Shadow Internet

Abstract

Due to the rise of smartphone technology, numerous citizens carry Internet-enabled recording equipment with them at all times. Should atrocities be committed by the the government, they would have a hard time to cover-up the truth without blocking the Internet. Governments have demonstrated their ability to restrict access to the Internet during events like the Arab spring. The Shadow Internet bachelor project aimed to create an application that thwarts government censorship by allowing the spread of incriminating footage without the use of the Internet. This way, a video could be passed around until an enterprising journalist can smuggle the footage out of a censored region. When in a safe area, he would be able to spread the footage to the world. Our application implements this functionality by using Android Beam to transfer videos. Android Beam is Google's implementation of Bluetooth file transfer that is started through NFC. As the Google Play Store will not be available during an Internet blackout, it also supports installing itself on other phones through the same mechanism. This will allow the spread of both our application and the video without the use of the Internet. In order to facilitate the spread of evidence we have implemented Tribler support. This allows the anonymous uploading of videos into the Tribler network. The project was divided into 3 Scrum cycles lasting two weeks each. Each cycle iterated upon the existing application, with a focus on adding additional functionality. The first cycle focused on creating the first prototype and getting used to the Kivy framework. The second cycle saw the addition of the core features such as NFC file transfer and the video recording. The final cycle focused on improving the user experience and adding Tribler support for uploading videos. This cycle was plagued with a number of problems that delayed progress, but were eventually resolved. As of this writing, the application supports video recording and allows for file transfer through Bluetooth, along with the application itself, to another phone through the use of Android Beam. Sadly, Tribler support has not yet been fully implemented.