The exact thing needed is very boring, very low-level, and very unsexy, and I believe can be summarized thusly:
We need a method for locating hosts on a network graph which does not have a central point of failure and which cannot be easily disabled.
We then need a method for authentically routing messages back and forth between these hosts without fear of man-in-the-middle attacks that can change the contents of the messages.
This is pure transport-layer engineering.
As long as we can locate anyone connected to our network, and communicate with them without interference, we can build whatever else we need to on top of that.
We shouldn't confuse our efforts by trying to make a social network, or new hashcoin lottery, or advanced supergovernment, or whatever else. We shouldn't worry about interception of message contents--that way lies madness; as long as I know my message reached somebody in one piece, and as long as they know that a message signed by me is from me, we can fix the rest later.
This is a pure, straightforward, fucking hard engineering problem.
You can set up an illegal radio station for less than $1,000. My friends and I did so in Virginia, in the USA, back in 2002. We were out in a rural area of Virginia. We had great fun playing our favorite music to whoever would get the signal. The FEC is slow to crack down on stuff like that when you are out in the middle of nowhere. The radio station lasted 2 years, and it only got shut down when we moved on to other things. I have fond memories of it.
Running a radio show is great fun and, if you are an extrovert, it can be addicting. So why don't more people do it? Because it is illegal.
Likewise, if you created a protocol so free that government regulation was impossible, then the government could simply make it illegal. You would be "free" to use it, just like I was "free" to setup an illegal radio station, but most people won't go near it if it is illegal.
There are many things that go through our society, and which flow so freely that the government doesn't have the power to stop it, so instead it increases the penalties. Drugs would be an example. In that case, a lot of people get scared away from drugs simply because the government policies are draconian -- small amounts of drugs, found on your person, can lead to years of pain and legal trouble.
I agree with the other comment where someone says that you can not come up with a technology that will solve a policy problem. The ultimate power of the government is that, in the end, to uphold the legitimacy of the law it has the power to kill people. You can't come up with some cool technology that lets you get around the reality of a punishing government, if the government decides that some technology is too dangerous. All you can do is what the people of Syria are doing now -- organize, resist, protest, possibly even fight. There are only political solutions to political problems.
Here in the UK, we don't give a fuck. For half a century, not a fuck has been given. All those pulsing repetitive beats you've heard in your pop music for the last 30 years, that stuff that's made people untold billions of dollars? That's largely a result of us over in the UK not giving a fuck about getting in trouble for pirate radio.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_radio_in_the_United_King...
http://www.londonpirates.co.uk/stations.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/sep/08/pirate-radio-rav...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpS0jR6FG1o (this last link says it all)
Just sayin'.
The system described wouldn't stop a government from censoring the internet for its own people. No technology can stop that. It would however prevent a government from becoming the government, which the Americans seem to try endlessly to do.
Once the technology was "in the wild" the US could simply "ban the whole thing"... and join North Korea in the nuthouse of closed internet while the rest of the world passed them by with a curious shrug.
I was glad when it lapsed. The penalties for emitting RF that falls outside of the rules somehow tended to be significantly higher if you actually had a some kind of a license than if you had none.
My dad and several of my friends have HAM licenses. It's not inordinately difficult; it's kind of like getting a driver's license. The structure is not designed to prevent ordinary people from using it, just to keep it usable and reasonably civil.
If they ban it but it lets people do something they want to do and can't otherwise as conveniently then they will ignore the ban.
>but most people won't go near it if it is illegal.
Really? I think the media industry would beg to differ. Normal, everyday people have stolen more songs than they have time left in their lives to listen to.
You're taking an obscure example that many people don't even know about, much less want to do and using that to say people won't touch it if it's illegal while missing media piracy; something most people do want and most have had no issue just taking it, laws or no laws.
Private networks hooked to other private networks are not similar. The internet is not a thing.
They can go after parts they have power over, like .com, but the core concept of simply communicating...... O so easy.
That's pretty darn underground.
However, let's suppose that tons of people wanted to set up their own radio station. What would the result be exactly?
To all the super-geniuses reading this: burn your socialmobilelocal startup to the ground tomorrow and do this instead.
Start by watching this Blackhat talk I linked elsewhere in the thread, the guy has the right kind of ideas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7Wl2FW2TcA
I have a team of capable engineers, and relationships with network/wifi hardware/firmware developers. What I don't have is $2-10M to spend designing open protocols (and building the software), especially with no obvious commercial upside.
Yes, in fact it's one of the famous "only two hard problems in Computer Science": locating hosts on a network graph is just a restatement of "naming things".
You can build it, but it'll never gain the authority to make everyone use it.
You'll need to be a Google or Microsoft to pull this one off.
