Thoughts on combating packet discrimination

No, I can't save you. But I believe that we can save ourselves, if we collaborate. Here are a few of my ruminations on the recent uproar over the Google-Verizon usurpation of so-called net-neutrality, and the coming Info War.

The proposed management of services

- Currently the proposed policy pertains only to the modern wireless network (in the USA). On the legacy wired network, we peons can have all the net neutrality we want. It reminds me of Logan's Run, THX-1138, Soylent Green, etc, where there are the citizens of the utopian society who take their meds, do what they're told, and don't ask questions - and there are the excluded underground denizens who must live on the run or in hiding, subsisting on the scraps and waste of the domed cities.

Deep Packet Inspection and the need to darken unsanctioned traffic

To my knowledge, very few wireless systems have the computing power to perform real-time intelligent traffic prioritization or QoS (with the exception of perhaps, Exalt Inc.) on encrypted traffic. This means that when the Big Filter is erected -- not unlike the Great Firewall of China -- that decides what traffic is passed and at what priority, greater computing capacity will be required within the backbone to inspect encrypted traffic and enforce policy. Common practice is to exclude or retard bit torrent traffic (under the assumption that all such traffic is illegitimate).

I foresee in the near future, an underground movement where real news, and perhaps, resistence, will have to go dark, that is, be transmitted using peer-to-peer, encryption, onion routing, 'in-plain-sight' covert traffic, etc - most likely, all of which will become illegal and/or unofficially subject to filtering. Secondly, because of this, most of that will eventually have to be carried on a modern 'sneakernet' - in which data does not traverse the traditional backbone. This could be accompished using spread-spectrum radio, comprising an alternative, wireless backbone.

Real-time steganography

I have not seen any discussion on this idea yet, perhaps because the need for it has not yet been anticipated. Currently, most bit torrent traffic is static data - music, videos, etc. There are a few exceptions to this; I believe that skype calls and chats are real-time p2p encrypted traffic, but I don't know of any others aside from general TOR traffic.

Traditionally, people who wished to hide messages in plain sight used steganography techniques that encoded messages into the low bits of ordinary jpg's. No amount of inspection would be able to distinguish this use of a static jpg file. Naturally, any transcoding or resizing of the image destroys the original message. Perhaps in the very near future it will be necessary to hide dynamic traffic "in plain sight" - in real-time video data, such as is used in video teleconferencing. I think it could be done, and probably will have to be done.

Private volunteer wireless p2p networking

Eventually, possibly sooner than we think, it will be necessary to move excluded traffic via a p2p mesh composed of short-range spread spectrum radio, since the cellular data networks and wired backbone will essentially become privatized. This "HAM radio" network of the 21st century - the new underground railroad, if you will - could largely be composed of radio nodes that are purchased and operated at the volunteer's own expense. Many of those radios could be modified android phones.

External Links

• http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/2010/08/a-paper-trail-of-betrayal-googles-net-neutrality-collapse.ars
• http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_34/b4192032271712.htm