A notable capability humans are able to leverage during difficult times is resiliency. When people finally decide to react to a situation, they are capable of adapting to seemingly insurmountable odds and austere conditions.
In 2011, Egypt experienced violent protests as a younger generation of activists engaged in country-wide demonstrations, as the Muslim Brotherhood and some portions of the military were politically at odds with each other.
For the purposes of this blog which is communications focused, I won’t spend a lot of time taking a deep dive into the complexities of Egypt’s social and political structure, or discuss in-depth issues of the day. I also don’t want to go outside of my knowledge on this subject, and possibly make inaccurate statements about a country I know little about. But I do want to lay the ground work for the topic of alternative communications, by citing the 2011 Arab Spring in Egypt, and the 2014 Hong Kong protests, as real-world examples of what happens when a population is cutoff from every-day communications networks (e.g. telecommunications networks).
Egypt
In both 2011 and 2012 the Muslim Brotherhood which was previously banned in Egypt won the Presidency and a majority of seats in Parliament. However, this political victory did not last long as Egypt’s judiciary voided the vote and dissolved the 2012 legislature.
The following year, the army removed then President Morsi, which caused many Egyptian citizens to begin protesting the removal of a democratically elected President. The state deployed forces to quell the protests and several hundred protesters were killed. At this point, Egypt was in a state of emergency and using any means at its disposal to retain control.
In the state’s attempts to keep the population under control, they amended their constitution to re-define “the military’s role and functions,” created laws to ban gathers of more than ten (10) people without authorization, and prohibit political parties established by religion. [1]
In addition to the aforementioned new legislation, the state blocked several websites from public access such as WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook, and eventually the state shut down the Internet, official Domain Name Servers (“DNS”), as well as the Short Messaging Service (“SMS”). The state was effective in their efforts to control Internet traffic across Egypt. The authoritarian approach of the state to create an information blackout seems to have the opposite effect of what they intended. The blackout caused many to go out into the streets seeking information on what was happening, and culminating into protests.
Eventually the Internet was restored, however, in the aftermath of the blackout citizens began discussions on what could be done to communicate without being hamstrung by the state?
One solution was to use Tor which “is a circumvention tool that allows users to access censored information online, by bouncing communications among a network of users around the world, ultimately enabling its users to maintain anonymity online…Tor as a program that enables you to circumvent the central service of censorship by using a computer from someone else in the world. It played crucial role…because social media pages sharing information about the protests were “systematically censored so you could not access them without censorship circumvention tools. [2]
Hong Kong
In 2014, Hong Kong saw a series of protests referred to as the Umbrella Revolution, where the state’s proposed electoral system reforms were the catalyst for the demonstrations. [3] However, unlike in the early days of Egypt’s Arab Spring, “technology would play a huge role in organizing political protests.” [4]
The Hong Kong protesters faced similar censorship efforts by their government that the Egyptian citizens did. However, the Umbrella Revolution protesters leveraged Mesh networks such as Firechat, where “instead of routing traffic through base stations, they allow nearby mobile phones to communicate directly with each other – what is called peer-to-peer networking.”[5] This alternative communication tool enabled them to continue their coordination efforts with each other, as opposed to figuring out a solution in real time.
The aforementioned examples underscore the importance of having alternative communications methods independent of the telecommunications network. Now you may be asking yourself, can I establish a Mesh network among my circle of friends and family?
There is an open-sourced project called Meshtastic, which is a “project that enables you to use inexpensive LoRa radios as a long range off-grid communication platform in areas without existing or reliable communications infrastructure. The radios automatically rebroadcast messages they receive in order to create a mesh network so that everyone in the group can receive messages – even from the furthest member. Depending on settings used, the Meshtastic mesh can sustain up to 80 device nodes. Radios can be paired to a single phone so that your friends and family are able to address a message to your specific radio. Each device supports a connection from a single user at a time” [6]
I have setup two devices which I can pair with either my Android phone or tablet, and after testing can confirm the device and software work as intended. I was able to flash a device (transceriver) called a LILYGO® TTGO T-Beam. Once the firmware was installed, I was able to pair them with my Android devices. If you are interested in getting started, you can follow the instructions on the Meshtastic website which will detail what hardware you need here, as well as the drivers you’ll need to install.
There is a lot of technical information on the Meshtastic site, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed for those that are non-technical. Do not get discouraged by this, setting up a device with your phone or tablet is not as daunting as it may seem when digesting all the information on the website.
The items I purchased were the LILYGO® TTGO T-Beam, 915 MHz version, and installed the ESP32 Serial Drivers on my laptop running Windows 10, as well as the Flashing Firmware for my ESP32 Device.
If you are interested in purchasing a case for your device, then you can procure one from the Esty store here. Although, you may need to brush up on your soldering skills because you’ll need to attach the OLED screen to the board, unless you can find one that has already been attached.
As of this writing, you can purchase a T-Beam from either Amazon here, or Ali Express here. If you live in North America, you’ll want to purchase the 915 MHz version as that is the specified band range for this device. For reference, below are a couple of photographs of two that I built last year.
I’ll close with a quote from a survivor of the Balkan War in the 1990’s. “Survival is about resilience, to move on and on, to overcome difficult situations and come back again.” – Selco Begovic [7]
[1] https://www.mpfpr.de/research/constitutional-change-after-the-arab-spring/
[2] http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/06/17/mesh.technology.revolution/index.html
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Hong_Kong_protests
[4] https://theconversation.com/mesh-networks-and-firechat-make-switching-off-the-internet-that-much-harder-32588
[5] https://theconversation.com/mesh-networks-and-firechat-make-switching-off-the-internet-that-much-harder-32588
[6] https://meshtastic.org/docs/introduction
[7] https://geroldblog.com/2018/11/28/selcos-shtf-survival-lessons-part-1-a-to-b/