GhostNet 1.5, page 10

10 “What’s the Point?” Understandably, such a seemingly complicated plan/infrastructure is bound to result in the question “Why even bother with all this?”. Though the answers should be fairly obvious, below are few concepts that are perhaps not adequately explained in the field of emergency communications: - He who owns the wires, owns the communication. All internet communications are vulnerable to censorship, surveillance, entrapment, manipulation, and information warfare. Granted, this can apply to all communications on Earth, but there is a reason that powerful entities have spent substantial portions of defense budgets on information warfare and censorship tools. You can jump from platform to platform, being banned from one social media site before moving to the next. But the inconvenient truth is that radio is exceptionally difficult to influence by anyone. Though this may change in the future, radio is the ONLY option for communicating over long distances, without using anyone else’s infrastructure. - Comms can’t be established after a disaster, only before. No meaningful comms network has ever been set up after a natural disaster strikes, and certainly not after a man-made disaster (such as war) breaks out in a region. During a crisis, people tend to be rather busy as the time-saving conveniences that make our modern society function stop working. There are only so many hours in the day, and if a person has to spend a lot of time establishing even the most basic comms links (and assuming risk doing so), this is time lost that could have been better spent on other tasks. It’s better to create the plan, practice it, and integrate it into daily life NOW, so that when all other comms are shut down or censored, the transition to radio is as seamless as possible. - A couple of “prepper freqs” is not good enough. Shouting into your radio handset on doomsday is hardly likely to be effective. In modern times, even during significant emergencies, traditional voice comms that hams are known for are extremely ineffective. If we factor in the sheer number of people who own radios (even HF radios), we can clearly see that more significant network planning is needed. If the HF bands are so busy that the average user has a hard time breaking through on the average sunny Saturday afternoon, during a time of emergency, comms won’t be possible at all. Thus the need for more substantial networks, modes, and methods that can handle higher volumes of varying kinds of traffic. - The average citizen is now playing for keeps. No one lives forever, and in today’s world many people are finding out how true that adage really is. As such, resiliency in the face of an airstrike/raid is paramount. If a ham radio group cannot survive even a basic raid, they are of no help when the chips are down. This means that a “work-in-progress” plan is better than no plan at all. And more importantly, a non-hierarchical framework is essential for the network’s survival in the event of kinetic targeting. Typical Use Case Examples Standard natural disaster preparedness: A great use of the GhostNet would be to serve as a common network that many people can use to share news regarding natural disasters which may have degraded cellular networks. Decentralized, uncensorable, off-grid news network: The unique nature of HF radio makes censorship very very difficult. If someone wanted to stop a station from transmitting, they would have to either jam that sta- tion, or physically visit the actual location of the station, and physically stop the transmission. As the world discovered from the Cuban Jamming incident of 2021, even military grade jamming is not entirely effective enough to totally stop all communications. Where there is a will, there is a way, and JS8Call (and other tools) make alternative communications not just possible, but a reliable alternative for the average user. Group Messaging: JS8Call is a powerful group messaging tool. Due to the nature of using offsets, many people can send messages at the same exact time, only being limited by the time one is transmitting them- selves. A listen-only user can pull up JS8Call and automatically decode multiple messages simultaneously, receiving messages from many different regions. JS8’s store-and-forward capability allows users to send messages far beyond their own station’s range. This forms a very basic form of a mesh network, which although not a true mesh, still offers many of the capabilities of exchanging messages far beyond the line of sight of just one station. ATAK Compatibility: Through the use of various plugins, the TAK suite of software can function within JS- 8Call. Obviously sending extremely high amounts of CoTs data is not best suited to HF radio, but this could be a useful feature for those who wish to integrate HF comms into their TAK network. GhostNet is simply meant to help ensure communications. It’s not intended to replace anything, or override any pre-existing networks or plans. If you want to use it, Great! If not, that’s fine too. But it’s there for those that need a reliable plan, where nothing similar currently exists.