[Commotion-dev] Fwd: [liberationtech] Circumventing Government-Imposed Communication Blackouts

Tue Jul 23 16:46:34 UTC 2013

I just recently heard of it.  One of the people on the project, Yahel
Ben-David, was also involved in the AirJaldi mesh network in India.  The
rangzen software sounds like it would be very complimentary with OLSR mesh
networks.

Looks like quite an interesting project.  Its basically a secure system of
peer-to-peer delay-tolerant messaging.  On one hand, its good that they are
focusing on the layer above the actual network connectivity since it is an
area ripe for exploration.  It sounds like they are making delay-tolerant Tor,
with delay meaning hours, days, etc.

Their descriptions seem to say that this project
provide a complete networking solution when there is a network blackout.  But
when you look at the details of what the actual network is, they say it is
"leveraging whatever connectivity may be available, from full 3G/4G internet
access, through ad-hoc wifi & Bluetooth, to sneakernet (manual transport of
SD-cards)."

To use adhoc wifi, bluetooth, etc. seamlessly and transparently is quite
difficult and relies on lots of manual steps.  Sneakernet is definitely very
manual.  This means that this project will remain an "activist tool", and once
it is at all widely deployed, it will become a target like Tor is.  I suspect
Rangzen traffic will be tracked and blocked by China, etc. like how
Tor traffic is.

So the key its success of it is getting it working well with as many available
data transports as possible: mesh networks, GSM, internet, bluetooth, wifi
direct, sneakernet, etc.  Sounds like they have the money to do that.
Hopefully they'll work collaboratively and openly so that all of these related
projects can share on the hard technical details.

They have a paper which outlines their criticisms of existing approaches:
http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~yahel/papers/Building_Dissent_Networks-Towards_Effective_Countermeasures_against_Large-Scale_Communications_Blackouts.FOCI2013.pdf

.hc

On 07/22/2013 11:48 PM, Paul Gardner-Stephen wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> The project rings a bell, but I don't recall if I ever managed to speak
> with them.
> 
> Certainly worth following up.
> 
> Paul.
> 
> On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 11:21 AM, Dan Staples <
> danstaples at opentechinstitute.org> wrote:
> 
>> Some pretty ambitious goals...perhaps let's get in touch with them, if
>> no one is already. I've never heard of the project before.
>>
>>
>> -------- Original Message --------
>> Subject: [liberationtech] Circumventing Government-Imposed Communication
>> Blackouts
>> Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2013 18:17:49 -0700
>> From: Yosem Companys <companys at stanford.edu>
>> Reply-To: liberationtech <liberationtech at lists.stanford.edu>
>> To: Liberation Technologies <liberationtech at lists.stanford.edu>
>> CC: Yahel Ben-David <yahel at denovogroup.org>
>>
>> http://rangzen.denovogroup.org/wp/
>>
>> We develop technology to allow citizens of repressive regimes to
>> communicate freely, independent of government or corporate-controlled
>> infrastructure, while providing strong anonymity guarantees.
>>
>> - Infrastructure Independent: A mobile mesh that scales to millions of
>> users, without compromising their safety.
>> - Trustworthy: Leverages social connections to resist attack and
>> infiltration.
>> - Private: Provides strong anonymity guarantees to users to preserve
>> their privacy.
>>
>> Enabled by a generous grant from the US State Department’s Bureau of
>> Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL), as part of their Internet
>> Freedom Initiative, we embark on an exciting journey to help citizens
>> of oppressive regimes circumvent government-imposed communication
>> blackouts.
>>
>> At the core of this work, is our recent study – Rangzen, on which
>> we’ll build the remaining elements for a widely deployable solution.
>> Some of these elements pose fascinating research challenges, while
>> others call for skillful integration of existing solutions.
>> Our core team of developers is housed in Berkeley’s computer science
>> department (EECS), amidst graduate students and faculty, at the CITRIS
>> headquarters, to drive the research agenda and incorporate
>> cutting-edge studies through a collaborative process.
>>
>> We plan to release a beta version of the Android-app by the end of
>> summer 2014. This version will be rigorously tested, peer reviewed and
>> experimented with by students and the general public, leading to bug
>> fixes and feature enhancement in successive releases.
>>
>> Our work is freely available as open-source encouraging peer review
>> and transparency.
>>
>> We work in tight collaboration with the TIER group and the Data and
>> Democracy Initiative (DDI).
>>
>> Rangzen is the Tibetan word for Freedom/Liberty/Independence.
>> --
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>>
>>
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> 
> 
> 
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