Here Come the Internet Blackouts - Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, and First World Countries...
Here Come the Internet Blackouts - Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, and First World Countries are Not Immune Either
On the first day of the new year, the Democratic Republic of Congo cut internet connections and SMS services nationwide — for the second day in a row. The reason? To avoid the “chaos” that might result from its presidential election results. Not even a week later, on January 7, Gabon’s government did the same after an attempted coup. And it’s unlikely that these will be the last “internet blackouts” we hear about over the coming months.
In fact, we’ll likely see a rise in internet blackouts in 2019, for two reasons: countries deliberately “turning off” the internet within their borders, and hackers disrupting segments of the internet with distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks (and let's not forget natural disasters either). Above all, both will force policymakers everywhere to reckon with the fact that the internet itself is increasingly becoming centralized — and therefore increasingly vulnerable to manipulation, making everyone less safe.
Let's not think First World Countries are Immune either. The issue of control is not around the hundreds of lower tier ISPs that you deal with, its the first tier operators and the peering exchanges through which all Internet traffic in a country flows. These operators are far fewer and are also granted licenses with strict conditions. Many governments have a right to intercept at this level (remember NSA having installed equipment at AT&T - Room 641A?) and it is at this level they get an instruction to switch off the whole pipe, to intercept, or to block certain traffic. I think it was in the UK a few years back that social media was blocked during a localised riot with a lot of violence too. Whilst its true a First World country is far less likely to block the Internet in its entirety, believe me that they are ready to do so, and that more likely there will be censorship (Australia) and quite likely temporary social media blackouts in areas where there is extreme unrest or violence (for people's safety of course!).
Disasters are quite likely to black out certain areas for a time. A blackout means no Internet, no VoIP phones, no e-mail, no social media.
So what's your plan B as its too late to do anything whilst you are in a blackout situation? Some ideas are:
1. Censorship - easily overcome with a VPN service. You can often also just use alternative social media accounts (but you want to be registered there along with some friends already - it's too late to send a tweet once Twitter is blocked). Using non-mainstream social media like Diaspora, Mastodon, Hubzilla works very well as they are not centralised - you can register at any hub and anyone can follow you there. Mastodon is an ideal alternative to Twitter = also lightweight, familiar, lots of different hubs to connect to that no-one has heard of.
2. Internet Blackout/Disaster - a bigger problem as there is often zero connectivity. Even if the local Internet has slow access you may not be able to reach a centralised site that is running from only the USA. Cellphones are designed to route through a tower and a central network so that phone is essentially dead once the tower loses its comms. So these tips are around you connecting within your city and the assumption there is no Twitter/Facebook:
2.1 Always have a bettery radio receiver so that you can receive public broadcasts.
2.2 Public channel license-free Walkie-Talkies are useful for up to 1 - 2 km radius for a neighborhood to organise. Sometimes you can tune into your local neighbourhood watch even.
2.3 Try and identify who your local ham radio operators are as they will be in communication across a city, often to neighbouring towns or much further afield, as well as with local disaster management agencies. They will often relay messages to local radios on a particular channel. Radio hams know how to stay in contact during emergencies and often already practice for these scenarios. In Cape Town our ham radio repeater network streches 100's of kms running purely on radio.
2.4 Cellphones are essentially useless but if a neighbourhood has, by prior arrangement, installed something like the Firechat app, it is possible for one phone to talk directly to another and for a message to bounce across a few connected phones. But unless you've pre-organised this across your neighbourhood, it will be too late. One person having it is useless.
2.5 Wireless-User-Groups are mesh networks that interconnect a number of WifI hotspots across a city and sometimes even between close towns. It allows someone to share a server or a website that everyone can connect to locally as if it is the Internet. In this way you could have a localised "Facebook" running, local e-mail, posting of messages, etc.
If you have any ideas or suggestions to add plesae put them in the comments below.
See https://www.newamerica.org/weekly/edition-232/here-come-internet-blackouts/
#disaster #blackout #communications
from Danie van der Merwe - Google+ Posts http://bit.ly/2FIERI5
via IFTTT
On the first day of the new year, the Democratic Republic of Congo cut internet connections and SMS services nationwide — for the second day in a row. The reason? To avoid the “chaos” that might result from its presidential election results. Not even a week later, on January 7, Gabon’s government did the same after an attempted coup. And it’s unlikely that these will be the last “internet blackouts” we hear about over the coming months.
In fact, we’ll likely see a rise in internet blackouts in 2019, for two reasons: countries deliberately “turning off” the internet within their borders, and hackers disrupting segments of the internet with distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks (and let's not forget natural disasters either). Above all, both will force policymakers everywhere to reckon with the fact that the internet itself is increasingly becoming centralized — and therefore increasingly vulnerable to manipulation, making everyone less safe.
Let's not think First World Countries are Immune either. The issue of control is not around the hundreds of lower tier ISPs that you deal with, its the first tier operators and the peering exchanges through which all Internet traffic in a country flows. These operators are far fewer and are also granted licenses with strict conditions. Many governments have a right to intercept at this level (remember NSA having installed equipment at AT&T - Room 641A?) and it is at this level they get an instruction to switch off the whole pipe, to intercept, or to block certain traffic. I think it was in the UK a few years back that social media was blocked during a localised riot with a lot of violence too. Whilst its true a First World country is far less likely to block the Internet in its entirety, believe me that they are ready to do so, and that more likely there will be censorship (Australia) and quite likely temporary social media blackouts in areas where there is extreme unrest or violence (for people's safety of course!).
Disasters are quite likely to black out certain areas for a time. A blackout means no Internet, no VoIP phones, no e-mail, no social media.
So what's your plan B as its too late to do anything whilst you are in a blackout situation? Some ideas are:
1. Censorship - easily overcome with a VPN service. You can often also just use alternative social media accounts (but you want to be registered there along with some friends already - it's too late to send a tweet once Twitter is blocked). Using non-mainstream social media like Diaspora, Mastodon, Hubzilla works very well as they are not centralised - you can register at any hub and anyone can follow you there. Mastodon is an ideal alternative to Twitter = also lightweight, familiar, lots of different hubs to connect to that no-one has heard of.
2. Internet Blackout/Disaster - a bigger problem as there is often zero connectivity. Even if the local Internet has slow access you may not be able to reach a centralised site that is running from only the USA. Cellphones are designed to route through a tower and a central network so that phone is essentially dead once the tower loses its comms. So these tips are around you connecting within your city and the assumption there is no Twitter/Facebook:
2.1 Always have a bettery radio receiver so that you can receive public broadcasts.
2.2 Public channel license-free Walkie-Talkies are useful for up to 1 - 2 km radius for a neighborhood to organise. Sometimes you can tune into your local neighbourhood watch even.
2.3 Try and identify who your local ham radio operators are as they will be in communication across a city, often to neighbouring towns or much further afield, as well as with local disaster management agencies. They will often relay messages to local radios on a particular channel. Radio hams know how to stay in contact during emergencies and often already practice for these scenarios. In Cape Town our ham radio repeater network streches 100's of kms running purely on radio.
2.4 Cellphones are essentially useless but if a neighbourhood has, by prior arrangement, installed something like the Firechat app, it is possible for one phone to talk directly to another and for a message to bounce across a few connected phones. But unless you've pre-organised this across your neighbourhood, it will be too late. One person having it is useless.
2.5 Wireless-User-Groups are mesh networks that interconnect a number of WifI hotspots across a city and sometimes even between close towns. It allows someone to share a server or a website that everyone can connect to locally as if it is the Internet. In this way you could have a localised "Facebook" running, local e-mail, posting of messages, etc.
If you have any ideas or suggestions to add plesae put them in the comments below.
See https://www.newamerica.org/weekly/edition-232/here-come-internet-blackouts/
#disaster #blackout #communications
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Here Come the Internet Blackouts The rise in internet blackouts shows that the internet is becoming more centralized—and increasingly vulnerable to manipulation. |
from Danie van der Merwe - Google+ Posts http://bit.ly/2FIERI5
via IFTTT
Comments