How do we deal with an internet blackout? - page 2.

miscreanity

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Quote from: MoonShadow on December 04, 2012, 02:41:08 PM

A commercially available digital radio with 'meshable' computer capablities, called D-STAR, makes anything that you've heard of so far look about as advanced as morse code. A 50 mile, two hop, mesh connection while in a moving vehicle isn't even pushing the margins anymore.

Has there been much progress on an open ABME codec replacement?

jgarzik

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This is turning into an interesting thread. Although it is now lapsed, I was formerly a licensed ARRL amateur radio operator ("KB4UZB").

Here is a useful, cheap, realistic idea that would help bitcoin survive an Internet blackout:

Have multiple stations broadcast the best known bitcoin block header.

It is only 80 bytes of data, which on average changes every 10 minutes. That should be feasible for packet radio and other low bandwidth communication streams.

Back in the late 1980s, the BBS days, I remember one FidoNet operator had access to a few unused, off-screen scanlines of a satellite TV channel broadcast all over the world. If you bought or built a cheap decoder box, and already had a satellite dish, you could receive FidoNet file downloads via satellite. You had no choice in what you received, of course -- it was whatever the FidoNet operator decided to send that day -- but it was a great alternate one-to-many broadcast mechanism.

One could broadcast the blockchain headers in the same manner, with extraneous satellite bandwidth. (of course, that is an old trick and probably impossible these days due to tighter resource management)

MoonShadow

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Quote from: ?? on ??

That's very advanced stuff, not fast but the features and extra software are impressive. Was pricing the homebrew options, GMSK modems are very cheap but couldn't find a price on Kenwood TKR-820's or equivalent. Any idea what sort of power consumption?

Power consumption varies considerablely due to a number of variables, but about 300 watts is your top end limit, practically speaking. Range with that kind of digital gear is more limited by line of sight issues than anything else at greater than 50 watts peak-envelope power, and is somewhere in the range of 10-15 miles radius with a high mounted mobile antenna of decent quality, or up to about 30 miles on a roof mounted stationary antenna.

Again, shortwave bands make those ranges look like crap, but are bandwidth limited, crowded and noisy. A shortwave setup using a near-vertical incidental skywave antenna (NVIS) has a range radius of about 300 miles in all directions, and PSK-31 can do this with a peak-envelope power rating of under 10 watts. Slow as hell, though; but it scales up bandwidth almost linerally, so 50 watts PEP is about right for PSK-250 to that same range for a clear enough signal to be picked up with common quality shortwave listening gear.

MoonShadow

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Quote from: ?? on ??

That sounds like a really nice setup all ready to go. Maybe a stupid question but are police surplus units available?

Well, yes. To licensed hams. But the D-STAR off-the-shelf transcievers are usually cheaper anyway.

MoonShadow

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Quote from: ?? on ??

Reading up on this atm, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_radio

Sounds like a stream of the data as it comes onto the chain would be fairly easy to set up and the more there are the more it could be trusted, would be a weak link though.

Packet radio is a crude form of wide area, time-division type mesh network. Might be useful for relatively small areas, such as a medium sized city, but if the POTS system still works, regular phone modems would be better. Hams don't really use packet much anymore. Better systems are phase-shift keyed modes, such as PSK-31 and up. PSK-125/250/500 are more robust, and generally has better range and practical throughput, than a 300 baud shortwave packet modem. There are many other types of (software defined) soundcard modes to choose from, PSK was just the first in widespread use, and one of the simpliest to impliment. Packet radio requires specially modifed modems, and specialized hardware is expensive. Sound cards are not expensive anymore. Hell, I can do PSK-31/63/125 audio conversions on my android cell phone.

Modern hams willing to invest that kind of money into specialized mode gear just tend to skip the packet modem and go for a full blown digital transciever with built-in software defined capabilities. Much better capabilities and costs about the same.

EDIT: Really, some of this gear is truely impressive. If you've ever seen some of the modern digital transcievers that cops use in their cars these days, hams have had that kind of gear for over a decade now. A commercially available digital radio with 'meshable' computer capablities, called D-STAR, makes anything that you've heard of so far look about as advanced as morse code. A 50 mile, two hop, mesh connection while in a moving vehicle isn't even pushing the margins anymore.

MoonShadow

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Quote from: ?? on ??

Maybe the bittorrent download implementation could handle that kind of thing?

A torrent of the blockchain would do well, to a point. The torrent file would have to be updated on a regular basis though. Perhaps the magnet file is what you would broadcast occasionally on your transmitter.

Quote

The SW radio (I'm guessing that's the same as CB)

Not even close.

Quote

soundcard modem setups, would they be able to work over a wide band in stacked frequency ranges to allow either wider bandwidth or multiple connections depending on what signals are found?

Not multiple connections. There really wouldn't be 'connections' per se. There is the transmitting station and the listening stations, data flows one way, in a one-to-many format. A computer using much wider bandwidth sound cards (64, 128 bit) can listen to a muc wider band of the radio specturm at once, and could receive data from two ajacent stations, but it can't tune to tow distinctly different channels at the same time; that would require two sondcards at least, likley two different shortwave recievers as well, unless you've got the skills to bypass the tuner an access the internal frequency of the reciever. The bandwidth of the signal is limited by the transmitter gear, power requirements, and clear frequency bandwidth on a shortwave band. Shortwave is a worldwide set of bands that most americans have no experience with, and they are crowded.

MoonShadow

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Quote from: ?? on ??

It could be worth reading up on borders and communication's, the introduction of radio must have given rise to methods of blocking it and I'd guess cables crossing borders have a lot or restrictions. Someone must have condensed all that into a paper without to many big words and there's a thread about that somewhere...

Doubt there's anything to prevent bouncing signals off the moon though.

Prevent it, no. Interfere with it, yes. The problem with a moonbounce is that it requires not just some high quality transmitters with highly directional dish antennas with accurate moon tracking gear, but due to the distance & scatter issues with a moonbounce, the receiving gear has to be pretty high end as well. So it takes a relatively low power jammer to screw with that, or a high quality one also pointed at and tracking the moon. If you turned up your transmission power high enough to overcome a moonbounced jammer signal, they would be able to identify your transmitter from orbital sats due to the signal leakage of your dish.

Normal shortwave is much simpler, and much more effective, IMHO. The receiving gear is much cheaper, more widespread (outside of the United States) and the decoding gear is just a regular computer with a 16 bit soundcard. Sure, it'd be difficult to transmit the full blockchain, or maybe even full blocks once they start really filling up, but both block headers and loose transaction data could be transmitted continuously up to a certain point. The real beauty of the p2p network system is that not all the data must come from the same source. If your broadcast only transmitted the last block header and the myrkle tree, smarter clients than are currently available could piece together full blocks by collecting the loose transaction data from other sources, and there will be other sources, evenif it's only the occasionally smuggled blockchain on a usb drive two days out of date.

MoonShadow

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Quote from: ?? on ??

The first casualty of war is the truth, therefore any source that can offer truth must be removed.

No doubt some will try. I question their practical effectiveness.

Rassah

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Quote from: hardcore-fs on December 04, 2012, 08:07:25 AM

2. "it can not be blacked out", war is an example of it being blacked out, either in part of in full.

Low tech war, like those waged by third world dictators, can black it out partially, and even then only temporarily. High tech war would only strengthen the internet, since it is used to communicate with troops, collect and disperse intelligence, and control remote war machines. Any threat to the internet during war would get first attention, and would be strongly defended against; defences which will become public again once the war ends. Unless you're talking about nuclear war that wipes out most of the population (or a zombie apacolypse Grin

), but radioactive mutants and zombies have no use for internets, so...

cbeast

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Let's talk governance, lipstick, and pigs.

Quote from: hardcore-fs on December 04, 2012, 08:07:25 AM

Quote from: MoonShadow on December 04, 2012, 02:07:07 AM

Quote from: hardcore-fs on December 04, 2012, 01:05:53 AM

Quote from: kokojie on December 01, 2012, 05:00:14 PM

The Internet was invented precisely because it can not be blacked out. Though if you are talking about blacking out access to the Internet, then I guess that's a possibility. In that case, electronic bitcoin transaction will be impossible, though physical bitcoins can still be used as cash.

Nonsense!!!!!

War, is one example.

An example of what?

"The Internet was invented precisely because it can not be blacked out."

1. The internet was not invented for that reason.
2. "it can not be blacked out", war is an example of it being blacked out, either in part of in full.

Correct. The "Internet" was not created to avoid being blacked out. ArpaNet was invented to avoid being blacked out. The Internet was built upon ArpaNet though and serves the same function.

hardcore-fs

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Quote from: MoonShadow on December 04, 2012, 02:07:07 AM

Quote from: hardcore-fs on December 04, 2012, 01:05:53 AM

Quote from: kokojie on December 01, 2012, 05:00:14 PM

The Internet was invented precisely because it can not be blacked out. Though if you are talking about blacking out access to the Internet, then I guess that's a possibility. In that case, electronic bitcoin transaction will be impossible, though physical bitcoins can still be used as cash.

Nonsense!!!!!

War, is one example.

An example of what?

"The Internet was invented precisely because it can not be blacked out."

1. The internet was not invented for that reason.
2. "it can not be blacked out", war is an example of it being blacked out, either in part of in full.

MoonShadow

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Quote from: hardcore-fs on December 04, 2012, 01:05:53 AM

Quote from: kokojie on December 01, 2012, 05:00:14 PM

The Internet was invented precisely because it can not be blacked out. Though if you are talking about blacking out access to the Internet, then I guess that's a possibility. In that case, electronic bitcoin transaction will be impossible, though physical bitcoins can still be used as cash.

Nonsense!!!!!

War, is one example.

An example of what?

hardcore-fs

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Quote from: kokojie on December 01, 2012, 05:00:14 PM

The Internet was invented precisely because it can not be blacked out. Though if you are talking about blacking out access to the Internet, then I guess that's a possibility. In that case, electronic bitcoin transaction will be impossible, though physical bitcoins can still be used as cash.

Nonsense!!!!!

War, is one example.

miscreanity

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A good synopsis provided by Trace Mayer. Quoted below with links added.

Quote from: Trace Mayer

One of the most remarkable aspects of Bitcoin is its censorship resistance.

First, any bitcoins stored in the blockchain will be safe. Private keys can be created extremely easily and securely using tools like www.brainwallet.org (the code is open-source and can be downloaded so an Internet connection is not needed if one prepares before hand by making a brainwallet and establishing the 'firstbits' for easy payments).

Second, is the ability to transfer bitcoins and use them as a currency. This is where Bitcoin's censorship resistance takes on Godzilla like attributes compared to alternatives like cash or gold which can exist only in one place at one time and are easily identified due to their physical nature.

Using the source code from brainwallet.org it is possible to generate Bitcoin transactions offline. Then all that is required is to broadcast the transaction to the network.

Jack mentions a few of the great alternatives like the mesh net, bitcoincard, etc. A local mesh net could be setup and cover a large distance, many square miles, and there would only need to be one connection to the worldwide Internet and transactions could be submitted and processed. They could also be collected and batched; this would allow trade to take place and eventually be settled. Because Bitcoin transactions are small, usually less than 1,000 bytes which is tiny, they can easily be submitted via an Iridium phone or via satellite.

Third, Bitcoin coupled with some of the innovations in Open Transactions, www.monetas.net, and you could have a very powerful way to route around the politicians and Praetorian Guard. Bitcoin is already being largely used as a 'settlement currency' in a lot of cases in conjunction with Open Transactions.

For an overview of Open Transactions watch this interview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfhbjkge4fs

So, in conclusion, Yes, it would be inconvenient if the Internet were drastically limited by State actors. Bitcoin could still be used pretty easily if one were prepared (had brainwallet.org source-code and an Iridium phone). In my opinion, the main problems would not be with using Bitcoin but the general economic environment of the area.

miscreanity

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Quote from: 2112 on December 03, 2012, 01:29:06 PM

Moon bounce is the word. Let them shoot the Moon down to disable the radio and laser links!

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.1024491

Support the free trade on Earth by banking off the Moon!

FTFY

MoonShadow

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Quote from: mintymark on December 03, 2012, 01:20:35 PM

The internet blackout in Syria got me thinking about this too.

I see two possibilities. A transmitter could be set up that continiously broadcasts the block chain. Several of them in different places perhaps. They could be jammed, or falsefied so perhaps more than one would be needed. Its possible this could be even on the longwave band, or on something more modern like encrypted CDMA on a band of frequencies. As well as current transactions, blockchain history would also be periodically transmitted, perhaps using a special protocol that was able to transmit current and historical data simultaneously.

Shortwave DRM can do that, no problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Radio_Mondiale

So could a bit of rented digital satillite downlink once each day, such as is used to deliver daily educational shows to distant elementary schools. Of course, then someone needs the sat dish and receiver/decoder; while DRM just needs a quality shortwave receiver that can be plugged into the sound port of a computer.

2112

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Quote from: mintymark on December 03, 2012, 01:20:35 PM

A transmitter could be set up that continiously broadcasts the block chain. Several of them in different places perhaps. They could be jammed, or falsefied so perhaps more than one would be needed. Its possible this could be even on the longwave band, or on something more modern like encrypted CDMA on a band of frequencies. As well as current transactions, blockchain history would also be periodically transmitted, perhaps using a special protocol that was able to transmit current and historical data simultaneously.

Moon bounce is the word. Let them shoot the Moon down to disable the radio and laser links!

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.1024491

Support the free trade on Earth by banking on the Moon!

mintymark

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The internet blackout in Syria got me thinking about this too.

I see two possibilities. A transmitter could be set up that continiously broadcasts the block chain. Several of them in different places perhaps. They could be jammed, or falsefied so perhaps more than one would be needed. Its possible this could be even on the longwave band, or on something more modern like encrypted CDMA on a band of frequencies. As well as current transactions, blockchain history would also be periodically transmitted, perhaps using a special protocol that was able to transmit current and historical data simultaneously.

This gives you the ability to receive and verify reception of bitcoins, but not initiate transactions.

To initiate transactions there are several possibilities that I see.

a) Tempory and expensive satellite phone connection.

b) Possible use of ham radio or phone to get a trusted 3rd party to send your bitcoins to a number of smaller 1 use accounts. The private keys to these could then be passed to others to make a transaction. They have to empty the accounts in your presence so that they know you cannot using similar methods. Not great but possible. This is for the future not now though, if we decided to do this.

c) Transactions using other ultra low bandwith mesage systems (eg carrier pidgeon, SMS, air mail letter) and 3rd parties, trusted or untrusted. This in conjunction with b)

d) Mesh networks, which will eventually become efficient, cheap and ubiquitous in countries like Syria. But this is for the future, not now, but will certainly happen.

Thats my take.

Is it needed? I would say certainly yes, it will become increasingly common and easy for governments to 'black out' the internet when something they dont like happens.

interlagos

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Quote from: ?? on ??

... Tor given away, sha, now meshnets, maybe handing out freedom is part of the masterplan but it doesn't fit in well with the rest of the script...

They are bored with being unchallenged and therefore setting up the playground for the next generation games. I don't think people in the intelligence and military circles are concerned about survival, they like to play games with very advanced toys, but they need to find the opponent first.

The other way to look at it is that military is tired of being at the mercy of central banks and they thought: "Hey, we're smarter than those guys... why work for them when we can create a better system?"
There are also white hats in any three letter agency, I'd bet.

miscreanity

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Quote from: ?? on ??

... does it make sense to give away tools that could later be used against you? It only makes sense if you have something to counter that system.

It does when it makes sense to use every tool available to ensure success. Would you game the voting system to secure your reelection if there would be no repercussions?

Or maybe to make sure that access to natural resources remains in place...

Providing tools might not be a choice.

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