'Commotion Wireless' an App for Online Freedom Coming Soon

For people living in countries where the government monitors and censors the Internet, help is on the way.

It may be in a smartphone app or it could be a clandestine wireless network that looks innocuous but allows people to communicate out of the view of government censors.

A project funded by the U.S. government and developed by a Washington think tank called "Commotion Wireless" is being readied for delivery early next year.

The effort seeks to promote free expression online and takes advantage of the fact that more people are using mobile devices.

Such a system "is useful for people to communicate in situations when governments don't want them to," said Sascha Meinrath, head of the project at the New America Foundation.

While Facebook and Twitter played a role in the Arab Spring uprisings, these networks can also be used by governments to track or harass dissidents.

Commotion is designed as "a secure and reliable platform to ensure their communications cannot be controlled or cut off by authoritarian regimes," says the mission statement of the open-source software project.

Because it is a "mesh" network, each of those using the system becomes a "node," making it harder to shut down than a centralized access point.

"The mesh network doesn't live on any single device," says Preston Rhea, a program associate at New America who has been testing community wireless projects using the technology.

One test network was set up in a neighborhood in Washington where the local hacker community joined in by rigging up a makeshift antenna.

"The same technology would be able to help in countries like Syria where the government is trying to crack down on the free flow of information," said HacDC member Ben Mendis, who helped set up the local network.

The Commotion program became known as the "Internet in a suitcase," but those involved say it is a misnomer.

"This is not a suitcase full of specialized equipment, this is meant to run on whatever exists on the ground," Meinrath said. "It's all software."

But even some State Department officials use the "suitcase" term to describe the effort to get a quick, easy way to help people get around filtering and surveillance.

-- Emerging technology meets an emerging need --

Commotion is one of several projects being funded by the U.S. State Department to promote online freedom, an extension of other human rights initiatives.

The United States has provided $76 million over the past four years for this and other programs for online freedom, and has another $25 million in the pipeline.

Ian Schuler, program manager in the State Department's office of Internet Freedom Programs, said U.S. concerns rose with revelations about repression and shutdowns of Internet services in countries during the Arab Spring uprisings.

Because Commotion can get around Internet shutdowns, he said it appeared to be "a good combination of an emerging technology that met an emerging need.

"We saw that people having rights in one realm helps them have rights in another realm," he said.

Some projects keep a low profile, but officials agreed to discuss Commotion because those working on it have been open about it.

Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Michael Posner said recently that his agency is supporting "a dozen different circumvention technologies" including a "panic button app for mobile phones," a "slingshot" program to identify censored content, and training programs to help activists in repressive areas to keep operating.

Although the U.S. government funds the Commotion project, it is not making decisions on where to deploy it, officials said.

"Our goal is to allow people to express themselves and exercise their rights," Schuler told AFP. "The goal is not regime change.... We're not picking who does and doesn't receive this technology."