6 ms·

> If the Internet’s down, Briar can sync via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or memory cards I'd like to see more "peer to peer" projects take things this seriously.

DonsDiscountGas 2y ago
What's the use case? I'm assuming one is trying to send a message to someone far away so it seems like the alternatives wouldn't necessarily help.
- rsolva 2y ago
  Other phones with Briar installed can carry your (encrypted) messages, as in a game of whisper. This works best if enough people between you and the recipient had Briar installed ... but most people don't. But I see how this feature could be very helpful if a state shuts down internet connectivity or during war or a natural catastrophe. The nifty thing is that the app can be shared from one device to another, so you are not dependent on having the app in advance of an emergency. Ideally, everyone should have this installed as an insurance :)
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - N2yhWNXQN3k9 2y ago
    > Other phones with Briar installed can carry your (encrypted) messages Sounds like an excellent target for DoS
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      DoS by local users on local networks? This is that thing where you solve the cryptography problem with the $5 wrench but only slightly different, right?
      - N2yhWNXQN3k9 2y ago
        I haven't looked at the implementation. I was making an off the cuff comment to see if anyone had more information, but yes, ultimately I assume that you could mute an unwanted node with brute force? Or just move further away from it? I was thinking more you flood the "mail bag" of the "message carrier" and assume the implementation has a LRU eviction policy on said "mail bag".
    - genewitch 2y ago
      Someone not participating in briar or the DoS can use fing (android app) or a signal strength meter (handheld, I have 2, personally) to direction find and triangulate the person sending the traffic. Hence $5 lead pipe. and by "someone" i mean "any android cellphone"
  - 7373737373 2y ago
    > This works best if enough people between you and the recipient had [...] installed ... but most people don't. Which is why it would be nice if operating systems already included such functionality
  - Velocifyer 2y ago
    This is not true, unless you are all in one big fourm or you have a chain of shared blogs. I think they are woried about metadata privacy or people using this to do a DoS.
- beefnugs 2y ago
  A bunch of countries turn off the internet at the first sign of protests, hell sometimes they just turn it off to stop "a bunch of college kids from cheating during test week" Coming to a country near you soon
  - DonsDiscountGas 2y ago
    Right but Bluetooth and local Wi-Fi are very short range so it doesn't actually solve that problem
    - Charon77 2y ago
      It does if you consider that everyone can act as a relay. This is also how apple airtags can be find anywhere there's an iphone users nearby.
      - idiotsecant 2y ago
        I haven't studied the protocol but that seems like it has some...obvious routing issues. Airtags have a totally different architecture than what this protocol is describing, I think.
        dlenski 2y ago
        > I haven't studied the protocol but that seems like it has some...obvious routing issues. Yes indeed. I don't understand how the peer-to-peer relaying can possibly scale without some directed routing algorithm. If my phone running Briar is literally handing off every as-yet-undelivered message to every other phone running Briar, we're going to pretty quickly become overwhelmed. It'll have all the routing issues of a Wi-Fi mesh network, except at a vast scale. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_ad_hoc_network#Briar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_ad_hoc_network#Briar
      - dlenski 2y ago
        > It does if you consider that everyone can act as a relay. Let's think this through. Imagine civil war breaks out in Australia, and communications infrastructure is destroyed or shut off. I'm in Sydney and want to transmit a message to a friend in Perth. How exactly is "everyone acts as a relay" going to work? In particular, how is it going to scale when everyone in the country is trying to do the same things? > This is also how apple airtags can be find anywhere there's an iphone users nearby. This is incorrect. Airtags (and the Google version) communicate with nearby Internet-connected devices, via Bluetooth and NFC I think. Those nearby Internet-connected devices send the airtag's location to a server. Nothing about this would work without the Internet.
bloomingkales 2y ago
It is very much in the bingo cards that internet gets shut off in America as an extension of strong-arm policies.
- cannonpalms 2y ago
  You mean the substrate of our entire economic engine? I think that's a bit dramatic.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - kragen 2y ago
    What, like free trade?
  - jazzyjackson 2y ago
    Parent didn't say all the internet at once, it could just be a matter of telling telecoms to block connections within certain geofences when protests start to flare up, Egypt 2011 style. Could even bring down 4G services while whitelisting POS terminals, keep the Starbuckses up and running.
- dlenski 2y ago
  I dunno why you're getting downvoted so much. This sort of thing seemed unthinkable a decade ago, or even in the first Trump admin, but definitely doesn't now. Other similarly-inclined regimes like Modi in India have proven the effectiveness of targeted Internet shutdowns.
stevenwalton 2y ago
I've really been trying to get Signal to get some decentralization[0] but unfortunately I pissed off some mods. I do understand their reasoning for staying away from full decentralization, both Moxie and Meredith have made good arguments. But I think this is something where there's a really good middle ground. Where both parties highly benefit. Users get a lot of added utility, "fun", and not to mention a huge upgrade in privacy and security (under local settings), while Signal gets to reduce a lot of data transfer over the network. There's a lot of use cases for local message and file sharing (see thread) and if the goal is to capture as little data as possible about the users, well let's not capture any network traffic when users are in close proximity, right? It's got to be a lot harder to pick up signals that only are available within a local proximity than signals traveling across the internet. The option of expanding to a mesh network can be implemented later[1] but I don't understand how an idea like this doesn't further the stated goals. The big problem with things like Briar is that you can't install it after the internet has been turned off AND it is already unpopular. But if an existing app with an existing userbase implements even some meshing then this benefits all those users when an event like that happens. Not to mention there's clear utility in day-to-day life. [0] https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-airdrop/37402 https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-airdrop/37402 [1] I think a mesh network maintains the constraints both Moxie and Meredith have discussed, concerns about ensuring servers are up to data. But then again I'm not sure why that can't be resolved in the same way it is already done where if you let Signal fall too far behind in updates then it will no longer communicate with the servers.
- kragen 2y ago
  > The big problem with things like Briar is that you can't install it after the internet has been turned off AND it is already unpopular Sideloading an .apk is supported in all Android versions, right? Even without internet access? Is something more needed to install Briar?
  - stevenwalton 2y ago
    Sure, but this doesn't really scale very well. Distributing those APKs without internet access is pretty hard.
miohtama 2y ago
Firechat did meshed WiFi during 2014 Hong Kong protests https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/29/firechat-messaging-app-powering-hong-kong-protests https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/29/firechat-messa... China went to hard mode to kill the app.
myself248 2y ago
Secure Scuttlebutt can do similarly. A wandering node can ferry messages to another cluster of nodes; it's used by sailboats where someone visits shore to run errands and exchanges messages as they go.
- pferde 2y ago
  Do you know of any documentation to get SSB bootstrapped? I tried several times, but I hit a wall of not being able to find any active communities, plus there were old-style, technically obsolete communities and new-style communities, and half the available documentation referred to each, so it was impossible to figure out what to do.
  - myself248 2y ago
    Nope, same issue myself. I find it fascinating to read about, but it seems to have a steep and very slippery social hill to climb before the technical parts of the network do anything.
    - evbogue 2y ago
      I'm fairly certain there is not a working implementation of ssb in it's original form anymore. But yes, it had local wifi sync.

DonsDiscountGas 2y ago

What's the use case? I'm assuming one is trying to send a message to someone far away so it seems like the alternatives wouldn't necessarily help.

rsolva 2y ago
Other phones with Briar installed can carry your (encrypted) messages, as in a game of whisper. This works best if enough people between you and the recipient had Briar installed ... but most people don't. But I see how this feature could be very helpful if a state shuts down internet connectivity or during war or a natural catastrophe. The nifty thing is that the app can be shared from one device to another, so you are not dependent on having the app in advance of an emergency. Ideally, everyone should have this installed as an insurance :)
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- N2yhWNXQN3k9 2y ago
  > Other phones with Briar installed can carry your (encrypted) messages Sounds like an excellent target for DoS
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    DoS by local users on local networks? This is that thing where you solve the cryptography problem with the $5 wrench but only slightly different, right?
    - N2yhWNXQN3k9 2y ago
      I haven't looked at the implementation. I was making an off the cuff comment to see if anyone had more information, but yes, ultimately I assume that you could mute an unwanted node with brute force? Or just move further away from it? I was thinking more you flood the "mail bag" of the "message carrier" and assume the implementation has a LRU eviction policy on said "mail bag".
  - genewitch 2y ago
    Someone not participating in briar or the DoS can use fing (android app) or a signal strength meter (handheld, I have 2, personally) to direction find and triangulate the person sending the traffic. Hence $5 lead pipe. and by "someone" i mean "any android cellphone"
- 7373737373 2y ago
  > This works best if enough people between you and the recipient had [...] installed ... but most people don't. Which is why it would be nice if operating systems already included such functionality
- Velocifyer 2y ago
  This is not true, unless you are all in one big fourm or you have a chain of shared blogs. I think they are woried about metadata privacy or people using this to do a DoS.
beefnugs 2y ago
A bunch of countries turn off the internet at the first sign of protests, hell sometimes they just turn it off to stop "a bunch of college kids from cheating during test week" Coming to a country near you soon
- DonsDiscountGas 2y ago
  Right but Bluetooth and local Wi-Fi are very short range so it doesn't actually solve that problem
  - Charon77 2y ago
    It does if you consider that everyone can act as a relay. This is also how apple airtags can be find anywhere there's an iphone users nearby.
    - idiotsecant 2y ago
      I haven't studied the protocol but that seems like it has some...obvious routing issues. Airtags have a totally different architecture than what this protocol is describing, I think.
      - dlenski 2y ago
        > I haven't studied the protocol but that seems like it has some...obvious routing issues. Yes indeed. I don't understand how the peer-to-peer relaying can possibly scale without some directed routing algorithm. If my phone running Briar is literally handing off every as-yet-undelivered message to every other phone running Briar, we're going to pretty quickly become overwhelmed. It'll have all the routing issues of a Wi-Fi mesh network, except at a vast scale. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_ad_hoc_network#Briar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_ad_hoc_network#Briar
    - dlenski 2y ago
      > It does if you consider that everyone can act as a relay. Let's think this through. Imagine civil war breaks out in Australia, and communications infrastructure is destroyed or shut off. I'm in Sydney and want to transmit a message to a friend in Perth. How exactly is "everyone acts as a relay" going to work? In particular, how is it going to scale when everyone in the country is trying to do the same things? > This is also how apple airtags can be find anywhere there's an iphone users nearby. This is incorrect. Airtags (and the Google version) communicate with nearby Internet-connected devices, via Bluetooth and NFC I think. Those nearby Internet-connected devices send the airtag's location to a server. Nothing about this would work without the Internet.

bloomingkales 2y ago

It is very much in the bingo cards that internet gets shut off in America as an extension of strong-arm policies.

cannonpalms 2y ago
You mean the substrate of our entire economic engine? I think that's a bit dramatic.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- kragen 2y ago
  What, like free trade?
- jazzyjackson 2y ago
  Parent didn't say all the internet at once, it could just be a matter of telling telecoms to block connections within certain geofences when protests start to flare up, Egypt 2011 style. Could even bring down 4G services while whitelisting POS terminals, keep the Starbuckses up and running.
dlenski 2y ago
I dunno why you're getting downvoted so much. This sort of thing seemed unthinkable a decade ago, or even in the first Trump admin, but definitely doesn't now. Other similarly-inclined regimes like Modi in India have proven the effectiveness of targeted Internet shutdowns.

stevenwalton 2y ago

I've really been trying to get Signal to get some decentralization[0] but unfortunately I pissed off some mods. I do understand their reasoning for staying away from full decentralization, both Moxie and Meredith have made good arguments. But I think this is something where there's a really good middle ground. Where both parties highly benefit. Users get a lot of added utility, "fun", and not to mention a huge upgrade in privacy and security (under local settings), while Signal gets to reduce a lot of data transfer over the network. There's a lot of use cases for local message and file sharing (see thread) and if the goal is to capture as little data as possible about the users, well let's not capture any network traffic when users are in close proximity, right? It's got to be a lot harder to pick up signals that only are available within a local proximity than signals traveling across the internet. The option of expanding to a mesh network can be implemented later[1] but I don't understand how an idea like this doesn't further the stated goals. The big problem with things like Briar is that you can't install it after the internet has been turned off AND it is already unpopular. But if an existing app with an existing userbase implements even some meshing then this benefits all those users when an event like that happens. Not to mention there's clear utility in day-to-day life. [0] https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-airdrop/37402 https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-airdrop/37402 [1] I think a mesh network maintains the constraints both Moxie and Meredith have discussed, concerns about ensuring servers are up to data. But then again I'm not sure why that can't be resolved in the same way it is already done where if you let Signal fall too far behind in updates then it will no longer communicate with the servers.

kragen 2y ago
> The big problem with things like Briar is that you can't install it after the internet has been turned off AND it is already unpopular Sideloading an .apk is supported in all Android versions, right? Even without internet access? Is something more needed to install Briar?
- stevenwalton 2y ago
  Sure, but this doesn't really scale very well. Distributing those APKs without internet access is pretty hard.

miohtama 2y ago

Firechat did meshed WiFi during 2014 Hong Kong protests https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/29/firechat-messaging-app-powering-hong-kong-protests https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/29/firechat-messa... China went to hard mode to kill the app.

myself248 2y ago

Secure Scuttlebutt can do similarly. A wandering node can ferry messages to another cluster of nodes; it's used by sailboats where someone visits shore to run errands and exchanges messages as they go.

pferde 2y ago
Do you know of any documentation to get SSB bootstrapped? I tried several times, but I hit a wall of not being able to find any active communities, plus there were old-style, technically obsolete communities and new-style communities, and half the available documentation referred to each, so it was impossible to figure out what to do.
- myself248 2y ago
  Nope, same issue myself. I find it fascinating to read about, but it seems to have a steep and very slippery social hill to climb before the technical parts of the network do anything.
  - evbogue 2y ago
    I'm fairly certain there is not a working implementation of ssb in it's original form anymore. But yes, it had local wifi sync.