Just weeks after first allowing foreign visitors to access 3G networks, North Korea has reportedly cut off mobile Internet service for short-term tourists, reports North Korea Tech (h/t Tech In Asia), which spotted a notice on Koryo Tours’ Web site. The Beijing-based company, which specializes in arranging tours to North Korea, said:

“3G access is no longer available for tourists to the DPRK. Sim cards can still be purchased to make international calls but no internet access is available.”

Foreigners visiting North Korea were allowed to get uncensored 3G data for the first time on March 1. Typically banned services like Twitter and Skype were available on the network, which was set up by Koryolink, a joint venture of Egyptian company Orascom Telecom Holding and North Korean state-owned Korea Post and Telecommunications Corporation (KPTC). North Koreans are blocked from accessing the global Web and allowed only a few services, such as MMS messaging and subscriptions to Rodong Sinmun, the state-run newspaper.

There’s no word yet on why North Korea decided to cut off 3G access for visitors, but it could be because the government was unnerved by the worldwide interest in tweets, Instagram pics, and other online missives sent by visitors to the highly-secretive country. The news that the DPRK has suspended 3G access for foreigners comes hours after North Korean state media said that the country’s military has ordered rocket and artillery units to be on “highest alert” to strike bases on the U.S. mainland, Guam, Hawaii, and other targets in the Pacific and South Korea. In response, Seoul said it hadn’t detected any warning signs of an attack, while the Pentagon said that U.S. military bases are ready to respond to “any contigency.”

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

North Korea reportedly tested a nuclear weapon tonight. For perspective, its recently demonstrated long-range missile could potentially deliver a bomb capable of taking out downtown San Francisco.

After measuring a 4.9 magnitude seismic event tonight, South Korea’s defence ministry confirmed that it was caused by an underground nuclear test. North Korea’s nuclear capability is estimated to be about 2 kilotons.

Of course, I immediately wanted to know what kind of damage this could do to San Francisco and found one disturbingly addictive website (for the paranoid) that allows users to see just how much of their hometown could be destroyed in a nuclear blast, overlaid on a Google Map (image above).

According to the website, nearly all of downtown South of Market (the home of TechCrunch’s San Francisco office) would be taken out, and parts of Lower Height and the Mission would suffer extraordinary damage. Nearly all of San Francisco and parts of Oakland (not shown above) are within glass shattering range. We pasted the explanation for what each concentric circle represents:

• 1st: Complete destruction of reinforced concrete structures, such as skyscrapers, will occur within this ring.
• 2nd: Severe damage to complete destruction of reinforced concrete structures, such as skyscrapers, will occur within this ring.
• 3rd: Complete destruction of ordinary houses, and moderate to severe damage to reinforced concrete structures, will occur within this ring.
• 4th: Severe damage to ordinary houses, and light to moderate damage to reinforced concrete structures, will occur within this ring.
• 5th: Light damage to all structures, and light to moderate damage to ordinary houses, will occur within this ring.

There is a big caveat: North Korea has an embarrassingly bad missile program. Last year, one of their test rockets fell apart moments after liftoff. So, while there are long-range missiles that could potentially reach the West Coast, I’m not buying a bunker anytime soon.

Indeed, many seem to be far less concerned than we might imagine. As of this writing, CNN’s readers appeared to be more concerned about the porn on their smartphones than the threat of nuclear annihilation (at least for a few hours after the news was announced). Below is an actual photo of the relative traffic for their most popular stories.

I’m not sure which is more scary: the fact that we still leave in age where the world can be blown to bits, or that the masses care more about porn on their phones.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

If you watch one paranoid fever dream video of a missle-blown New York set to a Muzak version of “We Are The World,” make it this one. While the prospect of mass nuclear annihilation isn’t funny, what is funny is this video from the official North Korean propaganda corps that shows a sleeping NK citizen dreaming of Glorious Missiles Of The Fatherland winging their way to New York where they destroy a stylized Manhattan. The biggest problem? The footage is stolen from a Modern Warfare 3 cut-scene.

In the scene the dreamer notes that “It seems that the nest of wickedness is ablaze with the fire started by itself,” which, given that the game was developed in California, is mostly true. However, with all that talk of North Korea’s amazing film production capabilities and excellent cinema, it’s odd that they wouldn’t render their own scenes of absolute destruction, possibly by making little models of Brooklyn and crushing them under the feet of Pulgasari.

Sadly, the other videos in the official North Korean YouTube channel are pretty boring unless you totally like smelting and power plants. It will be interesting to see real cinema come out of this country in the next few years as, just perhaps, international pressure finally caves in this gulag.

via Forbes

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The old, Imperialist centers for entrepreneurial excellence have been eclipsed by the great and glorious Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea, the world’s new and preeminent location for startups.

“We invite the world to come to us and plug into the vibrant tech hub that is North Korea,” said the Great Leader Kim Jong-un. “We have a workforce unparalleled, amazing infrastructure, and a can-do attitude.”

With such exciting firms as Instagram, Rovio, DKR People’s Tractor Factory, and Epicurious opening headquarters in Pyongyang, the beautiful city is turning into a force to rival Palo Alto in might and financial glory. President Obama is awed by the energy in North Korea.

Bootstrapping? Why waste your funding on employees when many of our people will work for free?

“Yes, we will,” said an unnamed citizen.

Looking for nightlife? Come to our beautiful hotel where you can enjoy fine beer and liquor. Enjoy the capital’s many statues or lay a wreath on the Great Leader’s grave. Are you a health nut? You will lose weight.

North Korea boasts a controlled, strong Internet connection to the West and dark fiber throughout the country. The captive market will let you test products without oversight or interference, and taxes are lower than in the Bay Area.

North Korea invites you to visit today. Visas are available to entrepreneurs, journalists, and celebrity founders, and Our Glorious Leader is sponsoring Geeks On A Kaengsaeng, a countryside tour that will bring outsiders closer to the beauty of North Korea.

The possibilities are endless in North Korea and your future is limitless. Start your dream in the Country of Dreams.

“Come to North Korea for the buzz,” says our Great Leader Kim Jong-un. “Stay until you are allowed to leave.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Clever ‘gif animations’ startup Loopcam has released it’s new version which has been more or less been rebuilt from the ground up. This is an infectious app and has cleverly hooked into the craze for creating funny animations.

Sitting between photographs and video, Loopcam captures a series of frames through an iPhone or iPad camera stop-motion style, which are merged into an animation to share and which can be embedded on a site. The new version features more social features, a upgraded design, deeper Facebook integration through the Open Graph. Berlin-based Loopcam is backed by Passion Capital and a syndicate of local angel investors.

It’s being used by musical producer Jermaine Dupri for instance.

But that’s not why we’re mentioning it today.

Founder Tor Rauden Källstigen became an occasional traveller to North Korea, after working with the project called Noko Jeans (which has since finished), which made the first and only jeans ever to come from North Korea.

While on a recent trip there Källstigen managed to record some loopcam loops.

Thus we present exclusively for you the first ever gif animations ever been made in North Korea.

We have some street scenes, some kind of fair ground attraction and Källstigen waving goodbye.

Enjoy.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Facebook is nearing a billion users, but what could topple the big blue giant? Government intervention, the shift to mobile, and a loss of “cool” all have the power to violently disrupt the social network, or at least cause it to lose its strong grip on the market.

Here’s a look at the four things that could ruin Mark Zuckerberg’s dream of a single site that connects the world.

The thread that runs between all these pitfalls is their potential to make Facebook irrelevant. If you can’t access it, its overrun by ads, there’s something better, or it’s simply uncool, Facebook could fade away.

It’s size, network effect, and wise leadership could protect it from these threats, and honestly, I think Facebook has the potential to be successful for a long, long time. But if you had to bet against Facebook, here’s what you’d be betting on.

Big Brother

Facebook is banned in China and access is or has been restricted in several countries including Iran, North Korea, and Syria. Right now this is limiting the social network’s growth potential. But if disputes with governments over what content is appropriate cause it to be shut out of more countries, these roadblocks could divert users to other local social networks. That would fracture the value that comes with having such a high percentage of internet users in one place. For example, Singapore is a valuable market with a strict government that could drop the ban hammer on Facebook.

Regulation around privacy could also slow Facebook down and make it more vulnerable to competition. Facebook narrowly escaped privacy audits from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the European Union. If the government of a core market put restrictions on how Facebook can launch new products or what features it can show where, it could create opportunities for startups to eat Facebook’s lunch. Imagine how much bigger a threat Foursquare would be if Facebook had been restricted from launching its Places location service.

Competition From The Next Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook doesn’t actually need to worry much about Twitter, Google+, or international players. They’ve failed to offer something revolutionary enough to make early adopters ditch Facebook, or mainstream enough to appeal to everyone. What big blue needs to worry about is the next social product visionary, the next Mark Zuckerberg that could turn Facebook into the next Myspace.

While acquiring and acq-hiring top talent from companies like Instagram was easy when it had pre-IPO stock to throw around, recruiting that next Zuck to side with Facebook rather than wage war against it is about to get tougher. Same goes for keeping its current rockstars from leaving to start a true competitor.

It might take a big hardware change like eyewear computers, holograms, or apps you download straight to your brain to finally make Facebook obsolete. Even then that upstart would have quite the uphill battle, but so did Facebook when it launched.

Smaller Screens, Small Ad Revenue

Staying afloat on display ads won’t cut it if the social network wants to live up to or surpass its ~$100 billion valuation, as Chris Dixon writes. It will have to think bigger. But for now, it has to worry about mobile.

Handheld devices have less room for ads and Facebook’s long list of features. Currently, Facebook only shows a few mobile news feed ads per user per day, while it shows as many as four to seven ads per page on the web. But if Facebook chokes mobile with too many ads, usage could plummet. As more users shift the time they spend on Facebook from the web to mobile, it will make less of the money that keeps the lights on for the whole service.

To counteract this Facebook is aggressively acquiring and hiring from mobile companies like Instagram in hopes of getting its mobile site and apps up to draw more eyeballs. However, while it has a huge footprint of over 500 million mobile users, there’s widespread discontent with the speed of its mobile apps. Many people think they’re cluttered, and complain of slow loading speeds.

Mobile is the biggest threat to Facebook, and the company admits it. If it can’t make more compelling mobile apps and earn more money from these small screens, the shift to mobile will see Facebook lowered into its own grave.

Losing Its Cool

Facebook doesn’t want to be cool. It wants to be a utility. It wants to be the cell phone or the television, not Virgin Mobile or HBO. But the fact is that a big reason Facebook is so popular is because it started by being accessible to only the most envied demographic in the world: Ivy League college students like those at Harvard. It used that prestige to spread like wildfire on every American college campus, and the sexiness of young adulthood to capture the teenage market. Its popularity in the trendsetting United States soon pulled in the rest of the world.

But now your mom is on Facebook. You grandma, professor, little cousins, and plumber are too. It’s not exclusive anymore. Usefulness is what keeps it afloat, but cold, dry, utility for everyone is vulnerable. And soon Zuckerberg will be 30, and he might no longer be seen as the geeky boy genius challenging the adults. He’ll be one of those adults. There are already signs that apathy and distrust for Facebook are setting in.

The slick destroyer of today’s social network would be something that starts elite but that gradually opens up like Facebook did. It would be designed specifically for the hip and young in-crowd. It would recruit big celebrities and carve out an influential niche from which to grow its power. This could be what makes Facebook seem old and boring. And the average Facebook user doesn’t want to go somewhere boring every day. That’s what their jobs are for.

[Image Credit: WaterySoul, TheFW, E:TB.]

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

This afternoon, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) by a vote of 248 to168. Unlike SOPA, which focused on copyright violations, CISPA wants to give Internet companies and the U.S. government the tools to protect and defend themselves against cyber attacks by sharing information with each other. Critics, however, argued that this information sharing would be happening with very little oversight and would put Americans’ privacy rights at risk.

Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), an outspoken critic of the bill, argued that the bill would “waive every single privacy law ever enacted in the name of cybersecurity. Allowing the military and NSA to spy on Americans on American soil goes against every principle this country was founded on.”

Even though this bill has now passed the House, chances are that it will not get through the Senate. On Tuesday, the White House issued a statement condemning the bill and on Wednesday, President Obama threatened to veto the legislation because it “fails to provide authorities to ensure that the nation’s core critical infrastructure is protected while repealing important provisions” of long-established privacy law.

Critics, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, argue that the current version of this bill is basically a major violation of established privacy rights and would allow companies to hand anything and everything you do and say online over to the government in the name of “cybersecurity.”

Proponents of the bill, including House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), argue that the bill is “needed to prepare for countries like Iran and North Korea so that they don’t do something catastrophic to our networks here in America.”

An earlier provision in the bill that would have given Homeland Security more authority to monitor the Internet was dropped before the bill (PDF) passed. In return, though, a number of last-minute amendments, including one that expands the list of reasons for which shared information can be used. While the bill still allows for Internet companies to hand over confidential customer information to U.S. security and intelligence agencies, as well as local low enforcement services, it is worth noting that it does not require them to do so.

You can read a full version of the bill here (PDF).

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Editor’s Note: Richard Fontaine, a Senior Advisor at the Center for a New American Security, is the co-author of Internet Freedom: A Foreign Policy Imperative in the Digital Age. Follow him @rhfontaine.

In its new “Enemies of the Internet” report, the international watchdog group Reporters Without Borders depicts an Internet under unprecedented pressure from the world’s autocratic regimes. The study lists twelve such “enemies,” including Iran, North Korea, China and Saudi Arabia, and observes that an increasing number of governments are not content merely to take domestic steps to control online space. “Freedom of expression on the Internet,” the study notes, “is no longer the sole preserve of dissidents, geeks and censors. Diplomats have followed in their wake.” Internet freedom has become a foreign policy issue.

The report documents the ways in which the twelve countries — and others — have established a broad approach to online control. Internet and mobile phone shutdowns have become more commonplace in recent years, famously in Egypt during the Arab Spring but also in countries like Kazakhstan and parts of China. Internet filtering and deep packet inspection is on the rise, and government surveillance of users’ activity — both online and offline — is increasing. Governments hack dissident websites, spread propaganda on the web, and sometimes simply arrest problematic bloggers and online activists.

It is clear what many autocratic regimes want in the Internet: a controlled space, one that ideally permits their citizens to use online tools for economic activity and basic communication, but that will not permit the kinds of expression that might undermine government authority. The effort to build such a controlled space is no longer restricted to domestic measures, and for several nations it now comprises a significant diplomatic effort.

Indeed, there are several diplomatic avenues through which Internet freedom may become restricted. FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell recently warned that dozens of countries are pursuing a new treaty to establish, in the words of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, “international control over the Internet.” The treaty would give governments new power to regulate the Internet via the UN’s International Telecommunications Union. If successful, McDowell warns, this effort could upend the bottom-up, private-sector-driven model of the Internet and give way to greater government control over its structure.

In addition, diplomats are wrestling over definitions of terms such as online “freedom” and “security” in ways that impact freedom of expression. At an April 2008 U.N. conference that sought to clarify what represents “aggression” online, for instance, a senior Russian official argued that “any time a government promotes ideas on the Internet with the goal of subverting another country’s government — even in the name of democratic reform — it should qualify as ‘aggression.’”

Similarly, the six-member Shanghai Cooperation Organization – which includes Russia and China – in 2009 adopted an accord that reportedly defined “information war,” in part, as an effort by a state to undermine another’s “political, economic and social systems.”

There is push back. A key United Nations official last year issued a major report emphasizing the right of all individuals freely to use the Internet, and earlier this month, the United Nations Human Rights Council held a Swedish-led discussion among member states on online freedom. These instances follow on initiatives by the United States and others to push in various international forums for an expansive definition of the right to online expression.

The United States and likeminded countries will need to become even more active on this front. Developing international norms in favor of Internet freedom is a long-term, global objective. Some countries that currently repress the Internet — like China and Iran — are unlikely to be moved by any of these diplomatic efforts; statements at the United Nations and policy declarations supporting Internet freedom are highly unlikely to change their current policies.

But promoting Internet freedom is not only a near-term challenge, and current efforts may pay off in the longer run. In addition, many countries have not yet fully developed their own Internet policies or thought through all of the implications of Internet freedom and repression even in the short run — including states in Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Shaping the behavior of those states should be an important goal of the United States and its partners.

Continued U.S. leadership is critical to fill what remains a normative vacuum. Part of the difficulty, however, lies not only with authoritarian regimes, but also with some key democracies as well. In addition to its 12 “enemies,” Reporters Without Borders listed several “countries under surveillance.” These include Australia, France and Turkey, democracies all. The United States will need to work with these and other democracies to find common ground that favors internet freedom.

This is not always an easy task, but the need for continued action is pressing. The United States should use all relevant diplomatic forums – the United Nations, the G8 and G20 meetings, and so on – to press for a liberal concept of Internet freedom, and to counter attempts by other states to adopt norms that would restrict expression online. Many autocracies now have an Internet agenda. Those nations who favor an expansive vision of Internet freedom should be equally vigorous in pressing their own.

Image credit: Freepress.net

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Facebook’s $5 billion S-1 IPO filing includes a detailed assessment of business risks. These include: its lack of mobile monetization and the fact that it doesn’t own a mobile platform, government restriction of access, inability to maintain its growth rate, and competition from Google+ as well as Twitter and Microsoft.

Here’s a closer look at these risks, followed by the full text of the risk summary, and you can see the whole Risk Factors section starting on page 10 of the S-1 filing to the SEC.

Growth and Engagement

Facebook explains its biggest challenge may be that:

“Our financial performance has been and will continue to be significantly determined by our success in adding, retaining, and engaging active users. We anticipate that our active user growth rate will decline over time as the size of our active user base increases, and as we achieve higher market penetration rates.”

As we’ve written about, Facebook has saturated some of its key first-world markets in terms of user count.Some specific threats to its growth and engagement include competing products, failure to introduce well-received new products, inability to balance the user experience with the presence of ads, content relevancy, reduced perception of the service’s usefulness, and concerns about sharing, safety, and security.

Mobile

Facebook admits:

“We do not currently directly generate any meaningful revenue from the use of Facebook mobile products. Accordingly, if users continue to increasingly access Facebook mobile products as a substitute for access through personal computers…our revenue and financial results may be negatively affected”.

Simply put, Facebook’s mobile site and apps do not show ad sidebars, or ads of any kind. Many suspect Facebook will soon start serving Sponsored Story ads in the mobile news feed, but it will have to limit their presence to not offend users.

In regards to its lack of a mobile device or OS, Facebook states:

“We are dependent on the interoperability of Facebook with popular mobile operating systems that we do not control, such as Android and iOS, and any changes in such systems that degrade our products’ functionality or give preferential treatment to competitive products could adversely affect Facebook usage on mobile devices.”

Google’s Android could give preference to Google+ and iOS already uses Twitter as its identity provider and native sharing option. Google and Apple could effectively box Facebook out of mobile if it doesn’t secure stronger relationships with them.

Additionally, Google and Apple control the native in-app payments systems on their mobile operating systems, preventing Facebook from earning its 30% tax on in-app purchases. Facebook has launched an HTML5 mobile app platform but it has failed to gain significant traction. Facebook may need to develop its own mobile OS or wait until HTML5 becomes more powerful, and by then it could be too late to catch up to Apple and Google’s mobile app platforms.

Competition

Facebook says competitors are attacking from all directions, stating:

“We face significant competition in almost every aspect of our business, including from companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Twitter, which offer a variety of Internet products, services, content, and online advertising offerings, as well as from mobile companies and smaller Internet companies that offer products and services that may compete with specific Facebook features. We also face competition from traditional and online media businesses for advertising budgets.”

This is one area where Facebook’s risk may not be as bad as it sounds. As I’ve detailed, the network effect of its interconnected user base protects it from disruption by similar services. Facebook has also been acquiring disruptive startups and talent. Through recent product launches like its asymmetrical Subcribe feature, Facebook has reduced Twitter’s threat.

Still, Google has enormous cash reserves and web presence to throw into the war with Facebook. Google knows identity as a layer that ties together activity on its various products is crucial to the future of its ad targeting business. Google+ may never have the world’s most popular news feed, but its ability to serve highly-targeted ads based on personal data and Google product usage could fracture social advertising demand.

Government Censorship and Privacy Regulation

Regarding the possibility of government censorship, Facebook notes:

“It is possible that governments of one or more countries may seek to censor content available on Facebook in their country, restrict access to Facebook from their country entirely, or impose other restrictions that may affect the accessibility of Facebook in their country for an extended period of time or indefinitely. For example, access to Facebook has been or is currently restricted in whole or in part in China, Iran, North Korea, and Syria.”

Facebook’s censorship in China is possibly the biggest barrier to its sustained growth. If it could gain entry there, it would quickly surge past 1 billion users. If more countries shut it out, it will have to squeeze a higher average revenue per user from its existing base. Facebook’s needs to build a crack team of international policy specialists and lobbyists to make sure there’s still a supply of fresh users to sign up.

Beyond censorship, Facebook is also subject to regulation:

“Our business is subject to complex and evolving U.S. and foreign laws and regulations regarding privacy, data protection, and other matters. Many of these laws and regulations are subject to change and uncertain interpretation, and could result in claims, changes to our business practices, increased cost of operations, or declines in user growth or engagement, or otherwise harm our business.”

–

Additional risk factors include that Zynga makes up 12% of Facebook’s revenue, the company’s dedication to user engagement over short-term financial results, privacy scrutiny, patent lawsuits, and hacker attacks.

Full Text of the “Summary Risk Factors”:

• Our business is subject to numerous risks described in the section entitled “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in this prospectus. You should carefully consider these risks before making an investment. Some of these risks include:
• If we fail to retain existing users or add new users, or if our users decrease their level of engagement with Facebook, our revenue, financial results, and business may be significantly harmed;
• We generate a substantial majority of our revenue from advertising. The loss of advertisers, or reduction in spending by advertisers with Facebook, could seriously harm our business;
• Growth in use of Facebook through our mobile products, where we do not currently display ads, as a substitute for use on personal computers may negatively affect our revenue and financial results;
• Facebook user growth and engagement on mobile devices depend upon effective operation with mobile operating systems, networks, and standards that we do not control;
• We may not be successful in our efforts to grow and further monetize the Facebook Platform;
• Our business is highly competitive, and competition presents an ongoing threat to the success of our business;
• Improper access to or disclosure of our users’ information could harm our reputation and adversely affect our business;
• Our business is subject to complex and evolving U.S. and foreign laws and regulations regarding privacy, data protection, and other matters. Many of these laws and regulations are subject to change and uncertain interpretation, and could harm our business;
• Our CEO has control over key decision making as a result of his control of a majority of our voting stock;
• The loss of Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl K. Sandberg, or other key personnel could harm our business;
• We anticipate that we will expend substantial funds in connection with tax withholding and remittance obligations related to the initial settlement of our restricted stock units (RSUs) approximately six months following our initial public offering;
• The market price of our Class A common stock may be volatile or may decline, and you may not be able to resell your shares at or above the initial public offering price; and
• Substantial blocks of our total outstanding shares may be sold into the market as “lock-up” periods end, as further described in “Shares Eligible for Future Sale.” If there are substantial sales of shares of our common stock, the price of our Class A common stock could decline.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Editor’s note: Guest author Shervin Pishevar is the founder of the OpenMesh Project, SGN and an active angel investor.

On January 7, 2010 I was ushered into a small private dinner with Secretary Hillary Clinton at the State Department along with the inventor of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google and a few others. We were there to talk about technology and 21st Century Diplomacy. As we mingled I noticed next to me the small table that Thomas Jefferson wrote the first drafts of the Declaration of Independence. I was inspired by the history around us as we discussed the unfolding history before us. I was sitting in front of Secretary Clinton and when she asked me a question I said, “Secretary Clinton, the last bastion of dictatorship is the router.” That night seeded some of the ideas that were core to Secretary Clinton’s important Internet Freedoms Speech on January 21, 2010.

Fast forward almost exactly one year later to January 25, 2011—a day that shall live in history in the company of dates like July 4, 1776. Egypt’s decision to block the entire Internet and mobile telecommunications network was one of the first salvos in a war of electronic munitions. In this new frontier humans are the routers and armed with new technologies they can never be blocked or silenced again.

I was staying up for days sharing and tweeting information as they happened. I had two close personal friends of mine in Egypt who were passing me information when they could. The day Egypt blocked the internet and mobile networks my mind went back to what I had said to Secretary Clinton. The only line of defense against government filtering and blocking their citizens from freely communicating and coordinating via communication networks was to create a new line of communications technologies that governments would find hard to block: Ad hoc wireless mesh networks. I called the idea OpenMesh and tweeted it.

Within hours through crowdsourced volunteer efforts the OpenMesh Project was alive complete with domain name, website and forum. One volunteer, Gary Jay Brooks, a tech entrepreneur from Michigan, stepped up to lead the effort as a volunteer Executive Director. Another company from Canada volunteered to donate their specs for a tiny mobile router, that could be hidden in a pocket, and would cost only $90 per unit for us to make. Another well known communications pioneer stepped up to donate some important patents in this space.

OpenMesh’s basic idea is that we could use some new techniques to create a secondary wireless Internet in countries like Libya, Syria, Iran, North Korea and other repressive regimes to allow citizens to communicate freely. By create mobile routers that connect together we could create a wireless network that mobile phones and personal computers can connect to. The first priority would be to have the people connect together and the second priority is for them to connect to the world. One the second front, we could use intermittent satellite internet connections so people in those nations could upload and download information with the rest of the world. Openmesh aims to be a clearinghouse for the best ideas out there to connect and get products out into the hands of people.

Open Mesh networking is a type of networking wherein each connected node in the network may act as an independent router or “smart” device, regardless of whether it has an Internet connection or not. Mesh networks are incredibly robust, with continuous connections that can reconfigure around broken or blocked paths by “hopping” from node to node until the destination is reached, such as another device on the network or connecting to an Internet back haul. When there is local Internet available, they can amplify the number of people who can connect to it. When there isn’t, mesh networks can allow people to communicate with each other in the event that other forms of electronic communication are broken down. Devices consist of most wifi enabled computers and run on existing Microsoft Windows, Apple OS X, and Linux systems along with iPhone and Android mobile devices. An open source mesh network further offers a scalable solution that retains low costs while avoiding path dependencies and vendor lock-in. Combined with open hardware, these networks facilitate long-term maintenance flexibility and improvements.

We will be establishing, building, maintaining, and distributing a common Open Source Mesh software/firmware that will allow citizens of the world to commonly communicate without telephone or cable companies. The raw product OpenMeshProject.org will free to download and free of charge. The technology will be released and maintained as Open Source GPL V2 project. This means that anyone can use or change the software. Our job as a community will be to maintain this project. We will help to build standards. We will help communities build mesh networks. We will lobby equipment manufactures to join the Open Mesh Project initiative. The idea all revolves around wireless technology that will allow us to connect and communicate with each other without telephone lines, cable, or fiber. We will build private networks that can span countries. We will empower the citizens of tomorrow. At the end of the day a grandmother might find this disk on the street, walk into the house, install a CD on her laptop and join the mesh cloud with 2 clicks. After joining the mesh she starts to see others in her network, clicks to call others in the mesh, joins group calls, or searches for friends online to dial. We as the OpenMeshProject.org community will facilitate the building, offering, and support for this project. We will all build 1 common mesh. We invite people to participate and to offer new innovations. Working together we can secure tomorrows communications needs.

Free communications is an essential human right. The 21st Century will be defined by the idea that no Government, no power shall ever block or filter the right of all men and women to communicate together again. It is my dream that within my lifetime that dictatorship shall be banished from this planet and unfiltered and true democracy shall flourish everywhere. It is time that our Faustian bargains with brutal dictators for short-term concerns end and a new covenant directly made with citizens everywhere seeking freedom will take its place. OpenMesh is a first step to help create a world where such a covenant can take hold in a world where brave people armed with new electronic tools can never be blocked or silenced ever again.

Photo credit: Joel Carillet/Getty Images.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch