The New York Times has uncovered a "shadow internet" set up by the Obama administration. Thanks to $2 million from the State Department, some nerds on L Street in Washington "who look as if they could be in a garage band are fitting deceptively innocent-looking hardware into a prototype 'Internet in a suitcase.'"
From the Obama State Department, in other words, a "stealth internet."
Financed with a $2 million State Department grant, the suitcase could be secreted across a border and quickly set up to allow wireless communication over a wide area with a link to the global Internet.
The American effort, revealed in dozens of interviews, planning documents and classified diplomatic cables obtained by The New York Times, ranges in scale, cost and sophistication.
Some projects involve technology that the United States is developing; others pull together tools that have already been created by hackers in a so-called liberation-technology movement sweeping the globe.
A further $50 million has been invested "an independent cellphone network in Afghanistan using towers on protected military bases inside the country. It is intended to offset the Taliban’s ability to shut down the official Afghan services, seemingly at will."
This is a real departure from old one-way, we-tell-you-what-to-believe services like Voice of America over which the US maintained control. We've moved from offering US-sourced and approved propaganda to creating tools for freedom fighters over which, presumably, we have no control. Thanks to an effort backed by Hillary Clinton, we are freedom enablers as distinct from being the board of directors of Freedom, Inc.
Developers caution that independent networks come with downsides: repressive governments could use surveillance to pinpoint and arrest activists who use the technology or simply catch them bringing hardware across the border. But others believe that the risks are outweighed by the potential impact. “We’re going to build a separate infrastructure where the technology is nearly impossible to shut down, to control, to surveil,” said Sascha Meinrath, who is leading the “Internet in a suitcase” project as director of the Open Technology Initiative at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan research group.
In a country like ours, where the most powerful media are no longer owned and protected by all of us, the ability to set up a shadow, portable communications system could be a major safeguard.
It's not solely for Iranian students. It's not just a tool to get around the Taliban in Afghanistan. We've been busy over here creating our own taliban. We may need our own work-around.
