Unboxing the Gear Behind America's 'Shadow Internet'

They’re tools for the amateur spy, the would-be dictator toppler, or the determined porn hunter—and they’re funded by the U.S. government. It’s a new generation of freedom promotion, ushered in with fanfare to succeed or replace the creaking Voice of America propaganda efforts. If activists in the Arab Spring took down governments with social media, the U.S. State Department under Hillary Clinton wants to make sure other governments can’t shut down revolutions with the flick of a switch. A very complex switch.

Here are some of the tools the U.S. government is funding, according to The New York Times yesterday:

A team of tech geeks working as contractors for the U.S. State Department is designing suitcase-sized hardware that can be spirited into countries where the internet is censored or at risk of being shut down during a political movement. Based on mesh networking – a concept – though the details of the project don’t come through clearly in the Times – the $2 million suitcase is built to pass data across a system of wireless relays such as laptops or mobile phones, without depending on normal infrastructure like cell towers or home internet connections. Even if someone shut down main communication lines, the mesh network keeps going (see this graphic). But establishing trust over this network, and avoiding infiltration by security forces, is a key vulnerability.

Another way governments and industry can control people’s communication is by monitoring or manipulating mobile phone conversations and texts. In Afghanistan, “[w]ith a combination of threats to phone company officials and attacks on the towers, the Taliban was able to shut down the main network in the countryside virtually at will.” So the U.S. launched something called the Palisades project, an effort to build an alternate phone system. Estimated to cost somewhere between $50–250 million, the project is not yet fully operational. I’m pretty sure the U.S. government would never use such a thing for its own intelligence purposes.

Given how much attention some of us pay to the plight of activists and other targets of powerful Chinese government officials, it’s hard to imagine China’s closely monitored mobile phone system as a breath of freedom. But if you’re on the North Korean side of the border, staring across the Yalu River at booming Dandong, China, their cell towers could be beacons of freedom. With more than 850 million digital subscribers in China, blocking cross-border phone use is not exactly easy. This one’s not U.S.-funded, but it does let that old-style “Radio Free Asia” propaganda machine slip information across a tough border, presumably in both directions.

Now that the secret’s out, is any of this going to work? It depends what the goals are. If the aim is to empower a few key people to secretly communicate without monitoring, the suitcase and cross-border methods seem pretty slick. If they can actually build a robust network (don’t hold your breath for military efficiency), the Afghanistan mobile phone system independent of the Taliban could be great too.

But if the goal is to topple regimes, our touch screen starts to look foggier. Egypt’s government fell despite shutting off its internet. Iran’s government severely restricted internet access and survived. Cell phones aren’t stopping Gadaffi from killing people. Free communication may have a value in and of itself, but being caught with tools built pseudo-secretly by the U.S. government could lead to things we might not like to think about.

Meanwhile, the dream of creating an alternate telecom system to carry massive amounts of traffic and make internet use truly free seems elusive. It costs private industry decades and billions of dollars to set up infrastructure. The pocket or suitcase version is more powerful than smoke signals on mountaintops, but how much freedom flows from a slow, shaky connection? In experiments for political freedom, it’s a good idea to remember the law of unintended consequences.

_Photo by laverrue:http://www.flickr.com/photos/23912576@N05/2962194797/ _