How Do You Communicate When Your Government Doesn’t Want You To
Protests in Hong Kong escalated this week, with police and protesters clashing violently today after the protest group occupied Hong Kong International Airport, bringing all air travel to and from the country to a halt. The protest is in response to a proposed legislative measure that would allow residents of Hong Kong that are accused of a crime to be extradited to mainland China for trial. This measure sparked fears that Chinese law enforcement would abuse this power to arrest and deport law-abiding critics of the Communist country.
Social media has played a part in uprisings of the past, most notably the Arab Spring, but it was more focused on organizers communicating information to groups. What is different about the Hong Kong protests is that communication has been mainly peer-to-peer.
According to the Wall Street Journal, “Protests can spring up within minutes via encrypted message apps or even just among clusters of people on the streets. Participants sometimes have no idea what is occurring a block over. As many as 10,000 can gather quickly and occupy streets for hours, faced off against riot police, then disappear in a flash.”
Telegram, with its encrypted messages, has been a significant method of communication for protestors, but with law enforcement on high alert, some have looked to less traditional forms of communication. Communication has included live streaming on Twitch and messaging on dating app Tinder and augmented reality game, Pokemon Go (the game also doubles as a cover for the reason that a large group is congregating in an area).
They have also taken to the cloud, sending Apple Airdrop messages via Bluetooth, which allows the sending of images to anyone in range, giving strangers the ability to disseminate information unsolicited and without needs to be connected or followed on social media.
All of these channels are controlled by major corporations, with centralized servers. Therefore, if a powerful enough government (United States?) or group of Governments (G8?) put enough pressure on these companies, it is conceivable that said government(s) could gain access to the servers and messages.
The next evolution is blockchain-based, phone-to-phone messaging where messages are not kept on central servers and cannot be intercepted. Sense Chat is the first decentralized messenger with a built-in EOS wallet to hold and share tokens. We believe that censorship resistance plus value transfer will be two of the primary building blocks of change in this world, and we are excited to see new ways that this technology will improve lives globally.
