Communication and Movement in Internet Shutdown Protests: Rethinking Mesh Messaging

The talk opens with the scale of internet shutdowns, which reached a record 296 documented events across 54 countries in 2024. The speaker explains that shutdowns cluster around protests, elections and coups, and that they cut off emergency calls and protest coordination. Mesh messaging, which relays messages device to device over short-range links such as Bluetooth or Wi-Fi Direct, is often proposed as a fallback.

The speaker then reviews FireChat and Bridgefy, two mesh apps widely used during protests in Hong Kong. Both were designed for festivals and crowded venues rather than demonstrations. Security analyses found unencrypted local storage, weak authenticity and tracking risks, and later research showed that Bridgefy's Signal-based fix was implemented incorrectly and could still be attacked. Simulation studies usually rely on random waypoint mobility models, which ignore how crowds actually behave: people match the pace of nearby companions, travel in bonded pairs, channel along buildings and scatter when confronted.

Based on a review of public footage, the research plans interviews with demonstrators, organizers and journalists to build more realistic movement models and then evaluate mesh schemes against them. Participants can withdraw their testimony at any point, and the speaker notes that such models could also be misused by repressive actors. The practical takeaway is that mesh tools for protests should be tested against realistic human movement before deployment.