally a credit card number would be a public key, and part 1 of a two-factor authentication scheme, where all it did was allow someone to request a payment from a nominated account. Trading entities would publish their keys so requests could be filtered and verified, but required manual confirmation.

      No "silent" charges.

    4. Re:Prediction: Bad people will use it by hawguy · · Score: 2

      > I posit that there is nothing inherently bad with any speech

      Excellent. Let me know your credit card numbers. I'm sure you won't mind if broadcast them to the entire internet - it's just speech. Also, there's no such thing as "imaginary property". You suffer no loss from my telling them to everyone - you are still in possession of the numbers after I do, so this is not theft.

      If a hacker has my credit card number, he doesn't need a privately run satellite network to share it.

      And once he has that number, it doesn't really matter how many people he gives it to - once my credit card company discovers the suspicious activity and shuts down the card, it doesn't matter to me if one person or a million people have my card number.

    5. Re:Prediction: Bad people will use it by sexconker · · Score: 4, Insightful

      > I posit that there is nothing inherently bad with any speech

      Excellent. Let me know your credit card numbers. I'm sure you won't mind if broadcast them to the entire internet - it's just speech. Also, there's no such thing as "imaginary property". You suffer no loss from my telling them to everyone - you are still in possession of the numbers after I do, so this is not theft.

      The trick is that free speech means you can say whatever you want and never be punished for it, and you can never have your right to say shit removed, but you can be held responsible and punished for the effects of your speech.

    6. Re:Prediction: Bad people will use it by jdavidb · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The reason we can't have nice things is not because bad people use them, but because bad people shut them down, using the other bad people as a pretense.

      --
      Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
    7. Re:Prediction: Bad people will use it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Usually most laws about cause and effect require the accusation to pass the "reasonable man" test.

      Would a reasonable man dial 911 if you yell fire in a theatre? Yes. Therefore, you as the person yelling fire get the bill for the false alarm.

      Would a reasonable man try to kill a senator because you posted a hardcore libertarian rant on a weblog? No. Therefore, if it happens, it's not your fault.

      Yes, the reasonable man test has a lot of grey area (often related to silly stuff like religion), but that's for the courts to figure out. Sucks if your court is full of crazies. That's why "free speech" is always going to be limited as long as there's a government and people controlling it, even if you have the "right" spelled out on a piece of paper. He who has the money and the guns makes and/or breaks the rules and all that.

    8. Re:Prediction: Bad people will use it by pixelpusher220 · · Score: 2

      Mine effectively is...sorta anyway. Big bad Bank of America has a 'ShopSafe' program where I can get a randomly generated card/ccv/exp set with a fixed limit that I choose. Even has a $x/month recurring charge option for say, Netflix or other subscription services.

      I give that random number out to merchants so if things are hacked, they only have on average a $50 limit to work with. Not $50 limit to my liability, but a fixed limit on that card number's chargeable amount.

      And my cc number never leaves my pocket. If some vendor gets hacked, the exposed number is simply shut down and I don't have to then go change numbers at 14 other merchants.

      My 2 factor is something I 'know', my password, and something I 'have' the generated number. It's not exact as the 'have' can be determined if they get the 'know', but it is two separate pieces of data. Though if followed through to the extreme (which I don't) and if this card was never used at retail places then the 'have' would be the ccv number which I need to enter to generate the random cc num.

      I really don't like BofA, but I haven't found anyone else with this type of online payment random card number ability.

      --
      People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people :-D
    9. Re:Prediction: Bad people will use it by tehcyder · · Score: 2

      *sigh* OK then, how about if I publish your private key/incredibly clever and long password as that is also just a string of digits?

      You are mising the point that some things are not free speech and should not be freely available.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
  3. Free speech! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    Cool. Now they can finally draw a swastika without the government freaking out and going apeshit on them. Because we all know, drawing a symbol on a piece of paper is what caused the Third Reich.

    Nevermind the swastika was actually a holy symbol... apparently they want the Nazi's tarnishing of it to stand unchallenged.

    1. Re:Free speech! by SuricouRaven · · Score: 4, Informative

      *Almost* a holy symbol. For some strange reason, the Nazi version was drawn back-to-front. Pre-nazi, the other way around dominated, though the flipped form was not unknown.

  4. EMP will take care of that by jollyreaper · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If the big governments want rid of it, they will find a way.

    --
    Kwisatz Haderach
    Sell the spice to CHOAM
    This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
  5. Uncensorable? by Wowsers · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And what is there to prevent a government transmitting from the ground to disrupt the satellite transmission?

    --
    Take Nobody's Word For It.
    1. Re:Uncensorable? by Tekfactory · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If you are worried about governments, the problem is not disrupting the satellites at all, the weak link is the ground station which by definition resides in somebody's territory.

      I don't think there are enough friendly countries of convenience to give you line of sight and global access to the satellites 24/7. Symantec published a book on the different IT Security laws all over the globe, its dated now, but a map of something like that would be interesting for this discussion.

      So then you end up only running ground stations out of frendly countires somewhere in the netherlands perhaps, maybe to command and control satellites that route CnC information and traffic to the other satellites in the constellation which may be over an unfriendly country at the time.

      I can't really see it working unless every user is a ground station/autonomous node.

      There are some neat things you can do once you have this up, even for broadcast. Say you used it to broadcast grain or soybean prices to farmers in rural farming villages. Reformat traffic information from publicly funded sources (traffic cameras) and send them to a generic GPS or smartphone app so I don't need to pay TomTom or Garmin for the privilege of knowing if I will be sitting in traffic or not.

    2. Re:Uncensorable? by tmosley · · Score: 2

      I don't understand why people think they won't launch these with commercial launch service.

  6. Radio is inherently jammable by phayes · · Score: 2

    to any government that cares to do so...

    --
    Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
    1. Re:Radio is inherently jammable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's still easier: they'll shut down the ground stations.
      They should try mesh network but getting from the Americas to anywhere else looks challenging. Even in the same country lag can be terrible as packets get routed from home router to home router but a round trip from a bunch of satellites to get on the other site of the world is not quick.

  7. Guns by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I tend to agree, even as I applaud them for trying. The fact is that government = guns, and the man with the gun always wins.

    To clarify, government is defined as the organization holding the unique "right" to employ deadly force (or threat thereof) as a business model. You simply cannot compete with that unless you have similar firepower (which government makes damn sure won't ever happen).

    1. Re:Guns by forkfail · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I always am amazed at you "government is the root of all evil" folks.

      Let's say you do away with governments. Do you think that power will disappear? That government is power?

      How is it that you can see the evil of governments (and yes, they do exist), but not see the fact that there has to be some entity of the people to counterbalance private power? That at least with public power, there is some sort of ability to limit private power.

      Power abhors a vacuum. What you take away from governments, you hand to private entities - corporations, religious entities, whatever - something will fill the void. If you want any sort of control over what happens, you have to make the instrument of public power the tool of the public, and not the tool of the private entities. Therein lies the trick. Simply doing away with government is absolutely handing the deed to the hen house over to those that government is supposed to protect the rest of us from.

      --
      Check your premises.
    2. Re:Guns by cheekyjohnson · · Score: 2

      I always am amazed at you "government is the root of all evil" folks.

      Where did he even say that?

      --
      Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
    3. Re:Guns by forkfail · · Score: 2

      I'm all for second amendment rights (to the chagrin of my rather liberal friends, often) - but nevertheless, a well trained, disciplined military force will rip through a disorganized militia.

      Absolutely an armed citizenship can be subdued and conquered. Especially when you throw in the propaganda/advertising techniques that we've got these days to turn folks against themselves.

      And regardless of this, you can't always be tearing down all organization - that is anarchy, and that road leads to extinction. No, there has to exist some entity that maintains justice and balance. And that entity is government. The people have been persuaded (again) that government is evil by the very folks that would see their own private power increased - that is, by the uber rich and the corporations.

      If the tool of the people is broken and corrupt, then it needs to be fixed. But you can't do away with it completely. To quote Jefferson:

      That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

      --
      Check your premises.
    4. Re:Guns by forkfail · · Score: 2

      It's inherent in his definition of government.

      I'd argue that his definition is that of a broken government. The definition of a functional, western democracy is, IMO, that of the instrument of the people; the collective power of the citizenry to offset other powers, both internal and external to the nation in question.

      --
      Check your premises.
  8. where do i donate $$$ by alen · · Score: 4, Funny

    since it will cost like eleventy billion $$$ or euros where can i donate? i'll gladly donate $50,000 for this just to be able to download free movies and music

    1. Re:where do i donate $$$ by cdibbs · · Score: 5, Funny

      They probably only accept Bitcoins.

    2. Re:where do i donate $$$ by hawguy · · Score: 2

      Don't be silly. It would be abused for trading media files and other copywritten content, eating up what limited bandwidth there is to use. In turn, the owners will start filtering it for more worthwhile causes. The the pirates will get all up in arms because "You're trying to filter free speech on a medium specifically built to be free!" Haven't you learned? That community does nothing but ruin things for the rest of us.

      I think it would be relatively easy to block media files from being uploaded, even if it's ASCII (or unicode, or whatever) encoded.

      File size limits, rate-limiting (only x posts from the same IP/user account per hour), algorithms to look for encoded binaries, etc can all combine to make it unattractive for media hosting. Bandwidth constraints alone would make it unattractive for large files. Or they could use a bit-coin type computational task required before a post is accepted can also help reduce binary traffic - you might be willing to spend a few CPU seconds to post a 1K document, but if it "costs" a million times more to post a 1GB media file, you'd likely find an alternative.

      None of this helps with DoS attacks, which is the big flaw in this project, and it's how governments will shut it down. No need to send up a satellite killer, just jam its input channel(s) with a powerful transmitter.

  9. Landside? by smi.james.th · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I read about this on the Make Magazine blog a few days ago. (Link for anyone who's interested.)

    Something that strikes me as weird though. From TFA:

    In the open-source spirit of Hackerspace, Mr Bauer and some friends came up with the idea of a distributed network of low-cost ground stations that can be bought or built by individuals. Used together in a global network, these stations would be able to pinpoint satellites at any given time, while also making it easier and more reliable for fast-moving satellites to send data back to earth.

    So... these ground stations would I presume be connected together by, uh, the internet? I don't get it.

    Not that I'm against this at all, I think it's a fabulous idea. I'd buy one. Or build one. Or whatever.

    --
    One thing I know, and that is that I am ignorant...
  10. Now where have I heard this...... by sgt_doom · · Score: 2
    Effing A! Phase I implemented......

    http://thedaemon.com/

    http://thedaemon.com/daemonsynopsis.html

  11. Had this idea a decade or so ago... by crankyspice · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Was going to write a science fiction tale around it, but life intervened (and I'm not the wordsmith to make "OMG, data from the skies!" interesting... Neal Stephenson can make building a data haven interesting. Me, notsomuch...).

    The idea came about when I read about Sealand. Okay, sure, great, pseudo-island-nation with its own wacky laws -- but, (a) their pipes have to terminate somewhere, and (b) one pissed off Iranian speedboat[1] with a small hand-launched missile could wreak enough havoc to take Sealand offline, if push came to shove.

    My idea coupled the then-burgeoning phenomenon of microsats http://slashdot.org/articles/00/06/11/2013214_F.shtml with the fuzziness of international / maritime law; rogue geeks on sailboats uploading censored data to the satellite network, that could then be received by any kid with an 18" dish and readily available receiver plans. (Transceiver seemed a bit far fetched.)

    Maybe I'll write it one day. How long 'til NaNoWriMo?

    [1] Leaving aside for the moment the logistics of how such a speedboat would traverse the open ocean from the Strait of Hormuz to the coast of England ... [insert African swallow reference(s) here]

    --
    geek. lawyer.
    1. Re:Had this idea a decade or so ago... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Was going to write a science fiction tale around it, but then I took an arrow to the knee...

      Fixed.

    2. Re:Had this idea a decade or so ago... by Bucky24 · · Score: 2

      How long 'til NaNoWriMo?

      Well it's not until November so another 10 months? Personally I think it would be awesome if they left that graph thing running, just resetting every month. It's a great motivator. I've been thinking about coding something similar, just haven't gotten around to it.

      --
      All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
    3. Re:Had this idea a decade or so ago... by migla · · Score: 2

      How long 'til NaNoWriMo?

      Well it's not until November so another 10 months? Personally I think it would be awesome if they left that graph thing running, just resetting every month. It's a great motivator. I've been thinking about coding something similar, just haven't gotten around to it.

      Seems like you could use the NaNaNoWriMoCoWriMO - National NaNOWriMO Code Writing Month.

      --
      Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
  12. Uncensorable? by PPH · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think China has already demonstrated the ability to censor satellite-based communications.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  13. What about money? by kikito · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You know, putting satellites in orbit is kind of expensive. Who is going to pay for all that?

    1. Re:What about money? by MagikSlinger · · Score: 2, Funny

      Pfft! They'll just wire up some servos, an arduino and some hobby rocket motors, and it's all good. :-)

      --
      The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
    2. Re:What about money? by Tekfactory · · Score: 2

      Serious answer SpaceX, they have a really low cost per kilo to launch to LEO, and higher cost to launch to GEO. They will be doing a lot of satellite launches for Iridium to put up their satellite network.

      So now the problem is really architecting your standardized satellite not using a standardized picosat or microsat designed for limited experiments, but something meant to be up there for years handling comms.

      Then bundle them in a multiple satellite payload of some sort and have them spread to their final orbits from there using precious fuel, or get 50 kilos of payload reserved on a lot of other people's launches.

  14. Bandwidth? by brit74 · · Score: 2

    But, how much bandwidth would they need (especially considering all the bandwidth torrents consume) and how much bandwidth could one satellite provide? It sounds like they'd need a whole fleet of expensive satellites. Sounds to me like it's either a pipe-dream or a bluff.

    1. Re:Bandwidth? by wagnerrp · · Score: 2

      There's a big difference between a telecommunications satellite and a television satellite. A television satellite is nothing but a repeater. It gets a feed from a ground station, and bounces it back out over its primary antenna. A telecommunications satellite needs to simultaneously relay traffic from many endpoints to many other endpoints. Think of it like a network hub versus a network switch.

  15. Amateur Radio Satellites by Ozoner · · Score: 4, Informative

    Are you aware of the more than 70 Amateur-Radio Satellites which have been launched since 1961?

    see http://www.spacetoday.org/Satellites/Hamsats/HamsatsBasics.html

  16. A few hurdles .. by n5vb · · Score: 5, Insightful
    1. $10k/pound. Maybe less depending on which launch carrier will give you a ride to orbit, and how many sats can be taken up per launch, and how easily you can get each one into the orbit you want. And extra sats, because launch payloads don't always make it.
    2. Latency. Not as bad as with GEO sat links if you have a constellation of LEO sats, but packet round trip times are going to be seriously long, especially if you have multiple sat-to-sat line-of-sight hops on long connections. Unless you're connecting to a host in the footprint of the same sat you're connecting on, those trip times might cause TCP connections to drop if they're not aware of the longer latency. (This was a major problem with commercial "satellite Internet" ISP's a few years ago, as I recall.)
    3. Infrastructure. There will need to be at least one nameserver on the network, ideally a distributed name service that can propagate from a root name authority, and while it's probably not too outrageous to put the backbone routers on the sats and have them dynamically manage their routing tables based on which sats they can see (and possibly determining their locations via SGPS so they can route geographically) and maybe host the distributed DNS service as well, a fair bit of the core infrastructure and management will have to be on the ground somewhere. If it's in a country that doesn't absolutely love the idea of this system being operational, expect that ground control rackspace to be raided at some point. And if it's in an isolated location that isn't well defended by a willing host country, or the host country becomes unwilling at some point in the future, same hazard. (This actually makes some risks far greater because
    4. Attrition. LEO is LEO, and one of the facts of life at LEO altitudes is drag, at least at perigee. The sats will have to have some propulsion capability to maintain orbit, or more will have to be launched periodically to replace the ones that have de-orbited. Higher altitudes are far less susceptible to drag, but increase latency and possibly exposure to van Allen belt radiation. And there's always the danger of random collisions with space debris at almost any altitude, although low-LEO orbits are a lot more full of trash than higher altitudes.

    That's just off the top of my head. A worthy endeavor, but one that would require significant investment and planning.

  17. Re:Only... by interkin3tic · · Score: 5, Funny

    Coming to a congress near you by 2020 if this happens: SPACE JOB act

    (Solving Pirating American Copyright Enforcement Junk Orbiting Ban)

    A bill sold as protecting American satellites from this terrible problem of space junk in orbit, American jobs from overseas satellite hackers bent on stealing movies, and national security.

    It stipulates that the military will, at the RIAA/MPAA's command, blow up any satellite that the RIAA/MPAA lawyers say probably has pirated material on it. Additionally, large amounts of metal objects will be placed in orbit make it difficult for pirates to launch any more satellites. Sponsors of the bill say they don't really understand physics, but they doubt that could damage innocent satellites. They also point out that the constitution doesn't apply in space.

  18. Why not LOS shots? by HBI · · Score: 2

    This is a 5ghz band line of sight radio that I have worked with.

    This product delivers 108mbps of real bandwidth over a shot that can be up to about 20 miles. The radios can also be meshed, allowing multiple connections to each antenna. It's essentially not all that much different than wifi AP rigged up with a directional antenna. We've seen articles about such shots being extended to the same ranges the RF-7800w achieves. The key issue with such shots is the terrain, of course. Hills and valleys pose problems.

    That said, why isn't anyone thinking about this? It would work. True, it wouldn't help with transoceanic shots, but in that case you could consider satellite to carry that kind of traffic. Or just pipe it over the wired Internet using the encryption mechanism of your choice - cheaper and easier. Use the sats as a backup to that in the event of government interference.

    --
    HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
  19. Re:The road to Hell is paved with good intentions by Sentrion · · Score: 2

    The predecessors of our modern FAA and FCC both began at the infancy of aviation (NACA in 1915, and FAA in 1926 when aviation went commercial) and wireless communication (Radio Act of 1912), respectively. Whenever activity goes unregulated, there is a congressman somewhere with a bill waiting to be voted into law. Any new development that frees people from the confines of their well regulated environment will quickly be snuffed out or absorbed by an ever expanding bureaucracy.

  20. This was first discussed this summer by VP · · Score: 2

    at the CCC Camp in Germany. A lot of space-related topics were presented there

  21. NO! by uvajed_ekil · · Score: 2

    It would be shot down by communist China, not lobbyists.

    --
    This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.