[Freedombox-discuss] The message from Tahrir Square

[stillyet at googlemail.com]

I think those of us old enough to remember UUCP will be aware of the
merits of store-and-forward protocols. Obviously, if you have a
reliable live Internet link you'll use that, but as we've seen in
places like Bahrain and Libya this week, or Egypt last, continuous,
reliable live Internet links are not things that people whose freedom
is under threat can rely on. So a system of opportunistic
store-and-forward proxies which allow a node to get a message to a
node just a little bit closer to the Internet, which can get
information out even when links are partial, patchy and discontinuous,
should I think be part of the FreedomBox concept.

UUCP itself exists as a package in Debian stable. It can run over TCP
with SSL, but does not need to. However, UUCP addressing depends on a
known path from node to node. But in situations where Internet
communication has been cut by an oppressive state, known paths to the
public Internet will not be available; a message must necessarily be
broadcast opportunistically to any node which may subsequently get a
better connection. I don't know of any existing stable package which
will do this, although Freenet developers have certainly discussed the
problem.

But if FreedomBox is to be anything more than a toy for geeks in safe
and stable Western democracies, this is a problem we need to address.


-- 
Simon Brooke :: http://www.journeyman.cc/~simon/

		;; Semper in faecibus sumus, sole profundum variat.