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There were some rumblings about building out an "open source" alternative to the Internet about 10 years ago. The idea was to use various WiFi technologies to create a network that was encrypted and controlled by no one. It certainly is doable given enough people, but it seems like it just never materialized. Did I miss it? Surely there has been advancements in the last decade.

Where I live I have an elevation advantage. I could easily host a high-speed point-to-point link with line of sight to other peaks as far as 80 miles. I always wanted to get something like this rolling.

There were some rumblings about building out an "open source" alternative to the Internet about 10 years ago. The idea was to use various WiFi technologies to create a network that was encrypted and controlled by no one. It certainly is doable given enough people, but it seems like it just never materialized. Did I miss it? Surely there has been advancements in the last decade. Where I live I have an elevation advantage. I could easily host a high-speed point-to-point link with line of sight to other peaks as far as 80 miles. I always wanted to get something like this rolling.

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[–] • 1 pt

Why build your own if you can just build a private layer on top of existinf infrastructure. Thats the idea behind Tor and I2p.

With either approach you still run into the same issues eventually. Once the 5 eyes know of you there is literally nothing you can do to keep them off. And whether they can shut you down comes down to when not if.

You can do things like create super secure encryption but that only works when you're communicating 1v1 or in small groups. But each message you send the larger its intended audience the more vulnerability it brings. Not to mention that it requires the users to learn A LOT about crytography and in general makes the time to write and messages very long with a large degree of knowledge in the whole process... look around you... NOBODY has the attention span for that.

If I were to do something similar... look at Cicada 3301. Create a small local group, communicate directly and advertise very carefully. Make sure the only people who know of you have been vetted by means of some kind of IQ test or puzzle. Using a Raspberry Pi you can build a small private network that hosts a 4chan style website. You use some means of cordinating when and where people should meet in say a busy shopping mall food court... idk. Find the wifi network and use the right password. Meet and talk for a hour and then pack up and walk away. This presents an issue as the person holding the hotspot can be easily tracked while its on... But atleast there is nothing "online" 24/7.

For an added layer you need to develop python scripts that are built to use an agreed upon cryptographic mechanism. Rather than manually encoding and decoding letter by letter the user can just copy and paste text in and out of the script. This works well with OTP and python just makes the manual process as automatted as possible without introducing much vulnerability.

The revolution will be offline.

[–] • 1 pt

Why build your own if you can just build a private layer on top of existinf infrastructure. Thats the idea behind Tor and I2p.

Because they can just switch existing infrastructure off. That's a lot easier than sending some guys to take out the routers in your house and enough other people's houses that they can't communicate any more.