----- Forwarded message from Frank Forman -----
Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2013 22:02:47 +0000 (GMT)
From: Frank Forman
To: Transhuman Tech
Subject: [tt] NS 2929: Meshnet activists rebuilding the internet from scratch
NS 2929: Meshnet activists rebuilding the internet from scratch
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929294.500-meshnet-activists-rebuild...
* 08 August 2013 by Hal Hodson
Worried about the NSA snooping on your email? Maybe you need to start
creating your own personal internet
THE internet is neither neutral nor private, in case you were in any
doubt. The US National Security Agency can reportedly collect nearly
everything a user does on the net, while internet service providers
(ISPs) move traffic according to business agreements, rather than
what is best for its customers. So some people have decided to take
matters into their own hands, and are building their own net from
scratch.
Across the US, from Maryland to Seattle, work is underway to
construct user-owned wireless networks that will permit secure
communication without surveillance or any centralised organisation.
They are known as meshnets and ultimately, if their designers get
their way, they will span the country.
Dan Ryan is one of the leaders of the Seattle Meshnet project, where
sparse coverage already exists thanks to radio links set up by fellow
hackers. Those links mean that instead of communicating through
commercial internet connections, meshnetters can talk to each other
through a channel that they themselves control.
Each node in the mesh, consisting of a radio transceiver and a
computer, relays messages from other parts of the network. If the
data can't be passed by one route, the meshnet finds an alternative
way through to its destination. Ryan says the plan is for the Seattle
meshnet to extend its coverage by linking up two wireless nodes
across Lake Union in downtown Seattle. And over the country at the
University of Maryland, Baltimore County, student Alexander Bauer is
hoping to build a campus meshnet later this year. That will give his
fellow students an alternative communications infrastructure to the
internet.
While these projects are just getting off the ground, a mesh network
in Catalonia, Spain, is going from strength to strength. Guifi was
started in the early 2000s by Ramon Roca, an Oracle employee who
wanted broadband at his rural home. The local network now has more
than 21,000 wireless nodes, spanning much of Catalonia. As well as
allowing users to communicate with each other, Guifi also hosts web
servers, videoconferencing services and internet radio broadcasts,
all of which would work if the internet went down for the rest of the
country.
So successful is the community model that Guifi is now building
physical fibre-optic links to places like hospitals and town halls
where it can help carry the heaviest traffic.
Earlier this month, the General Hospital in the Catalan town of Gurb
was wired up to Guifi with a fibre-optic link, and cable is being
rolled out into the nearby town of Calldetenes too.
In the US, people can generally already get online with relative
ease, so meshnets there are less about facilitating access and more
about security, privacy and net neutrality - the idea that ISPs
should treat all traffic equally, and not charge more for certain
types.
After the extent of the NSA's clandestine PRISM program was revealed,
privacy advocates like the Electronic Frontier Foundation urged users
to start using relatively simple email encryption programs like
Pretty Good Privacy and GNU Privacy Guard. But even those can be
daunting to set up. A better idea would be a decentralised network
that relies on encryption by default.
This is the case with Hyperboria, the virtual layer that underpins
meshnet efforts in the US. Hyperboria is a virtual meshnet because it
runs through the existing internet, but is purely peer-to-peer. This
means people who use it exchange information with others directly
over a completely encrypted connection, with nothing readable by any
centralised servers.
When physical meshnet nodes like those in Maryland and Seattle are
set up, existing Hyperboria connections can simply be routed through
them. At the moment, Hyperboria offers a blogging platform, email
services, and even forums similar to reddit.
Encryption is the starting point. Computer researcher Caleb James
DeLisle wrote software called cjdns which allows the Seattle Meshnet
nodes to use Hyperboria and keep all communications between them
encrypted. Instead of letting other computers connect to you through
a shared IP address which anyone can use, cjdns only lets computers
talk to one other after they have verified each other
cryptographically. That means there is no way anyone can be
intercepting your traffic.
The Seattle Meshnet has just completed a successful crowdfunding
campaign for meshboxes - routers that come preloaded with the cjdns
software needed to join Hyperboria. Users will just plug the routers
into their existing internet connection and be ready to go on the
virtual meshnet - or a local physical meshnet when one becomes
available.
Some form of encryption is already in use across much of the
internet, but to be useful it has to be ubiquitous. Web services like
Gmail, for example, let you log in using an encrypted connection. But
when you send an email it leaves Google's encrypted garden and hits
the open web in clear text for anyone to read. With Hyperboria's
peer-to-peer connections, every single link in the chain of
communication is fully encrypted. Intermediaries that handle traffic
cannot even see what kind of traffic it is, let alone read any email.
Use the purpose-built hyperboria.name email service, and your
communication becomes untraceable.
Instead of a few established players building network infrastructure,
DeLisle wants anyone to be able to do it. For him, decentralised
internet access in the hands of the people is just a start. The
services they use must be decentralised, too. "If people continue to
use Facebook, they will continue to be spied on, that's just the
reality of the world."
Into the darknet
Visions of a decentralised internet come with a seedier side - the
darknet. One way to access it is through the anonymising routing
service Tor, which lets a user find hidden web pages that have .onion
addresses, rather than IP addresses. But anonymisation like this can
facilitate otherwise unacceptable activities. Illegal drug market,
Silk Road can only be accessed using its .onion address. But
Alexander Bauer, who works on a meshnet in Maryland thinks meshnets
are less likely to carry this content. Any website that can
successfully run on a meshnet must be socially acceptable to every
peer they connect with, making it less attractive for child
pornographers or websites like Silk Road.
"That's why we don't think the network will be taken over by child
porn. You have to have someone accept what's on your node in order
for them to pass your traffic around," he says.
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