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Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

Why can't we build distributed networks? I more mean like Google, Apple, WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, etc building methods to communicate through WiFi/Bluetooth and not be completely reliant upon cellular. I don't mean your random 3rd party app that is useless because no one uses it.

It helps the people that frequently text in the same room. It helps during natural disasters (including power outages). It helps prevent oppressive governments from shutting down communication. I see these companies talk a lot about promoting democracy, so I want to see them make an open protocol that is installed on all phones that allow this. They have the network effect that's required to do this.

Hell, I think even if Apple or Google just did this others would follow. It cleanly fits into the new privacy + safety narratives both are selling.

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There is/was FireChat [1], which does exactly that. AFAIK it gained popularity during Hong Kong protests. Looks like it's now discontinued, not sure if there's a successor app.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireChat

I'm completely aware that there are apps that do these. The problem is the network effect. This app is all fine and dandy when you think ahead of time, but humans aren't really good at that (I have a laundry list of examples of us not doing this). So what I'm asking for is companies with a large network effect to leverage that, and their huge capital, to improve their existing products to be resistant to things like power outages and government shutdowns. It should be default, not require people to be proactive.

> Why can't we build distributed networks?

We can... but I'll argue, very hard, that we shouldn't. Because it's the wrong technology to solve the problem, being based on the very things that are well targeted, understood, and frequently compromised.

If the problem is "Cell phones are compromised through and through," which I'll argue they are, and Apple's addition of Lockdown to work through the fact that even their best sandboxing efforts have been bypassed argues for as well, then "doing things with cell phones" is a horrible idea, because once either an endpoint is compromised, or a tap is within range, you're still giving your adversaries everything they could desire. Both of those are basically certain in a protest.

> because once either an endpoint is compromised, or a tap is within range, you're still giving your adversaries everything they could desire

This is hogwash because it is the wrong threat model. The encryption in this kind of communication is nearly pointless. If you're trying to organize a protest where you have to be messaging 100+ people then there's no way you can vet everyone. There's going to be a mole. In fact, we saw this with some of the militias at Jan 6th. Despite using Signal their texts got turned over. You just have to turn one person to compromise the system.

Would I rather have the communications encrypted? Hell yeah. I'm that annoying friend that makes everyone use Signal. But it is absurd to think that wire tapped mass communication is worse than no mass communication. Revolutions and protests are won my shear mass. They often show their faces and are demonstrating in a public space (where there are often plenty of cameras: CCT, Police, and the protestors themselves!), so there's no concern about privacy already. Many get arrested, you can't arrest a large group. Arresting everyone would be nearly impossible.

Furthermore, people still use covert speech. People are doing it in Iran right now. People are doing it on highly censored platforms like WeChat. Hell, there's covert speech on Twitter. There's definitely an advantage to using phones rather than going down to the public square and organizing that way. If you think everything is/was organized in back rooms and in complete secrecy, you're gravely misinformed at how these things work in reality.

You have the wrong threat model.

Hmm... if "doing things with cell phones" is horrible idea, then what's possibley the good idea?

Doing things in person, with offline techniques.

If your location (which implies who you're with) and at least the metadata of your communications (who you communicate with, when, how frequently, how long of messages, etc) are sensitive, I don't believe there's any way to use a cell phone safely for those tasks.

And having grown up before cell phones, I assure you, there are ways to coordinate things offline. We just need to bring them back.

> Doing things in person, with offline techniques.

Also be sure that nobody carries cellphones into in-person meetings, otherwise location correlation will associate them.

> Also be sure that nobody carries cellphones into in-person meetings, otherwise location correlation will associate them.

Correct. Which is why it's good to start cultivating the habits now of "not always having your phone with you, powered on, or connected to the network." If you turn it off right before going somewhere, and that's the only place it's ever off, well, huh. That's interesting. If you're cultivating the forgetful 70 year old approach to cell phones of "I don't know where I left it and I think the battery is dead," so much the better.

> having grown up before cell phones, I assure you, there are ways to coordinate things offline

Landlines?

Good old secret associations and secret meetings. The Italians did it quite well 200 years ago [1]:

> Cardinals Ercole Consalvi and Bartolomeo Pacca issued an edict forbidding all secret societies, to become members of these secret associations, to attend their meetings, or to furnish a meeting-place for such, under severe penalties

It also f.cks with the head with those in power, having secret associations and secret meetings, that is. Having it all out in the open gives them (the authorities) the illusion of control, and, I'd argue, actual control over any significant protest movement. Moving it in the "shadows" is a good tactic because it helps make things blurry and it starts "attaching" doubts to said authorities' monopoly of violence. The authorities will ask themselves: "whom should I punish? where are the revolutionaries? is everyone a revolutionary?", and, as such, that will decrease their legitimacy and their hold on actual power.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonari#Origins

Even if you could get that to work someone would take a cellphone to the secret meeting and share a geotagged selfie, people just can't help themselves. Hello secret police!

Or, they'd somehow manage to control themselves, but would only turn off their cellphone just before they got there. It would be easy to figure out the pattern of a bunch of likely instigators heading to the same location.

Or, people would somehow learn to leave their cellphone at home. If anyone's then stopped by the police not having a cellphone in your pocket would be extremely suspicious in a totalitarian dictatorship.

Even then it's not Italy in the 1800s. There's surveillance cameras on every corner, and you're right back to the problem of no signal being the signal.

Nobody in Naples was filing multiple notices in their local papers before they had a normal meeting with their friends on a Tuesday, but that's what everyone's doing via social media. You can tease out suspicious meetings of any non-trivial size as being those without such a signal.

The only way this is going to work for any amount of time is if it's organized like modern terrorist cells, but that's assuming a lot of steps between angry students staging demonstrations and covert operatives.

> There's surveillance cameras on every corner

Yeah, that's a big no-no, I'm starting to realise it more and more. I honestly don't know if there's a solution to it.

I remember leaving some piece of advice about 10 years ago on this forum about how best to attend an anti-government protest without getting into potential trouble afterwards (in the context of these protests [1]). My advice back then was to take a tram/bus to about 2 or 3 stations away from the location of the protests themselves, and then to walk to said location, that way one would have avoided the security cameras located at the metro stations or in some buses back then.

Nowadays, unfortunately, that piece of advice is null because there are cameras actually everywhere (including at the location of the protests), and the government, if it so desires, has access to them almost at will.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Romanian_protests

Not to mention the advances in machine learning and integrated systems to piece the picture together.

Now you probably won't need to follow the breadcrumb trail of some protestor trying to evade surveillance through the methods you describe, facial recognition will be enough.

And if it isn't completing the puzzle might only take computer time, and not someone in the police forces trying to manually track people down.

The CCP is apparently giddy at the opportunity to help Iran build out these systems, so they're likely state of the art.

Western companies would probably be keen to compete, with the only thing stopping them being the US sanctions. We'll only sell these sort of systems to regimes that respect human rights, like The Netherlands, Romania, and Saudi Arabia.

Not to mention that it isn't uncommon for the government to fly planes in the sky with cameras. These can track quite far.

> Even if you could get that to work someone would take a cellphone to the secret meeting and share a geotagged selfie, people just can't help themselves. Hello secret police!

The book Deep Green Resistance goes into various organizing techniques (agree with them or not, it's a fascinating read on the history of leftist movements with quite a bit in the way of practical techniques), but this is one of the reasons why you need multiple different layers within a group - some core trusted layers, and then what amount to messengers who handle communication with that sort of person, with only what's needed.

And "the silence is the signal" is a reason one really needs to start cultivating these habits in ones social circles of not using social media, not posting everything online, etc. It's long past time to reject the draw of social media as intermediating everything, and either start hosting your own stuff at small scale, or simply not using consumer/networked tech for anything important.

Using Metadata to find Paul Revere. -- Keiren Healy -- June 9, 2013.

https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metad...

Google, Apple, etc. do not have economic incentives to build it. They benefit from having everything going through their walled gardens.

They have an economic incentive just the same way they have the economic incentive to build better cellular infrastructure. Something they already invest in.

Investment in cellular infrastructure increases reach which increases the number of customers they can reach which increases profit.

Investment in distributed networks, reduces their own access to data about their customers because it would no longer go through their servers, which reduces income, at least for all of the companies that have an advertising business.

> Investment in cellular infrastructure increases reach which increases the number of customers they can reach which increases profit.

I could make this exact same argument about distributed networks. Along with the added selling point of safety, privacy, and security. Chat and share pictures with your friends while camping. Trying to contact your neighbors during a power outage?! There's a lot of angles to sell this.

> Investment in distributed networks, reduces their own access to data about their customers because it would no longer go through their servers

I have some serious doubts. If Google can still collect data you've collected while on airplane mode by just sending it once you reconnect to the network then they can do the same with this. If anything, I think it would increase the amount of data they can gather because it extends the capabilities of how one is able to communicate.

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