I would say that if you want to help, first reach out to your representative / government and put pressure on them to put pressure on belarus. It's a small country that depends on trade with the free world.
Secondly, we need a crowdfunder to support people who've suffered grevious bodily harm at the hands of this regime.
There is some truth to this- but the world is entirely run by people who believe they can personally effect change through their actions, everyone else be damned.
on individual level the best actuon I can think of is donating to help folks that lost and eye or were beaten withing an inch of their life.
Otherwise i am not sure what you could do, perhaps we could send equipment like radios, first aid and body protection / armor? Depending on your views you coupd even post crossbows. Would they arrive through customs, assuming you know who to post them to?
Lastly, you could travel there to join the protests, but realisticaly are you going to do that?
>I would say that if you want to help, first reach out to your representative / government and put pressure on them to put pressure on belarus.
Bahahaha. The US already has its hands full, there's no way on earth this gains traction when there's actual strategic priorities at the moment for them. Let the EU do something useful for once, they love talking about how much they help the world.
>Secondly, we need a crowdfunder to support people who've suffered grevious bodily harm at the hands of this regime.
Again, bahahaha. This is going to end up like when everyone and their brother was a "Syrian Refugee" because they knew it'd get them into Europe. You may as well send some of the money to the prince of Nigeria while you're at it.
What about this one? https://www.facebook.com/donate/1123543824684874/ https://www.paypal.com/pools/c/8rjj4ZxCNs
You just said how to evade the pressure.
Don’t they mostly depend on Putin money? Here in Europe we’ve had sanctions and been working for change for quite a while.
Doesn’t matter much when their dictator is backed by Russia.
Ah the famous free world where our social media posts are heavily censored, where lock-down was / is mandatory for a lot of us, and where protesting can cost you an eye (at least 20 people lost an eye last year in France's Gillets Jaunes protests).
Yes we still have it better than the Belorussians but free our world is certainly not.
What I suggest, perhaps as last ditch effort, is look in the opposite direction: attacking the remaining Beltelecom and mobile layer2/3 connectivity in the country.
The only reason the limited networking is still up and running is not some residual generosity of the regime. It is because traditional PSTN and long range special comms services are all routed via IP trunking these days. Disrupting these will also disrupt operations level communication between KGB, police and presidential security units that are squashing the protests.
(Жыве Беларусь!)
Is that really plausible though? I'm sure it's technically doable, but I'm not sure it's realistic or even a good idea if you could pull it off.
Who has the ability _and_ incentive to carry out such an attack? You could hire someone to do a DDoS attack, for example, but who would pay for that?
Let's say you've pulled it off. Have you considered the collateral damage?
Can we be certain that whoever has the capacity to do this will only ever use it "for good"? What's "for good" anyway?
Have you even considered that not all the people who remained connected in the country may be government officials? I don't know about this specific Internet blackout, but quite often other organisations (e.g., international NGOs, consulates/embassies, hotels) remain connected (see this for example: https://qz.com/africa/1884387/ethiopia-internet-is-back-on-b...).
I'd say a blackout may well pull more people to the street, and open more opportunities for spontaneous openings. The same was in USSR in 1991.
People are actually being attracted by the sound of gunfire, fire, and smoke, if all other decision making inputs are cut off.
Sounds of intense gunfire in a city often result in people being inadvertently "herded" into big crowds, and formation of street-to-street fronts, which result in assailants being surrounded.
Then, when people see enemies surrounded, and trembling in fear, human primal instincts kick in, and crazy things happen. Moscow 1991, Bishkek 2010, Kyiv 2014, Istanbul 2016 all demonstrated that effect.
How powerful can it be? There were historical precedents when such spontaneous crowds went on offensive again fully armed military forces, and won, with Istanbul, and Bishkek events being the most vivid.
In Bishkek, a column of smoke rising from a key government building, along with a comms blackout, was enough to instantaneously gather a crowd of 5000-6000 bystanders, and onlookers who in just 3-4 hours turned into am unstoppable human wave.
It were these complete randoms who then marched against an elite SF battalion, 10+ snipers, fire from 12.7mm, took 5 RPG shots (!!!), and, in the end, still managed to steamroll that battalion to the last man. Even the relatively tame footage that managed to escape Youtube censorship if still horrifying.
I cannot find the original Euronews footage on the net now, but here is the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3zUSe2peRE&t=30s (quite intense, be prepared.) Take a look at the footage starting at 0:30, and give attention to what happens after 1:05.
Yes there will be collateral of course, the most serious is to emergency response services who use the same network.
I realise it sounds a bit like that Death Star vent attack, but it is still more realistic than a Bluetooth mesh network that doesn't fold with more than a handful users.
Police and KGB use packet switching network at levels beyond tactical, and it piggybacks on civilian infrastructure.
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Sure you could smuggle a American terminal in, but SpaceX won’t help you.
The controversy they would stir up, is likely not worth the risk for the company's public image. Also I don't think the technology isn even released yet...
Article 18 of the ITU Radio Regulations was mentioned in the comments on another post. It basically states that nobody can use radio in any country without permission from that country.
https://boingboing.net/2018/05/03/inside-cubas-massive-weekl... https://www.wired.com/2017/07/inside-cubas-diy-internet-revo... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Paquete_Semanal
I think the level of indirection and timelyness can be used as a filter, in that it ought to be modeled after the sneaker nets and human crowds/socialization. For example individual clients can ignore messages more than a configurable signed time/distance and configure their clients to only repeat at a certain rate. That way the network is robust to spam, because it relies on the movement and consensus of people to move messages long range.
There exist long range communication : Meshtastic, with $20 devices you can send messages with kilometers range.
What would be ideal is for Briar to embrace the "Bluetooth to LoRa node".
We can extend Briar Bluetooth network by adding Bluetooth to LoRa node that can connect multiple bluetooth mesh networks together.
It's a reasonable solution for "a few dozen nodes up to 8-10km apart under ideal conditions", and enables SMS-style messaging across the mesh - but it's not "an internet replacement" by a long shot...
Think more "30people in an irc channel - without pics/video" rather than "Stream your protests to Instagram or Facebook Live"...
It's super fun to play with. But it isn't gonna "save democracy by circumventing nations-state internet shutdowns"
I couldn't find anything less than $100, where can you buy them from?
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000897355282.html
And if you don't need GPS (they'll use the GPS in an Android phone), these too:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000329729312.html
You could save a buck or two more by getting ones without screens, but it makes Bluetooth pairing more complex (you need to read the pairing code off the serial console over the USB port. But yo only need to do it once. It's not _awful_ if your plan is always to pair each device with the same (Android) phone)
You could send an email/tweet to SpaceX and ask to be part of the Starlink beta program. They'd have to be granted a license for your country first, however.
How - both deep packet inspection + filtering and primitive solution - making communication services (mobile and broadband) stop functioning. Such things happen already in the past in Turkey, Egipt, Iran.
disaster.radio is an off-grid, solar-powered, long-range mesh network built on free, open source software and affordable, open hardware.
Designed to be open, distributed, and decentralized, disaster.radio is currently in the prototype/development phase.
For everyone talking about solutions that involve deploying additional hardware: who's going to pay for it and how are you going to get it into Belarus?
It also underestimates the resourcefulness and motivation of those struggling in this situation.
It wouldn't be inconceivable that additional resources/hardware could be introduced either via smuggling or diplomatic staff. There is also a large and supportive diaspora of Belarusians in Lithuania and Poland that I assume would be willing to source and finance additional resources if it could tip the scale.
Examples: https://gotenna.com/
They all rely on your phone and themselves cost more than a whole low-end phone! I am really confused as to why meshing requires much additional hardware that isn't already in a phone.
It allows you to create your own social media feed with messages, responses and media completely offline. You then gossip that feed to anyone you want, for example via the local (WiFi) network or even by USB stick. Long range communication is done by car or by train.
There are servers (pubs) that can be used for more real-time communication. Or to make the information available on the internet after it has been sneaked out of Belarus. The main pubs have a dedicated, friendly and active community. [3]
What happens on the Internet stays on the Internet and all that, but no reason to write everything in stone - especially in times and places where governments thinks it is a good idea to cut Internet.
That thing is called Internet..Information never goes away, not even in the real world.
You can have a network of consumer radio walkie talkies with privacy codes, each node spread with a range of about 20km, depending on the weather and terrain. But this is would need dedicated hardware which I assume is not easily sourced in the current restricted environment.
Edit: Maybe if you setup a network of walkie talkies on rooftops you could probably maximize the node spread if are able to keep line of sight across each node.
It's sometime a bit more difficult: with spread spectrum technologies for example, widely used wireless technologies that work well in dense usage. It works also on cellular networks (2G, 3G, 4G, 5G).
Just so people don't get a false sense of security with some solutions.
I also asked some Belarusian friends how they keep getting information from there. They said they have intermittent access to Telegram but it works better by using proxies. Some of the news channels on Telegram are managed by people outside the country who receive the information via text message. Not sure what type of block was in place (cellular data?).
Edit: Another Belarusian friend said he's able to communicate again with people back home after 3 days of quasi constant blackout.
People are just terrified now and all they want is peace. They know that continuing protests is likely to result in a bloodbath and are understandably afraid of that.
I have a lot of friends from Belarus, and at least from IT sector, they are really eager to continue protests simply cause they are scarred what can happen if current government will stay
I think if you can still make cross border International phone calls you can setup modem on both sides and create a end-to-end network.
Maybe some kind of ad hoc mobile/mesh network stands a better chance, though that too is detectable and jammable.
There's a smattering of third parties confirming this, like: https://beincrypto.com/psiphon-connects-beincrypto-journalis...
How certain are you?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/indias-int...
(2) 2G internet was available
(3) 4G service is restored now. https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/4g-internet-to-be-allowed-on...
If crackers around the world want to actually be useful, now is the time.
Generally, I think Briar is your best bet for the organisers of the protest, since it's meant to communicate a group of people, but not broadcast data to anyone (inc. strangers). It can help you before, during and after the protest. However, you'll need a connection to the Internet to synchronise over what you describe as mid- and long-ranges (it'd use Tor in that case).
One thing to note is that when a repressive regime cuts off the Internet, it never gets to 100% of the affected population. At a minimum, certain government institutions will remain connected, but often also international organisations and hotels. Of course, in practice, finding which places remain connected to the Internet will be hard, but these are some of the places you could try. Also, if you have a land border and a SIM from the neighbour country, you'll generally get mobile access near the border.
During the protest, I think the Qual.net project is worth considering, although I must admit I haven't tried it myself.
Please, do not use FireChat or Bridgefy. They're pretty insecure: Data is neither encrypted or signed.
Shameless plug:
I'm leading the Relaynet project (https://relaynet.network/), a technology to restore connectivity when the Internet is totally cut off. Relaynet-compatible apps will use the Internet seamlessly when it's available, but they'll switch to a fallback medium (such as a sneakernet) when the Internet is cut off. No additional hardware required.
Relaynet's proof of concept made it possible to post and receive tweets without the Internet and we're currently funded by the Open Technology Fund. The protocol suite has been independently audited. The Android implementation will be ready by the end of the summer (and it'll also be audited).
Although we're focusing on connecting the general public, the security and privacy guarantees it offers should also be adequate for protesters (subject to the security/privacy guarantees of the Relaynet apps they use). Consequently, the initial version of Relaynet should come in handy before and after protests, and once we add support for Bluetooth-based meshnets (aka "scatternets"), it should also support protesters during a protest.
Mesh / opportunistic network solutions are great in theory, but require the installation of special software, which is difficult to coordinate on large scale. Also, this is an adversarial environment. We need to assume that every new network will be infiltrated by pro-government forces.
Only mobile internet was affected so far, so for now the most effective response was encouraging people to remove their WiFi passwords.
There are companies that sell software-defined radio products to help deploy volunteer-run radio networks, but those may be easy to jam and/or illegal: https://limemicro.com/products/boards/limesdr/
Not sure how far srsLTE (https://www.srslte.com/) can go here without requiring special equipment and Internet connectivity (someone well-versed can perhaps comment on its feasibility as a standalone backhaul): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18569961
Walkie-talkies work nicely for comms but not secure, should work well enough for coded messages; however.
I stumbled upon now-defunct https://opentech.fund backed https://www.qaul.net a few days back, developed in response to censorship in MENA, that I personally like: They maintain a mapping of devices (similar to BitTorrent) over Wifi P2P and/or Bluetooth to create a decentralised secure routing network. No extra hardware needed.
A bit earlier today there was also a HN post about a re-play attack on VoLTE encryption https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24129977
For information distribution look in to I2P as a means of caching popular News sites. Local password free wi-fi access points (but obviously only for those that can can risk a knock on the door). Power-Over-Ethernet Access Points are useful.
Good luck to all.
They work okay in home networks, but due to the noise of the active A/C power-line they don't scale that far.
Perhaps they could work in long distances at low bit-rates with high redundancy error-correction to account for the noise. Sending email and text messages...
Everyone should have an app like Canva, to easily add+edit text on images. This way people can communicate without any new technology.
Feel free to join the community, and contribute, www.berty.tech https://github.com/berty
Cheers peers!
To stay connected to each other, set up your own self hosted email servers. Email is old but is well designed for this. It is also easier to set up than IRC and does not depend on real time communication. Mail servers will queue messages and retry periodically. Look for "HOW-TO: Dovecot Postfix". Set up self hosted mail servers inside your country and configure them to relay to external sites using HAM, Satellite, whatever you can get your hands on. Even better, see if you can find obscure forms of internet that have not been blocked. Dial-up for example. It isn't fast, but will relay emails and small attachments just fine. Mail servers will queue messages and retry periodically. Adjust attachment limits on your email servers and let your friends know what that limit is. Use your own domains. Ensure that you configure your mail servers to enforce TLS, or at least enforce it for domains that you know use TLS. Most important, increase the retention time of the mail spool so that the server will keep trying to send messages for a month instead of a week. Get multiple accounts on mail servers hosted in other countries that your mail server can authenticated and relay through. This eliminates the need for things like FCrDNS, DMARC, etc... on your server. A dial-up will do just fine. Read up on how to use postfix header checks to sanitized email headers so that your users IP addresses are not exposed.
One advantage of self hosted email servers is that anyone inside your country that can reach the server can communicate directly to each other through that server. Nothing has to leave the country and can not be censored. Be sure to encrypt the mail and spool folders.
For trusted circles of friends, especially those responsible for maintaining servers, ensure they create and share PGP keys. There are how-to's for this as well. Create code phrases that mean different things, so that you can tell others if you have been compromised.
Look at what happened to Ukraine a few years ago and look at the state where it's at now. Do you really want that for your country ?
