U.S. Has Secret Tools to Force Internet on Dictators

[n2doc]

By Spencer Ackerman February 7, 2011


When Hosni Mubarak shut down Egypt’s internet and cellphone communications, it seemed that all U.S. officials could do was ask him politely to change his mind. But the American military does have a second set of options, if it ever wants to force connectivity on a country against its ruler’s wishes.

There’s just one wrinkle. “It could be considered an act of war,” says John Arquilla, a leading military futurist.

The U.S. military has no shortage of devices — many of them classified — that could restore connectivity to a restive populace cut off from the outside world by its rulers. It’s an attractive option for policymakers who want an option for future Egypts, between doing nothing and sending in the Marines. And it might give teeth to the Obama administration’s demand that foreign governments consider internet access an inviolable human right.

Arquilla, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, spent years urging the military to logic-bomb adversary websites, disrupt hostile online presences, and even cause communications blackouts to separate warring factions before they go nuclear. What the military can turn off, he says, it can also turn on — or at least fill dead airspace.

Consider the Commando Solo, the Air Force’s airborne broadcasting center. A revamped cargo plane, the Commando Solo beams out psychological operations in AM and FM for radio, and UHF and VHF for TV. Arquilla doesn’t want to go into detail how the classified plane could get a denied internet up and running again, but if it flies over a bandwidth-denied area, suddenly your Wi-Fi bars will go back up to full strength.

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http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/02/secret-tools-force-net/

[niyad]

1. does it work the other way as well?

[Poll_Blind]

2. While cool, this story smells a little bit when it comes to the Wi-Fi part.

I'm no expert but I have messed around quite a bit with so-called "omnidirectional" laptop Wi-Fi solutions and find the claim of being able to magically provide Wi-Fi a little dodgy. Most stock laptop antennas and wireless cards are crap and even a great USB standalone Wi-Fi antenna is omnidirectional...on a 2-dimensional horizontal plane. Which means something flying overhead is going to be one of the more difficult things to send and receive to. Complicating this is that most Wi-Fi in a laptop cards are going to put out a shitload less power than one watt, more like 25-50 milliwatts and their reception is far more touchy than an external USB omnidirectional antenna. I've only played around with B&G, not N, though. But I find the implication that you can have a plane flying around "broadcasting" Wi-Fi access...a little on the implausible side.

Unless the people who are meant to receive the Wi-Fi signal are notified that there will be a plane flying overhead and especially if they can track the plane with a directional antenna. In situations like that I bet you can get some awesome communications but...I just don't see an airplane flying overhead and lighting up wireless access bars being very realistic, given how Wi-Fi works and the realities of the hardware. At least for B&G, anyway. I have no experience with N.

PB