The ‘Network of Web Trees’ in Gaza | Hacker News Reader

The ‘Network of Web Trees’ in Gaza

globalvoices.org

112 pointsmwenge58 comments

Ah this reminds of Cuba: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEplzHraw3c

I bet everywhere with restricted internet something of this sort exists.

It also reminds the tech startup scene in Gaza, when I was browsing Google Maps to see what kind of economy they have there I recall stumbling upon startup schools. It's fascinating to browse the maps and see familiar things on places you wouldn't expect , I wish the best both to Gazans and the Israeli.

Anyway, just for a bit of humanisation of the people there, here is a spontaneous street performans by a Gazan dancer in Europe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSLR6uKTZX4

It's one of the most beautiful things I've seen. Notice how she transforms from fathers little girl into this elegant creature the moment she makes her first move? I think people completely transform into another persona when the assume a role and in this video you can see the transformation. IMHO a similar transformation happens when people have a connection to an environment outside of theirs, therefore this stuff is important for things beyond the practical needs.

this is pretty neat, reminds me of cuba's meshnet system.

i was wondering how all the efforts to buy gazan's eSIMs was going, this seems to be one of the results.

>i was wondering how all the efforts to buy gazan's eSIMs was going, this seems to be one of the results.

The eSIM stuff terrifies me, because you know damn well they're feeding that data into their intelligence apparatus for targeting purposes, and recent history has shown thus far that they don't give much of a shit about collateral damage.

I highly suspect that nearby cellular activity increases the chances of being injured or killed by an airstrike.

Some eSIM resources for you and the group:

Anonymous eSIM with no KYC

https://silent.link/

Anatomy of the eSIM profile

https://media.ccc.de/v/osmodevcon2024-174-anatomy-of-the-esi...

Exploring eUICCs and eSIMS using pySim, lpac and osmo-smdpp

https://media.ccc.de/v/osmodevcall-20240117-laforce-euicc-es...

A Look at eSIMs and Number Hijacking

https://intel471.com/blog/a-look-at-esims-and-number-hijacki...

It doesn't matter. Every phone is a candidate for targeting. They don't have to know who owns it.

I agree, and don’t dispute that.

What about Briar

https://briarproject.org/how-it-works/

Can eSIM run programs isolated from the host device like normal SIM?

They just point an AI at them and let it decide who to bomb, no joke, this is literally what happens. Before AGI we are already living in Minority Report...

To be fair, the goal seems to be to kill and injure as much as possible, so wether you're using a cellphone or not you might just die.

An I you consider a kill and 3 injury for each bombardement (4 casualties)(which is a low estimate), 250 bombardement a day (low estimate again), and take the highest estimate of Hamas militants, 20k (including associated armed groups), 90% of all casualties are civilians, which is a ratio you only find in civil war and genocides.

Cite for numbers?

This is a very good piece from bbc [1]. It revise IDF claims and how things are not correct and that the death toll is probably much higher because israel destroyed partially or completely most of functional hospitals where death toll numbers are collected.

I am replying assuming a good faith and that your goal is not justifying killing innocent people because it is horrible.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68387864

> cuba's meshnet system

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Paquete_Semanal

https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-cuban-cdn/

Amazing stuff. Thank you for sharing! I think Cuba is ahead of the curve here, considering the direction the internet is going these days WRT encroaching censorship and media availability issues.

I was most surprised to discover that the Cuban government releases its own version. I’m curious about the differences/additions between the “official” release and the pirate one. I can only speculate, but I would assume that the sanctioned one is likely to be instrumented and censored, possibly even with malware. The pirate site is blocked by my adblocker also, so it may not be any safer in that regard. I wonder if anyone has studied it.

It's not extremely clear to me - they manage to put phones with Esim where there is signal and set up a hotspot for other phones? Or do they maintain hotspots near the border for the people in Gaza to conect to? Or a mix of both?

seems like a mix of both.

Yes essentially they put the phones up high enough to get Israeli or Egyptian signal (since Israel shut off the Palestinian one), then the phone uses its hotspot to connect to nearby phones.

I went to the NGO to see if there any further technical specifications to read about, it doesn't seem so: https://www.acs-italia.it/gazaweb-e-gli-alberi-della-rete/

it seems to be purely built upon cellular connectivity and hotspots!

I'm shocked there's no meshnet stuff involved here, but I suppose we can't see much details beyond the backbone, last-mile connectivity methods are probably extremely hodgepodge.

I've never seen "Gazzawi" used before as a demonym instead of Gazan.

It's the Arabic version of Gazan.

I wonder if something like this will become more prolific sort of like the rise of private gated suburban cities that has their own unrestricted internet jurisdiction vs the public facilities that overtime become ghettos with their own web trees capable of evading surveillance (by the group that wakes up every morning worried about losing it all to the people outside the fence).

Often wars are frontiers for societal shifts that arises from new technological inventions/adaptations. What we are seeing in Gaza very may well become a reality in the West in the future: a divorce of a globally connected world into its own islands that can only be accessed via physical proximity or like in my earlier example, socioeconomic class, even by ethnicity.

Where's the technical details for how this works? Are they just broadcasting wifi hotspots?

I wonder why this is not a situation where Starlink could have been deployed?

a) lack of shipping resources, electricity, etc b) which people are reluctant to waste on something that will instantly be a visible target and probably last about five minutes c) Musk is on Netanyahu's side https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/28/elon-musks-israel-...

That's very unfortunate that he allows Netanyahu of all people in the world to allow whether 2 million people should be able to access Internet

> the telecommunications infrastructure has been severely damaged

Distal to the tech here but man, once you see the passive voice vs active voice stuff on this issue, you really can't un-see it. Astounding.

Edit: finished the article. The tech here really is stunning -- like, the ratio of ingenuity to resources is insane.

Can confirm can’t unsee it! And you realize it’s used a lot. If Russia destroys infrastructure in Ukraine, our news says “Ukrainians adapted after the Russian military destroyed their networks”. When the IDF destroys Gazan networks, the story is “Gazans adapted after their networks were destroyed”.

Same thing happens with police shootings. “A stray bullet killed a child during police encounter” is a common type of headline. “Police officer shoots kid” is less common.

> “A stray bullet killed a child during police encounter”

To be pedantic, this isn’t passive voice at all. See Pullum on this particular misconception: http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/passive_loathing.html

Oh good point! Thanks for the note.

You’re welcome!

I believe political judgements are against the Hacker News guidelines as I've been reprimanded for making them in the past. Your comment should be removed by the moderators.

If you'd said it about Ukraine/Russia, it wouldn't be removed.

Pointing out communication styles in the media is not a political judgement. There is a political judgement being made here, but it's done by the author of the article. Your parent comment is merely pointing out the political judgement. And if doing that is against HN guidelines, then your comment is too.

>Distal to the tech here but man, once you see the passive voice vs active voice stuff on this issue, you really can't un-see it. Astounding.

The author is an Arabic speaking, English as a second language pro-Palestinian activist/writer. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make?

Article title: The ingenious ‘network tree’ defying Gaza's connectivity blockade

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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