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Researchers are aiming to optimise the networking technology for large crowds and to avoid surveillance
Monitoring the devices of protesters – or even shutting down networks entirely – has become a staple of authoritarian regimes around the world. From Myanmar to India to Bangladesh, denying connectivity to entire regions is a common tactic used to suppress unrest.
Now, however, as first reported by IEEE Spectrum, researchers from City College of New York, Harvard, and Johns Hopkins University are building a protype mesh network called Amigo that could keep protestors connected throughout a state-imposed internet blackout.
“Shutting down the Internet during times of great civil protest is a way to prevent people from being able to organize and come together,” said Tushar Jois, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at City College. “That is what we’re specifically tailoring our technology for.”
Mesh networks are a type of local area network (LAN) where multiple devices (nodes) connect directly to as many other nodes as possible to share data. In the context of protests, users’ smartphones operate as the nodes, dynamically connecting to devices in the local area and forwarding data through the chain to its intended recipient. In this way, the users form their own LAN, bypassing the need to connect to local wireless networks.
This decentralised networking technology – which has widespread applications in more conventional settings, such as for office WiFi – has been used by protesters for several years, but results have been mixed, with messages failing to deliver, appearing out of order, and allowing users to be traced. Part of the challenge, the researchers explain, is that when the mesh network comes under strain nodes within it can begin sending redundant messages, flooding the system.
The researchers’ new system, Amigo, overcomes this challenge by dynamically segmenting the network into ‘cliques’ based on their geographical position. Within a clique, each node may only communicate to a designated lead node, which then communicates the data to other lead nodes. This reduces the number of redundant messages sent, significantly reducing pressure on the network.
Amusingly, this system somewhat resembles the clandestine cell systems use by resistance groups for decades, whereby members of a cell could only communicate to the wider organisation through a local (typically anonymous) leader, who in turn is part of another more senior cell. This limits the number of members who could be betrayed if one were to be captured.
Another major consideration for Amigo is security. In the past, it has been difficult to remove compromised devices from encrypted groups on the mesh network, and older mesh standards also leaked compromising metadata.
According to Jois, Amigo is tackling these problems with new algorithms, ensuring outsider anonymity and group removal. It also features forward secrecy, which ensures past communications remain secure even if a long-term encryption key is compromised, and post-compromise security, allowing the system to automatically create a new key if the current key is exposed, blocking out the intruder.
According to Jois, the next step for Amigo involves the researchers getting closer to active protests to better understand protesters needs and explore how the network functions as protest evolves.
“[Researcher Cora Ruiz’s] current work is about determining communications dynamics and [group] dynamics by going to protest activists and journalists—in these places where Internet shutdowns are common—and figuring out what are their needs,” said Jois.
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