War on the Internet: Meshnet activists Rebuilds the Net from Scratch

In anticipation that the US government will require the surrendering of customer’s data, two small email providers including Lavabit, a Texas-based service that was reportedly used by whistleblower Edward J. Snowden, decided to preempt them by shutting down and destroying their servers.

Such are examples of how government has used the web not only to expand their power but to mount repressive policies on their constituents. 

At the same time these are examples how government policies rob economic opportunities of small businesses (favoring the big ones).

However markets aren’t taking this slippery slope of privacy invasion sitting down. Some entities has taken into their own hands the rebuilding of the internet from scratch.

From the New Scientist 

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.

The development of the “new” guerilla internet doesn’t totally bypass the current system.

Again from the same article:

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.

Unlike sheep or automatons, the above shows how people respond to incentives. The war on the internet will signify a cat and mouse relationship in the deepening age of decentralization.