I love bitmessage. I don't have many people to talk with (I mean on bitmessage), and that's a funny feeling actually because it makes me amazed communicating to random people. I guess it is pretty much like the dawn times of e-mails or IRC exchanges in the early 90's, though I was quite young myself to experiment this, I am sure that people, without even going to a chat room with the aim of speaking about a specific topic, were amazed to
just communicate. Well, so yes, I love bitmessage!
Anyway, what I would like to hear about is your views and thoughts about what bitmessage could do in case of situations like the one of the arab spring.
We can always look at something and wonder "what if it existed earlier", and usually there is little meaning in doing so.
But in this special case (bitmessage and arab spring revolutions) I find it very relevant, mainly (i) because of the short time frame: bitmessage pop up in 2013, just 2 years "too late"; (ii) because there is a consensus that internet played a large (if not major) role during these events; (iii) because the inherent nature of a p2p application makes it resiliant to threats and that was a perfect case for this; (iv) because the world is such that we'll keep seeing the same situations here and there now (for instance in Syria) and in the future.
Some example of food for thought I found interesting:
- About encryption.
There were obviously many ways to communicate using encryption before bitmessage existed. However my view is that there was nothing as easy to use for the "average person". What do you think?
- About decentralization.
I wonder how far is bitmessage resilient to centralized (let's say governemental in these cases) attacks. I didn't dig enough myself to answer the following questions, so out of lazyness I seek for others to answer. What about just "closing" (at national scale) a given port? What about forbidding (again national scale) IRC plateform to prevent people to find peers? Is it possible to listen and detect people broadcasting bitmessages if you have national scale surveillance
infrastucture, thus finding "for free" people that are likely to be revolutionnary? Any other possibility of attack I didn't think about?
I'd be glad to hear from you, all, about that! Particularly, of course, if you have been through one of the so-called revolutions yourself.
