We need to build a decentralized untouchable underground Internet

Its funny because I was just thinking about how much I hate facebook, and the non-privacy and FBI asking for back doors into facebook and was thinking about a decentralized encrypted social network that the users decide how it looks, functions, etc (completely democratic.

And then saw the post about Wikileaks starting something just like this:
Wkikileaks launches encypted network

So that got me thinking about what it would take to to build something similar around a sub or underground interent that is untouchable by the feds/gov's and tyranical dictators the way most countries are seemingly becoming.

or become telepathic

I am not a coder, but that is a most excellent idea friend. Perhaps some of out more tech members will check in, and this can come to fruition.

Believe it or not its already happening. Google the hidden web or tor browser.

like many ideas that seem to be self evident and occur to our common sense, this one in particular is yet strangely unrealized. Given the skill of many in the programming community it almost defies reason why some java vm that can run on all platforms containing within it all the small programs for p2p,chat, hosting etc hasnt already been developed and deseminated. Perhaps its an issue of money but there are many progs that are written and given away for free.

Indeed, such a 'program' may never garner much financial compensation due to its nature....but the gift to humanity i would hope would be enough of an incentive.

Creating an entire another standalone network that would be accessible to the whole nation (let alone the world) isn't possible in today's world. You will need a middleman (the ISP) to let you connect to the main network. And then the infrastructure to make it possible. That just isn't going to happen with government's intervention which means they would have the control,

Better alternative is TOR. You can achieve what you mentioned in the OP without much hassle. It is a kind of underground network and in a way decentralized.

Link- www.torproject.org...

Excellent idea. The only problem is the physical connections. They control the routers and pipes etc.

I've often wondered how capable such things as ham radio etc would be at carrying digital data. If it could be made to work simmilar to p/p networks where everone shares the load I think it might work. Anyone heard of such an idea?

I've been using i2P. Encrypted mail,torrents and even your own http server..
Still in development but runs very well.
Similar to Tor, with your own onion site etc.

reply to post by dominicus

The ability to form our own network is actually already present, it's just getting people to form a global network instead of lots of localised ones that is the problem, advertising that network too in the event of a black-out. VPN's in their various forms (Virtual Private Networks).

Someone in that Wikileaks thread said that the government created and owns the internet. This is not true. It is true that DARPA created the TCP/IP protocol back in the 60's or 70's as a research project for a nuclear attack resistant network but that is just the software enabling communication. The Internet itself runs on mainly civilian infrastructure such as that by all our ISP's. The protocol stack itself has had at least a few major code changes due to bugs discovered in it, on all OS's.

reply to post by blaenau2000


tor has its place, like other 'hidden' services....but im not sure it comes very close to the scope of what the OP is imagining.


i imagine it this way. Say theres an internet or ISP or telco outage, either accidental or on purpose....in times past if the telephone lines went down many people had CB radios or long range walkie talkies or even short wave radios...but in the modern more tech dense age we find ourselves, there is not an equivalent service that allows cellphone or mobile devices to continue communicating with each other notwithstanding the outage....and thats quite tragic.

modern cellphones or any mobile device with a cellular antennae (and wifi and bluetooth) are quite capable if there is software developed to unleash their potential. As yet I am not aware of any software out there that allows a user to take complete control over the radio capabilities of smart phone antennaes. However, if someone could build/program a 'stack' as i think its called, that would give most smart phones limited or better capability to communicate INDEPENDENT of radio towers, satellite gps etc, forming a wide area network of such devices, with chat and other services enabled, such a program would be of amazing practical value in many emergency situations we can all imagine.

the time has come, indeed, long ago, that such a backup, redundant, or 'underground' network should be constructed. Its a moral imperative. I hope someone with the skills that i sadly lack, will catch the vision and make a great contribution to the freedom and autonomy of humanity.

There's always dead drops if things get too out of hand.

reply to post by ratsinacage

You're not 100% correct. With the advent of Wifi, 3g, 4g, Wimax, all that, we are slowly becoming able to form our own mobile and regional wireless networks. With simple Wifi, you can attain a couple of miles transmission distance if you turn down the transmission speed (ie less MB's per second) and have a clear line of sight to your receiving station. It is built into the WIfi protocol that "we" can either be a client, a server, or both. Ad Hoc and Infrastructure mode. Ad Hoc means you usually communicate with other mobile devices such as laptops, PDA's, etc and Infrastructure Mode usually means you communicate via an Wifi Access Point or router, usually using encryption to keep unwanted people out of the internet connection.

Unfortunately, it is often due to regulations that the software part of a radio system is not "open source" because of (they claim) possible malicious use. For example, the GSM protocol or rather the encryption used is a secret or a patent or some such so may not be revealed. Or at least that used to be the case. Transmitting strength in consumer equipment is often limited although I do remember acquaintances who "overclocked" their CB installations back in the day by uh...larger antennas or something like that (I know very little about CB's) but it was apparently "illegal".

Once The Pirate Bay get those drones in the air we'll be all set.

reply to post by ratsinacage


You sir just hit the nail on the head

Mobile phones are most certainly capable, all they need is the software. If this worked like the peer to peer systems we wouldnt even need the network providers and that would mean FREE calls etc.

This is an area actively being worked as published in a recent issue of Scientific American. A decentralized, and very robust net, sometimes called the Black Net, or Shadow Net. I support this 100% because among other things hackers can't screw with it. That means screwing with you me anyone. One aspect of this is it freaks out nations like China, who have invested heavily in doing everything to prevent this. Let them take their best shot...

Originally posted by dominicus
Its funny because I was just thinking about how much I hate facebook, and the non-privacy and FBI asking for back doors into facebook and was thinking about a decentralized encrypted social network that the users decide how it looks, functions, etc (completely democratic.

And then saw the post about Wikileaks starting something just like this:
Wkikileaks launches encypted network

So that got me thinking about what it would take to to build something similar around a sub or underground interent that is untouchable by the feds/gov's and tyranical dictators the way most countries are seemingly becoming.

If WikiLeaks what's to have something of there own, as long as it does not post the kind of stuff that can get our people killed, screw's up confidential communiqués, etc, then they can knock them self up.

im also concerned about such a technology being hijacked by interests not friendly to a 'pure' democracy of such use. I'm not so naive to think that most programs dont have backdoors built in....and would such a protocol, open source or otherwise, be able to escape that paradigm? Hopefully it would be open source and be fully vetted by many disparate and un-connected coders to ascribe a minimum level of integrity to it.


as to the comments about such a system being already available....i dont see wi fi or bluetooth as satisfying the rigorous capabilities we are theorizing about. Its true that with tinkering/hacking someone can make an antennae to increase range and such....but where is the supporting software? Yes there are field tests of bluetooth being transmitted miles or whatever.....but where is the communications software infrastructure? I must agree with you to a point that the hardware/capability exists.....but that doesnt amount to a fully functional system of communication that i think we are saying we all really need.

Dead drops....a nice idea in theory...ive never used one and though i do like the idea in THEORY it carries with it just too many natural problems to be effective for a secure use.

If i didnt have to go to a sh ite job every day maybe i would have the inclination to learn to code myself to help on such a project....but when there are already dozens of highly skilled programmers already up to the task....why havent they taken the ball and run with it? Like i said before....the idea is obvious....until i read this post today I was the only one i knew of in my circle of acquaintances that had ever uttered the concept.....but all the while knowing like so many ideas it was simply too obvious to be my idea alone.......and now all i can do is wait until someone becomes its champion.....

Originally posted by ratsinacage
reply to post by blaenau2000

 

tor has its place, like other 'hidden' services....but im not sure it comes very close to the scope of what the OP is imagining.

The OP asked for sub or underground internet that is untouchable by the feds/gov's and tyranical dictators the way most countries are seemingly becoming.
So in that case Tor IS what he is looking for.

reply to post by VoidHawk


free calls....can you imagine everyones cell phone functioning as a node in a network whereby audio 'calls' could be made? this is the thing the 'owners' fear the most.....a truly unhinged, unfettered and user accessible control of the technology in their hands. If everyones cellphone was both a transmitter and a repeater....well we would not have much need of towers now would we? (food for thought)

personally i think its just a matter of time. There are so many aspects of society that appear to be headed towards some kind of critical mass.......and this 'critical mass' or watever you want to call it....will bode well for the little people....which is precisely why it must be staved off by anything tptb can invent. Otherwise we (the little people) would succeed in empowering ourselves to the point where we would hardly 'need' any governing body at all, in any sphere you can imagine.


technology must be for lack of a better word 'democratized'. I call upon those with the skills to do so, to make this dream a reality.

reply to post by ratsinacage

Actually yes! But, because mobile telephone protocols are private, we can't. The very same concept for Wifi exists and is deployed. It's called FON and involves allocating a small amount of bandwidth to anonymous passersby.

ETA
A radio as we know it in modern communications especially when attached to PC's or with a dedicated CPU as in a mobile phone usually comprises 2 parts. The radio transceiver itself and the controlling software. In the case of wifi, we are accustomed to having total control over both parts, ie the hardware or transceiver and the software necessary to control all aspects of it.

In the case of GPRS we only have a limited software control and no real access to the hardware due to intellectual property, government regulations or somesuch. In other words, with my laptop PC, I can form my own network, with my mobile phone I cannot.

Hope it makes sense.

reply to post by blaenau2000


i have to apologize as i rather superimposed my own ideas of this 'underground network' on the OP. Youre correct that if what is desired is a program affording a degree of anonymity running on top of other services (at&t, verizon, samsung, motorola) proprietary ISP algorithims and such then TOR could do that. I guess it could in theory even be run from a cellphone thus untethering it from the desktop/stationary environment. I was thinking far deeper than that and didnt bother to read the OP very well. I personally am after something far more mobile and fast than TOR, IP2 or any of those......something that can be run without even an ISP at all......can TOR do that? Something truly 'underground' i can only imagine to be something that can exist APART from the government owned communications infrastructure and thus far less able to be observed/analyzed. Any data being piped through gov owned stations is subject to analysis....and rather easily. But can you imagine a bunch of cellphones/wireless mobile devices running around all communicating with each other completely independent of the gov owned infrastructure????


well anyway, someone will do it someday.....