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Home » Building Dissent Networks: Towards Effective Countermeasures against Large-Scale Communications Blackouts
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Building Dissent Networks: Towards Effective Countermeasures against Large-Scale Communications Blackouts

Authors: 

Shaddi Hasan, University of California, Berkeley; Yahel Ben-David, University of California, Berkeley, and De Novo Group; Giulia Fanti, University of California, Berkeley; Eric Brewer, University of California, Berkeley, and Google; Scott Shenker, University of California, Berkeley, and International Computer Science Institute

Abstract: 

Large-scale communications blackouts, such as those carried out by Egypt and Libya in 2011 and Syria in 2012 and 2013, have motivated a series of projects that aim to enable citizens to communicate even in the face of such heavy-handed censorship efforts. A common theme across these proposals has been the use of wireless mesh networks. We argue that such networks are poorly equipped to serve as a meaningful countermeasure against large-scale blackouts due to their intrinsically poor scaling properties. We further argue that projects in this space must consider user safety as first design priority and thus far have failed to preserve user anonymity and to rely only on innocuous hardware. From these two insights, we frame a definition of dissent networks to capture the essential requirements for blackout circumvention solutions.

Shaddi Hasan, University of California, Berkeley

Giulia Fanti, University of California, Berkeley

Eric Brewer, University of California, Berkeley and Google

Scott Shenker, University of California, Berkeley and ICSI

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BibTeX
@inproceedings {179187,
author = {Shaddi Hasan and Yahel Ben-David and Giulia Fanti and Eric Brewer and Scott Shenker},
title = {Building Dissent Networks: Towards Effective Countermeasures against {Large-Scale} Communications Blackouts},
booktitle = {3rd USENIX Workshop on Free and Open Communications on the Internet (FOCI 13)},
year = {2013},
address = {Washington, D.C.},
url = {https://www.usenix.org/conference/foci13/workshop-program/presentation/hasan},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = aug,
}
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