[Mesh] Alternative look on localization in mesh

[Mitar]

Hi!

One more thing. If you would even go so far to map each client in
real-time on the node map as they move around, showing how much data
they are transmitting, completely public and open, this could be a very
good thing because it would show to people that they are not anonymous.
This helps prevent misuses (like consuming the whole link) of the
network (there is this thing called peer pressure and if people feel
that community is watching they could behave more cooperatively, for
example, not clog the network) and also shows them what can be done with
data. So that if they want to be anonymous, they should make that
themselves and should not relay on the mesh for them.

So again, I believe that mesh should not try to encrypt data for users
or make them anonymous. Because this means that when mesh fails in that,
they are all exposed. We should maybe try to do opposite, show them how
exposed they are so that they can think about that and learn how to
protect themselves.

And then build useful services on top of this exposure. Like local
community info portal and content sharing.

One idea from some time ago:

You can run HTTP proxy on the gateway for non-SSL traffic and you run a
simple script which horizontally flips all images passing through. So
all clients get all website images flipped around. This makes them think
a bit.

http://www.ex-parrot.com/pete/upside-down-ternet.html


Mitar

> Hi!
> 
> I would like to add here another perspective. I see localization
> possibilities of mesh networks as a feature and not a bug. I object to
> being forced to not do good things because some other people are doing
> bad things. If they can do that, they already won.
> 
> I see the localization possibilities as a feature which can empower
> local communities, where users can get services and content based on
> where in the mesh network they are. I see mesh networks as connections
> between people. I see mesh networks as an interesting media where we can
> again bring physical world into a virtual world, an interesting plane
> in-between. In physical world when you laugh or scream, your sound
> propagates only so much. In mesh networks it can be the same. When you
> create some content, you could decide how far the content should go, one
> hop, two hope, all the way to the Internet? In the Internet you have
> that everything is one big soup and once it is in the Internet, it is
> available to anybody. In mesh networks you have a net, each hop means
> something and we can use and build upon that. Knowing where somebody is
> is a part of being in the community. How can you be a good neighbor to
> somebody if you do not know where your neighbor is? How can you open
> doors to your neighbors if they do not know where you are? And sharing
> and caring between neighbors and community is this important thing we
> are forgetting. We are getting paranoid. We will rather live in sit in
> bunkers alone instead of share and care and work together. Let them
> track us, let them see that we are a community and that we are many and
> that we are proud of being connected with the mesh network. And that we
> have a right to tools and services which can be build in our network
> because we can know where out friends and neighbors are.
> 
> Yes, all this can be misused. But it can also be beautiful.
> 
> Some more on this topic:
> 
> http://dev.wlan-si.net/wiki/PiplMesh
> 
> 
> Mitar
> 
>> Police, govt, and other evil adversaries are free to setup their own
>> hardware, their own mesh, the idea is not to prevent this but to prevent
>> the use of good mesh networks for evil. I want to give more thought to
>> this subject sometime in the near future but for now this is what I have...
>>
>> The major concern here (as I see it) is the persistence of MAC
>> addresses. The average user does not know how to change their MAC
>> address and in the case of most mobile devices it is not possible to
>> change the MAC address. We can ensure that IP addresses are cycled
>> frequent enough because we'll have control over a majority of the DHCP
>> servers on the mesh so I'll be focusing on MAC addresses.
>>
>> In any local network a MAC address can be associated with network
>> traffic, the obvious solution here is to use encryption. The problem
>> with MAC addresses in a mesh network is that they could also be
>> associated with a location.
>>
>> On any layer 2 network it is possible for any connected host to
>> determine the route to any other host using a MAC address as an
>> identifier. Because mesh nodes have a fixed (and likely known) physical
>> location it can be assumed that the last hop in the route corresponds to
>> the physical location of the specific host.
>>
>> It is important to realize that only mesh nodes (access points) have
>> *potential* knowledge of signal strength and other 802.11 broadcast type
>> frames-- sure Oakland PD can setup a device to listen to all 802.11
>> traffic, but remember we're only focusing on how existing hardware can
>> be abused. So, one host *cannot* triangulate the location of another
>> host. *From the perspective of a host on the mesh, a host can only be
>> connected to one mesh node or disconnected from the network.* In the
>> context of physical location, the privacy of a host on the mesh is a
>> function of the area covered by the mesh node it is connected to.
>>
>> To increase user privacy I would like to experiment with a MAC address
>> spoofing service that could run on mesh nodes or volunteer hosts. The
>> service would basically pretend to be just another host on the network
>> identified by some MAC address. The service could intelligently spawn
>> fake hosts depending on the number of other hosts connected to the
>> shared mesh node. Mesh nodes with fewer connected hosts need more
>> spoofed hosts to increase privacy, etc. But it is not that simple of
>> course, because spoofed MAC addresses need to persist just as legitimate
>> MAC addresses do, and move about in the physical world (connect to
>> different mesh nodes) just as other legitimate users will. I've thought
>> some of this through but it is a large undertaking that needs further
>> planning.
>>
>> Another thing to keep in mind is that although MAC addresses could be
>> used as a persistent identifier *they alone do not represent any
>> identity.* It is not until an adversary obtains additional information
>> that a MAC address could be used to identify an individual person. Not
>> to say the surveillance of pseudo-anonymous individual and group
>> movement is negligible, just pointing this out.
>>
>> In conclusion (for now) by keeping our software and build processes open
>> we can convince reasonable users that it is not possible for us to track
>> them with more than neighborhood level accuracy. If we go further and
>> deploy something like the MAC spoofing service it could be possible to
>> extend this guarantee further. I think it is also likely that this MAC
>> spoofing service could be designed to prevent/degrade 802.11 style
>> surveillance by hardware outside our control.
>>
> 

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