Decentralizing Telecom

December 2, 2012 (via LocalOrg) SOPA, ACTA, the criminalization of sharing, and a myriad of other measures taken to perpetuate antiquated business models propping up enduring monopolies - all have become increasingly taxing on the tech community and informed citizens alike. When the storm clouds gather and torrential rain begins to fall, the people have managed to stave off the flood waters through collective effort and well organized activism - stopping, or at least delaying SOPA and ACTA.

However, is it really sustainable to mobilize each and every time multi-billion dollar corporations combine their resources and attempt to pass another series of draconian rules and regulations? Instead of manning the sandbags during each storm, wouldn't it suit us all better to transform the surrounding landscape in such a way as to harmlessly divert the floods, or better yet, harness them to our advantage?

In many ways the transformation has already begun.
While open source software and hardware, as well as innovative business models built around collaboration and crowd-sourcing have done much to build a paradigm independent of current centralized proprietary business models, large centralized corporations and the governments that do their bidding, still guard all the doors and carry all the keys. The Internet, the phone networks, radio waves, and satellite systems still remain firmly in the hands of big business. As long as they do, they retain the ability to not only reassert themselves in areas where gains have been made, but can impose preemptive measures to prevent any future progress.

With the advent of hackerspaces, increasingly we see projects that hold the potential of replacing, at least on a local level, much of the centralized infrastructure we take for granted until disasters or greed-driven rules and regulations upset the balance. It is with the further developing of our local infrastructure that we can leave behind the sandbags of perpetual activism and enjoy a permanently altered landscape that favors our peace and prosperity.

Decentralizing Telecom 

As impressive as a hydroelectric dam may be and as overwhelming as it may seem as a project to undertake, it will always start with but a single shovelful of dirt. The work required becomes in its own way part of the payoff - with experienced gained and with a magnificent accomplishment to aspire toward.
In the same way, a communication network that runs parallel to existing networks, with global coverage, but locally controlled, may seem an impossible, overwhelming objective - and for one individual, or even a small group of individuals, it is. However, the paradigm has shifted. In the age of digital collaboration made possible by existing networks, the building of such a network can be done in parallel.
In an act of digital-judo, we can use the system's infrastructure as a means of supplanting and replacing it with something superior in both function and in form.

1. Mesh Networks: The first shovelful of dirt is to building a dam, as developing a rudimentary mesh network is to building a parallel "second Internet." It is a small project a small group of people can work on, with a lot of resources already out there to start with.

Image: A visual depiction of Project Byzantium's ad-hoc wireless mesh network. More information can be found on their website here. Such networks are being funded and passed out by the US State Department for use by "activists" to oust dictators in exchange for new ones, who coincidentally are US-backed. However, such networks also possess the ability to effect pragmatic change on a technical and local level.

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Syria's Internet Outage & the Future of Information Warfare

December 1, 2012 (LD) - It's not that Syria's government didn't prepare for war. They perhaps, simply prepared for the wrong kind of war.

This week when sweeping outages in Syria's communication networks were reported, the Western media immediately accused the Syrian government of being behind the move. However, it should be noted that NATO-backed terrorists operating inside of Syria have been openly given advanced communication equipment (also here and here) by Western nations, including the United States, allowing militants to create their own, independent communication networks. This includes radio, satellite, and cell networks, as well as the under-reported existence of "suitcase Internets" (also here and here).

The reason a communications blackout in Syria would not effect NATO's primary proxy forces is because any node or bottleneck in Syria controlled by the government has already long since been circumvented, either through independent networks, or satellite links.

Image: New York Times depicts what is called a "mesh network," or an independent internet that uses computers and phones not only as interfaces, but as actual nodes to create the network Imagine in this case, that the "country border" is that of Turkey and Syria. Such networks can be set up virtually anywhere, and the development of methods and software to do so have been the subject of US State Department funding and implementation.

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The New York Times in their article, "U.S. Underwrites Internet Detour Around Censors," stated in June, 2011 that:

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.

The effort includes secretive projects to create independent cellphone networks inside foreign countries, as well as one operation out of a spy novel in a fifth-floor shop on L Street in Washington, where a group of young entrepreneurs who look as if they could be in a garage band are fitting deceptively innocent-looking hardware into a prototype “Internet in a suitcase.”

Therefore, the Syrian government would gain very little by shutting off the Internet to neutralize networks working entirely independent of infrastructure within state control. Conversely, if NATO has shut the Internet off at nodes leading into Syria, as appears to be the case, NATO and their proxies operating inside of Syria can begin spreading false information, uncontested, via radio, SMS, and even ad hoc WiFi networks.

With NATO's proxies possessing their own communication networks, their own ability to co-opt and control signals in and near their areas of operation, in particular along the borders where NATO forces themselves are directly involved in disrupting and controlling communications, according to Reuters, a disruption in Syria's communication networks would only serve to blind, hinder, and disrupt the government and the vast majority of Syria's civilians.