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from the hacking-as-hacking-was-intended-to-be dept.
Michael Weissenstein reports for the Associated Press:
Cut off from the Internet, young Cubans have quietly linked thousands of computers into a hidden network that stretches miles across Havana, letting them chat with friends, play games and download hit movies in a mini-replica of the online world that most can't access.
Home Internet connections are banned for all but a handful of Cubans, and the government charges nearly a quarter of a month's salary for an hour online in government-run hotels and Internet centers. As a result, most people on the island live offline, complaining about their lack of access to information and contact with friends and family abroad.
A small minority have covertly engineered a partial solution by pooling funds to create a private network of more than 9,000 computers with small, inexpensive but powerful hidden Wi-Fi antennas and Ethernet cables strung over streets and rooftops spanning the entire city. Disconnected from the real Internet, the network is limited, local and built with equipment commercially available around the world, with no help from any outside government, organizers say.
(Score: 4, Informative) by jmorris on Monday January 26 2015, @07:20PM
Eh? They have fiber links. The US is the only country boycotting them and the US Navy doesn't maintain a blockade or anything; other countries have been trading with them and laying cables to them. They just restrict access severely.
If we were smart we would be dropping info dumps into their internal network. Make sure an updated Wikipedia was always easily available, etc. Reestablish the old packet based ways like FIDO to open gates into outside web based forums where they would access via a BBS based QWK packet based interface. No way they could keep intermittent sat based links from operating if outside governments would fund the links on the sly.
(Score: 3, Informative) by isostatic on Monday January 26 2015, @09:06PM
Who is "we", and why do you think the cuban population want's "we" to cause such issues and get thousands of people arrested?
Cuba prohibits the use of Wi-Fi equipment without a license from the Ministry of Communications, making SNet technically illegal. Broche Moreno said he believes the law gives authorities latitude to allow networks like SNet to operate. He described a sort of tacit understanding with officials that lets SNet run unmolested as long as it respects Cuban law — its hundreds of nodes are informally monitored by volunteer administrators who make sure users don't share pornography, discuss politics or link SNet to illicit connections to the real Internet.
I'd hope the U.S. has learnt from Afghanistan and Iraq by now, or if you want to go a bit further back how about the bay of pigs?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday January 27 2015, @06:43PM
Who is "we", and why do you think the cuban population want's "we" to cause such issues and get thousands of people arrested?
Why are they undertaking such effort to create a network if they don't want a network?
(Score: 1) by gnuman on Monday January 26 2015, @09:12PM
http://www.wsj.com/articles/cuba-opening-shines-light-on-obsolete-telecom-links-1418862828 [wsj.com]
Dec. 17, 2014 7:33 p.m. ET
....
The island nation has just one modern, fixed Internet connection to the outside world, with spotty access to satellite links providing the rest. Cuba has access to about 1% of the Internet bandwidth available in the nearby Dominican Republic, according to researcher TeleGeography.
...
The Cubans decided to build a cable with Venezuela instead.
...
The cable finally lit up in January of 2013. Its fibers are controlled by Telecomunicaciones Gran Caribe SA, a joint venture between incumbent Cuban and Venezuelan telecom companies.
The U.S. Department of Defense is funding a separate high-speed fiber-optic cable to the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.
So I guess it depends on what you mean by "they have fiber links". 1% total bandwidth is not that much. Like comparing 5Mbit/s connection with 56kbit/s modem. Sorry, can't even load twitter on that. Seems like the gitmo illegal indefinite holding will end up with more bandwidth than the rest of Cuba.
(Score: 2) by arashi no garou on Monday January 26 2015, @10:58PM
Why not packet radio? Hams from non-US locations could easily set up HF packet nodes for the homegrown network to connect to, giving them a tunnel to the outside Internet. About the only thing standing in the way (other than the Cuban government finding out) is the amateur radio laws of the other country, and some countries care less about what hams do with their equipment and the bands than others.