Activists are Designing Mesh Networks to Deploy During Civil Unrest (www.vice.com)
from zdhzm2pgp@lemmy.ml to technology@lemmy.ml on 18 Jun 22:36
https://lemmy.ml/post/31908978

#technology

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TribblesBestFriend@startrek.website on 18 Jun 22:47 next collapse

Sadly from October 2021, their site seems to be offline

zdhzm2pgp@lemmy.ml on 18 Jun 22:51 next collapse

Oops. Didn’t check the date; saw it on mastodon.social/explore/links.

TribblesBestFriend@startrek.website on 18 Jun 22:53 collapse

Yeah I’ve fall for it me too and foward it to my friend, cool projet nonetheless sadly it seems to be nowhere to be found 😢

SandySocks@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 23:13 next collapse

The project it looks based on is Meshtastic, the nodes are pretty cheap, you can even find them on Amazon if your truly desperate.

https://meshtastic.org/

digger@lemmy.ca on 18 Jun 23:39 next collapse

I LOVE Meshtastic!

user224@lemmy.sdf.org on 19 Jun 00:06 collapse

There’s also MeshCore, and now the networks are split between these 2.

curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 19 Jun 04:02 collapse

Well… Shit. Time to check out meshcore!

Edit: Nah, company driven.

I’ll keep the fully open GPL 3 meshtastic my preferred

vinnymac@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 23:42 next collapse

If someone is interested in getting involved with meshtastic but doesn’t have soldering or any electronics background you can purchase ready made devices from many vendors.

muzi.works/…/refurbished-r1-with-external-antenna

lilygo.cc/products/t-deck-plus-meshtastic?variant…

mesamunefire@piefed.social on 19 Jun 00:04 next collapse

It's a fun project!

Ulrich@feddit.org on 19 Jun 01:23 collapse

There are lots of competing LoRa mesh networks right now.

Rivalarrival@lemmy.today on 18 Jun 23:25 next collapse

Are you familiar with Briar?

Works over internet, TOR, local wifi, bluetooth, even “sneakernet”.

zdhzm2pgp@lemmy.ml on 18 Jun 23:28 next collapse

Is that still in development? The desktop client at least looks like it hasn’t been updated in quite some time.

Rivalarrival@lemmy.today on 18 Jun 23:30 collapse

AFAIK, yes. Latest release is from March of this year, and they have commits as of a month ago.

TribblesBestFriend@startrek.website on 18 Jun 23:38 next collapse

No I’m not. Looking foward to reading this

Rivalarrival@lemmy.today on 18 Jun 23:47 collapse

I’ve never used it, but I’ve heard of “Jami” that is supposed to operate in a similar fashion.

mp3@piefed.ca on 19 Jun 02:36 collapse

My only complaints with it are that there's no iOS app, which cut down the userbase significantly, and that there's no easy way to migrate / export a profile and and existing contacts between devices.

And I wish I could set a Briar mailbox node (without the encryption key, so that if compromised you can't read anything meaningful) on a VPS to receive messages when my app is offline. Right now the only way to accomplish this is with another Android device.

Rivalarrival@lemmy.today on 19 Jun 03:46 collapse

I’ve found Jami from another comment a few hours ago, but I haven’t downloaded it yet. But I think it expects an existing internet/network connection, where Briar seems to be focused on getting messages across through any means available.

dariusj18@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 23:34 collapse

Maybe briarproject.org/how-it-works/ as an alternative

dohpaz42@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 23:13 next collapse

To be fair, given what lengths the police will go to messing with protesters, would anybody trust some random mesh network?

Baaahb@feddit.nl on 18 Jun 23:18 next collapse

I mean, well, some would.

HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml on 18 Jun 23:21 collapse

Mesh networks can be built on zero trust principles and have everything E2EE. Kind of like Tor.

But the more realistic scenario is the police will just deploy jammers to completely disable all wireless communication.

dohpaz42@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 23:23 collapse

It could go either way. The benefit of faking an activist mesh network is tracking and surveillance for later retaliation.

jared@mander.xyz on 19 Jun 00:19 collapse

Reticulum network