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The Internet Network

Meet the Secretive US Company Building an 'Unbreakable' Internet Inside Russia (vice.com) 100

Posted by BeauHD from the under-the-radar dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: As Russia makes preparations to possibly disconnect from the global internet in a bid to control the narrative around the invasion of Ukraine, one secretive U.S. company is rushing to lay the final pieces of an unbreakable network that the Kremlin won't be able to take down. The company is Lantern, which says it has seen staggering growth inside Russia in the last four weeks for its app that allows users to bypass restrictions the Kremlin has put in place on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. But now the company is building something even more robust, an internal peer-to-peer network that will allow dissenting voices to continue to upload and share content even if the Kremlin pulls the plug on the internet.

Within the next week, the network will be fully operational, allowing opposition voices to use the Lantern app to post content like videos from protests or updates on the war in Ukraine directly to the Lantern network. This would allow users to share it with other Lantern users without fear that the content will be removed or blocked. [...] Lantern was founded in California in 2010 with the goal of keeping "the world's information, speech, expression, and finance uncensored." The free version of the app has a data cap of 500MB, but the pro version, which costs $32 a year, has no data cap. It has become hugely popular in China because of its ability to stay one step ahead of the government's censorship efforts, spreading mainly via word-of-mouth as it's not available via the Google or Apple app stores inside China. n Russia, like all new markets it enters, Lantern removed the data cap for all users. Despite this, some users still paid for the pro version.
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Meet the Secretive US Company Building an 'Unbreakable' Internet Inside Russia More

Meet the Secretive US Company Building an 'Unbreakable' Internet Inside Russia

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  • As Russia makes preparations to possibly disconnect from the global internet in a bid to control the narrative around the invasion of Ukraine

    Er, isn't it the global internet that's been openly disconnecting from them, as a punishment?

    • Only more recently. They've been working on their own "Great Firewall of Russia" for some time now.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by DVLNSD ( 9457327 )
        They were actually working on their own internet (code name Cheburashka) before their first invasion of Ukraine in 2014.
        https://www.bbc.com/russian/so... [bbc.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mmell ( 832646 )
        The "Great Firewall" is both the cultural and intellectual property of China. This is a Russian thing, therefore to be known henceforward as the "Iron Firewall", as befits a country once more withdrawing behind the iron curtain.

        • That just reminded me of an obvious pattern we often forget: societies move in cycles, not linearly. There was a time when Russia was very pro-West; then it became Soviet Union. Then it opened up again to the West, and now it's withdrawing again.

          Some will say (rightly in my opinion) that the West has a lot of blame to take for pushing Russia in this situation, but it takes two to tango: the two are fundamentally very different in their outlook on life. The West does what West does, Russia does what Russia d

          • Some will say (rightly in my opinion) that the West has a lot of blame to take for pushing Russia in this situation,

            It was Russia's choice to invade. Blaming the west is just gaslighting. Worse, I've heard people blame Ukraine saying things like, "You should have done what Russia wanted." wtf.

            If Russia didn't want missiles on their border, they should have negotiated to have missiles removed, just like happened during the Cuban missile crisis. No one died. (they aren't there anyway, it's an abstract fear).

            If Russia didn't want an expansion of NATO, they shouldn't have scared countries on their border into thinking they m

            • And if you don't want to look like an ass-hole, you shouldn't talk like an ass-hole.

              Fun fact. In the two rounds of NATO expansion, fear of Russia invading was never once used for NATO expansion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

              It's previous that you think NATO has anything to do with protecting Europe.

              • I'd rather talk like an asshole than invade another country and kill people.

                Putin didn't need to invade Ukraine. It was his choice.

              • It may not have been mentioned, but it was damned obvious that the tiny Baltic nations wanted protection from the bear that has dominated them for so long. They were independing nations for only a short time before the Hitler and Stalin agreed to divide central Europe between them. During that time the Baltic states were controled thoroughly by Moscow, with Russians sent in to adminstrate and live there. This is something the czars did as well, "russification." Then when they achieved independence again

            • Ukraine didn't have that many missiles until Russia attacked. In the intervening 8 years Ukraine has been getting better weapons and training soldiers better because of the takeover of Donbas areas, but also because they knew with little doubt that Russia was going to come back and attack again.

              If Russia wants a better NATO that stays further away, then it needs to be nicer to its neighbors so that the desire to join NATO goes away.

              • Usually in this context "missiles" refers to "nuclear missiles," but other than that your point is well taken.

                • Ukraine didn't have any nuclear missiles. The existing soviet nukes were given up and destroyed, and as a condition for joining the Nuclear Non Proliferation treaty it signed the Budapest Memorandum along with US, UK, and Russia. This gave Ukraine security assurances in exchange for its giving up of the nukes, and to respect its independence and existing borders. Russia has clearly violated this agreement

          • The west did not "push" really. Maybe it's culture shock, but trying to make friends with central Europe is not the same thing as being deliberately hostile to Russia. Russia was find with this early on, because they saw USSR as dead and gone, good riddance. Putin is the one who resurrected the absurd notion that Russia must have a sphere of influence and that it must dominate central Europe. The US does not dominate europe through intimidation; it wants to make trade deals, it wants alliances, it wants

            • I have not heard it from Russian sources but from American ones -- a pannel discussion from this March with John Mearsheimer and several other international relationship experts.

              It's an excellent discussion with great questions, such as why should Russia think it has the right to a buffer zone when many countries live without it, and why should we trust Putin on his word when he poisoned his political opponent, and so on. Watching it I had a feeling that this is the true America, brilliant, educated, intell

          • What ahistoric nonsense is this?! The Soviet Union was not "anti-West". It was born from an internationalist ideology that had its heart in Germany and France. Then the other great powers of America, Britain, and France spent billions of dollars organizing, arming, and funding the various White Armies for more than a decade. Then the USSR's main ally in the West decided to invade them. Then after having allied with America, Britain, and France to defeat Germany, those same powers immediately began plotting

            • I don't disagree, but they were still anti-West, even if they had good reason for it as you are saying.

              There is some fundamentally different social dynamic in Russia vs. the West that causes this cycle. I suspect it's because on the one hand Russia shares some intellectual heritage with the West, on another they seem to prefer -- and maybe even function better, if you compare Yeltsin vs Putin -- having a strong leader rule the country over having democracy.

              • The USSR wasn't anti-West. The West was anti-Soviet. There is a difference.

                • Actually I'll concede, it's a fair thing to say. The people in USSR still looked up to the West, in some aspects anyway. Not anymore, it seems.

                  Maybe what they looked up to was freedom. The West was much more free back then -- with the hippies, the rock'n' roll, the 80s... There was no cancel culture back then.

                  • They killed Malcolm and Martin. They beat protestors in the street. The US was actively supporting apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia. The US had killed millions in SE Asia. Race riots were a common occurrence in US cities. You don't know what you're talking about.

                    • You're talking about the actions of the US government. I'm talking about the American people. The spirit of freedom among the American population was much stronger back then, when people didn't voluntarily cancel their own and others' freedoms as many do now. It is this spirit that people in Eastern Europe and elsewhere looked up to.

                    • You mean the era when white men started bitching about "political correctness"? You mean the era when David Duke nearly won election? You mean the era when there were riots in Chicago about integrating housing and riots in Boston about integrating schools? You mean the era of the Red Scare? You mean the era of the Satanic Panic, of which there are still people in prison? You mean the era of mass incarceration where America imprisoned more of its people than any society in any time in human history?

                      You're f

                    • Time for a chill pill. You are seemingly angry at everyone. The events you describe are still people LOOKING for freedom, fighting for it, even if -- or because -- the government or some other people are trying to prevent them from having it. It was Malcolm X who said, âoeNobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.â It is this STRIVING for freedom within the nation that was inspiring to others.

                      Most of America today is not striving

                    • I'm not angry at everyone. I'm telling you, specifically that you're wrong and providing evidence for it. You're angry that everytime you say something, I show you for the fool you are.

                      Logically, if people are having to fight for basic freedoms, they are not free. It's tautological. The reason you can't accept that is your desire to see America's past as some glorious state that's degenerated to our current state. When in reality, America was built on genocide and slavery, the only reason America has any f

                    • It's hard to justify yourself as the side that's not angry and calling the other side bad and stupid at the same time. To top it off you make an argument from speculation -- who I would have found "degenerate" in a hypothetical situation and then saying it is me who oppress others. All the while you are failing to see that freedom that someone looks up to -- which is what the discussion was about -- is the state of his spirit, not a declarative state of his circumstances. You can be nominally free and still

                    • ... but if you were trolling, good job, I fell for it.

                    • Stop talking about yourself in the third person. There's not another side. It's you. I'm calling specifically you dumb and bad. I'm calling you dumb and bad because you repeatedly said things that were equal parts stupid, hateful, and wrong. Then I gave evidence supporting that assertion. And then you replied, proving my point.

                      You also have no idea what oppression is if you think someone arguing with you on the internet when you say demonstrably wrong things qualifies.

                    • It's not trolling. It's an honest and objective assessment of you given in simple, direct language. As I'm sure this is the first time in your life that's happened, I'm sure it feels disconcerting.

          • There was a time when Russia was very pro-West; then it became Soviet Union.

            "Pro-West" was not a meaningful label before Soviet Union. Imperial Russia was a major power in its own right, shifting from opposing other such powers to allying with them within short periods of time and without ideological commitments.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Putin is worried about criticism.

        He is more worried about information getting out about the thousands of dead Russian soldiers. This was supposed to be a quick, 3 - 5 jaunt through Ukraine. It's now 30 days later and Russian troops are getting hammered day in and day out, the most events being the sinking of a ship at dock in Berdyansk, the damaging of two other ships at the same location, both of which will be out of commission for a long time, and the killing of a 7th general, Yakov Rezantsev, com
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • True, there's been a huge crackdown on independent media companies (ie, not state controlled), NGOs, and other voices that aren't in unison with his. Ie, it shut down Memorial, a human rights group internal to Russia that was keeping alive memories of Stalin's terror, but since Putin admires Stalin he wants all negativity about the past silenced. It's a very nationalist view, in the bad sense of nationalism (we are perfect, we've always been perfect, and everyone who is not us is trying to destroy us). W

        • MOD PARENT UP! Good details.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by evanh ( 627108 )

      Not at all from the west. It's a particular area that hasn't been targetted in the sanctions.

      There are some private companies that were operating inside Russia that have pulled out (Most likely for economic or safety reasons) but those aren't denying connection to the wider world.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mmell ( 832646 )
      Yeah - but remember, the Neo-Soviets don't want to destroy information any more than their counterparts in the old USSR did. They want to control information, a considerably more profitable goal. In the old days, that meant monitoring broadcast media, tapping telephone communications and even intercepting written correspondence. Back then, it was all government entities running the show, so it was easy.
      The modern internet provided the Neo-Soviet totalitarians with a ready-made answer to information mana
    • *Shh* don't let an inconvenient fact get in away of a good story.

      Sorry Motherboard but the U.S. is controlling the narrative. Other voices are not welcomed in America.

  • I'm a bit confused, if it's truly peer-to-peer, why are there servers involved that have seen their traffic rise "100,000%?"

    Maybe this is real, maybe it's just trash writing by a non-technical writer (as it is on Vice after all).

  • ...keeping "the world's information, speech, expression, and finance uncensored."

    That's all well and good, until the network starts being used for nefarious purposes, just like Tor and other P2P networks. If there's no mechanism to blacklist content, then it won't be long until the network is taken over by child porn, revenge porn, etc.

    Don't get me wrong, I'm all for using technology to guarantee freedom of speech & freedom from oppression, but I admit to having become a bit disillusioned with how once noble goals have so easily been subverted to themselves become tools of abuse

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      And no, I don't think the unfettered distribution of rape & other such content is a compromise we should be just willing to accept.

      Well, there's your problem.

      I'm not sure what you mean by "willing", but it's something you are forced to accept unless you want the Powers That Be to have total control over what people can communicate. Either the technical power exists, or it doesn't exist. If it does exist, there's a huge amount of experience that shows political and social institutions not only can't prev

    • Facebook censored the Hunter Biden laptop because they said it was Russian disinformation. Which turned out to be untrue. It looks as though any information that could hurt Biden in the polls is covered up by Twitter, Facebook, Google, and most of the media. Why is this? If we go back to the 2016 campaign, wikileaks uncovered the truth- when you watched the media, you were watching planted stories by the Clinton campaign. Forward to today, now they're helping Biden

      Rush Limbaugh--
      Literally, when you read the

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mmell ( 832646 )
        With a lie (more or less subtly) encapsulated within every paragraph of your post, you have demonstrated that you are indeed a worthy acolyte to Agent Orange. Congratulations, tvarisch. You have indeed learned that any falsehood may be made palatable and even believable if wrapped in carefully selected and worded facts.

    • Re:Be careful what you wish for (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Friday March 25, 2022 @10:26AM (#62388889) Homepage Journal

      > And no, I don't think the unfettered distribution of rape & other such content is a compromise we should be just willing to accept.

      You don't have to be willing - that's the saving grace. You don't have a choice. It will happen no matter how much any tyrants crack down on liberty.

      Since Free people become more prosperous and more prosperous people do fewer atrocities, the best way to reduce the evil you're talking about is to remove all boots from throats.

      Is it perfect? Nope. Do we get to pick perfect? Nope. Is it better. Yes, provably so.

      When Authority cracks down on free expression we lose out on any benefits of democracy and Enlightenment, and move back towards Dark Ages.

      • >> Since Free people become more prosperous and more prosperous people do fewer atrocities, the best way to reduce the evil you're talking about is to remove all boots from throats.

        What? That's the opposite of what's happening in Russia and all over the world. Rich powerful people are the ones creating and controlling the atrocities.

    • of technology. I know it's hard. We're /.. We're nerds. But I've learned a few things as I've gotten very, very old:

      1. You can't fix everything with tech.

      2. Being a nerd is about being overly interesting in one specific thing, and you can do that with anything. Just like we don't disparage train, stamp, or Gunpla nerds don't attack politics, sociology or humanities nerds because their not tech

      As for me, the problems we have need to be fixed by 2 things: Education and Democracy. You need both. Educ
      • As for me, the problems we have need to be fixed by 2 things: Education and Democracy.

        So much for the U.S. Republicans are on their way to kill off both.
  • And on the other side of the spectrum is AT&T. They guarantee breakage throughout their network.
  • I just went to download it on Apple... and the whole thing is in Chinese. Wow.

  • Tor has obfuscated bridges anyone can run and can help people from countries like China and Russia "get out". They're relatively low-risk, because they go to tor so your IP won't connect to anything particularly shady directly and probably impossible to detect by analyzing the protocol - they need to be banned basically each IP individually.

    There are more and more involved ways to get the IPs for such bridges, up to manually requesting them via email (obviously they can't be advertised in some large list th

    • One nice thing about Tor obs4 bridges is they will respect bandwidth and usage limits. I did the math on our hosted servers and wrote a little puppet class to push out tor in bridge mode to all of our servers not already running Onion services, while not costing us any more money. It was just unused capacity and I can tune the parameters centrally if the conditions change.
      Would recommend.

    • No, you're dreaming. Tor usage including obs4 can be identified in practice. Just like users of the system of this article can be identified.

      https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/do... [ieee.org]

  • Lets set aside invasion of Ukraine and controlling narratives around catastrophic losses Russian military suffered in that war. "Internet" in 21st century is very clearly key infrastructure of national importance. I don't see steps to secure this infrastructure, and that includes ensuring it could operate in extreme cases, as unreasonable over even overly paranoid national priority. More so, considering all other sanctions, including removal from SWIFT, is it that implausible that Russia will also get disco

  • When will the USA get such a tool? If you're not left wing, its like being under soviet rule.
    Project Veritas could use such a tool. The Ashley Biden diary proves free speech is only allowed if you're liberal.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by mmell ( 832646 )
      The USA doesn't need a tool like that - we already have you. You're the only tool we need.

      Tool.

    • If you're not left wing, its like being under soviet rule.

      What do you mean? The wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice was free to coordinate with the insurrectionists on January 6th by contacting the Chief of Staff and telling him to overturn the election. How much more free do you want to get?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by OYAHHH ( 322809 )

        What part of "The FBI illegally violated the 1st Amendment rights of Project Veritas" do you not understand?

        Go ahead, "Mr. But What About", you're just blowing fucking smoke because you literally have zero excuses.

        • Never said anything about whatabout. I asked a question in response to a whiner claiming they had no free speech. I used the example of a woman freely communicating with a member of the former administration to overturn a U.S. election.

          Not sure how much more free one can be if they actively work to undermine a democratic election.

          As for Veritas, considering they have resort to lies and distortions to keep themselves going, that's all one needs to know how much freedom there is in this country.

          Oh, and btw, r

    • When will the USA get such a tool? If you're not left wing, its like being under soviet rule. Project Veritas could use such a tool. The Ashley Biden diary proves free speech is only allowed if you're liberal.

      And yet, your shilling for Russia, and you and the Repblican party find yourself in the weird situation of supporting Russia and it's crackdown on speech and the internet, whilst claiming that only your mortal enemy, the "libs" are the only ones with free speech..

      Jebbuz H Fucking K-ryst Ivan - give it up. If you aren't a Russian operative troll or one of the Republicans that Russia owns or has video of, you are a Useful idiot, who act as a 5th column for Putin.

      Which is it? Don't care.

    • How is it like soviet rule? Who's being thrown in prison for not being politically correct enough?

  • Lantern ends up worsening the issue by allowing workarounds for Russian sanctions in 3,2,1...

  • And unlike some "secretive-must-be-superheroes" bunch of wannabes, Tor has a good track-record against the mist restrictive governments out there.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by DVLNSD ( 9457327 )
      Blocking all Tor traffic is easy.
      There was someone (possibly a country, maybe even russia) setting up thousands of tor relays that allowed for partial deanonymization.
      Not that I am promoting this Lantern solution which sounds suspicious.

  • Modem over POTS. Short of disconnecting their phone system from the rest of the world they can't shut that down.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rkww ( 675767 )

      They can just disable international dialling.

      A tale - I was in Moscow in April 1991, and, for want of something better to do, I tried to send a letter and make an international phone call.

      I couldn't find any writing paper, but I managed to buy a postcard. I took it to the central post office where I used a nib-on-stick pen and purple ink from an inkwell to write home.

      Buying a stamp wasn't easy, but I managed that too, eventually.

      I asked at the post office about international phone calls and I was told i

  • Encryption will most likely be outlawed in Russia, laws are rules that the mafia that is the Russian government makes up as it goes to attempt and deal with the problems spiking from actions of that government.

    Russian government is on its way to convert Russia into a new North Korea, it's going to be more difficult, the country is much larger and the population is much bigger, but it's not impossible, especially after the last 20 years of non stop propaganda that brainwashed most people there to believe wha

    • You mean like how it's already outlawed in the UK? Technically, you can still use encryption, but you must "render readable" any document the police happen to find on your computer.

      While the attempt to provide an unbreakable internet is laudable, the human factors [xkcd.com] provide a way around it. Every Russian knows that unless you want to wear VX, or drink Polonium tea, you won't have this software on your computer. In Russia, suspicion is enough to prove "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt".

  • If not, there is the weak link.

  • Just gave it try ftom Mexico and itâ(TM)s not working.

  • So it's a Commercial app similar to Tor / Matrix / I2P / Freenet?

    • So it's a Commercial app similar to Tor / Matrix / I2P / Freenet?

      And it'll be done in a week, which means in reality three months or more. And lets publicize it prior to release and wide use to give the Kremlin a heads up so they can start developing countermeasures.

  • OK, so you can do lots of stuff to "stay ahead" of authoritarian regimes with the app with regard to getting clandestine packets through.

    What you can't do is to stop those governments from making the app itself illegal, and its mere presence on your phone a crime punishable with prison time.

    All they need after that is the authorization of "enhanced interrogation methods" to obtain the PIN numbers to unlock the phone.

    That said it is a good thing enterprises like Lantern exist, but I wouldn't expect too

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mmell ( 832646 )
      This deserves amplification - AlanObject is absolutely on track. BUT . . . he does miss one point: It doesn't matter if the app's legal or illegal, if the neo-Soviet government thinks you may have used it in a way they don't approve of, the facts don't matter. You're all set for the 5:15 train to the nearest gulag where you'll learn all sorts of things about encryption and lead pipe techniques. It's not like they'll actually need to provide evidence or anything like that.
      "The State will prove beyond al

  • First, Let no one be deceived, there are a group of people who are banging the drums of war, death, and destruction who desire to control the narrative.

    As such, they will do everything in their power to perpetuate that war. I am pointing a finger straight at ALL of those who are more than happy to assume there is exactly one narrative to tell. Ukraine good, Russia bad.

    What they refuse to talk about is, case in point, the Azov Battalion. The literal definition of Nazis that have been employed by Ukraine t

    • What they refuse to talk about is, case in point, the Azov Battalion. The literal definition of Nazis that have been employed by Ukraine to do their really dirty work.

      The literal definition of Nazi is a member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party. Since that party no longer exists, you need a more sophisticated analysis.

      The reason we hate Nazis is because they invaded other countries and wanted to commit genocide. We don't hate them because their were using stylish symbols. So then answer, does the Azov battalion want to invade other countries or commit genocide? Or is your fear entirely based on outdated symbols?

      • So you are just going to ignore the genocide being committed by the Neo-Nazi's in Eastern Ukraine for the past 8 years.

        Are you really here to say the Azov battalion is just a band of misunderstood misfits?

        Wow.

        • So you are just going to ignore the genocide being committed by the Neo-Nazi's in Eastern Ukraine for the past 8 years.

          No LOL. That is fake news. Where did you hear it?

  • If Lantern ever opens an office in Russia, FSB will put their CEOs in a gulag for life the next day.

  • uucp over 300 baud modems? It used to work. Bounce emails around until you hit one with a real internet connection.

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