coming soon

Why Airchat?

Because We strongly believe communications should be free,
Free as much as the air itself and all the waves should be.
Free for everyone everywhere, free for those oppressed, free for the poor,
free for the dissident, free for those ones living out of the boundaries
of the infrastructure created for those who were lucky enough to have more than others.
And free...well... because sometimes the non-free infrastructure itself fails.


Several thousands years ago, we started shouting to the air to
communicate ourselves, to build our first communities and to survive.
Since then the power of our voices has travelled through the air,
carrying poetry, intelligence, knowledgement, art, emotions, science,
revolutions, goodness, philosophy, faith, evilness, war,
All those ideas, good or bad, which have made of us humans.

We freely shouted to the air our very own existences.
We shouted to the wind we were alive.

Several thousands years after we started this adventure, we have built
amazing and technologically sophisticated networks to serve us
to communicate everywhere, thou, our freedom is extinguishing.
Our once free voices are subject to uncountable controls, social clausures, financial
fees, patents, rights, regulations, government censorship, etc.


Today, keep meeting in common public spaces to keep expressing freely ourselves
so we will try to scale up all these human voices to cover not only those tiny public spaces
but a whole community, a neighborhood,
a big town, a huge city, a remote region... the world.

So...That's why Airchat,
because next time you want shout your freedom to the wind, perhaps someone will listen you up.

WTF is AirChat then?!?!


Airchat is a free communication tool, free as in 'free beer' and free as in 'jeremy hammond must be freed'.
It doesn't need the internet infrastructure, nor does it need a cellphone network,
instead it relies on any available radio link (or any device capable of transmitting audio -
we even made a prototype working with light/laser based transmissions).


This project was conceived not only from our lessons learned in the Egyptian, Libyan and Syrian revolutions,
but also from the experience of OccupyWallStreet and Plaza del Sol.
We have considered the availability of extremely cheap modern radio devices (like those handhelds produced in China),
to start thinking about new ways in which people can free themselves from expensive, commercial,
government controlled and highly surveilled infrastructure.

AirChat is not only our modest draft or proposal for such a dream, but it is a working PoC you can use today.
we hope you will enjoy it and we also hope that you too will be able to feel the beauty of free communications,
free communications as in 'free beer' and free communications as in 'free yourself and your people forever'.


User cases


People who were protesting against their govt resulting in the their internet being cut off.
Even worse govt decided to fuck with their cellphones networks too.
They need basic communication tools to spread news and updates about their conditions,
and with the aim to eventually relay that information to/from the internet
when at least one of those people gets a working internet connection.

NGO's and medical group working in Africa under poor conditions who want to build some
basic communication's infrastructure to coordinate efforts like the delivery of
medication and food or to update on local conditions
without being intercepted by regional armed groups etc.

Dissident groups who mistrust the normal communication infrastructure and who want to coordinate
regional activity and share updates about oppressive actions carried out by the authorities.

Disater response, rescue and medical teams who are working in devastated zones without the availability
of standard telecommunication infrastructure. They want to keep updating their statuses,
progress and resource availability between teams when there may be large overage zones between them.

Yacht owners who are sailing and who wish to obtain news updates from some approaching coastline
or another ship which has internet access. There may just be a simple exchange of information
about news, weather conditions, provisions, gear etc.

Local populations who want to keep in touch with each other on a daily basis with the goal of developing
a strong community capable of maximizing their resources,
food or manpower to help improve sustainability and their quality of life.

Street protests or any other street event where people would like to share their thoughts,
anonymously and locally without relying on the internet. They may also share wish to share them
with the world as a single voice using a simple gateway such as a unique Twitter account made for the occasion.

Expedition basecamps who need a simplistic solution to build a common gateway for establishing
radio communication and messaging service links with camps, remotely located basecamps and/or
rescue centers to coordinate tasks such as logistics, rescue efforts, routes and schedules.

Background: Dilemmas and decisions

Every project is a fractalized representation of infinite dilemmas sparkling other new ones,
glued to the futile decisions we make, to try to address all of them.

Many ideas have crossed our minds when we tried to make this thingie.
We experimented broadcasting UDP packets inside mesh network solutions.
We experimented using patched wireless network card drivers to inject crafted wifi management frames.
We also considered crafting TDMA packets via cellphones RF hardware.
We thought about those many different possibilities. we saw there's so much potential on them.
Sadly we found out how locked down and overregulated our communication devices are.

So, we thought: 'Well some solutions would require that we ask people to root their phones or routers, and
to then install custom firmwares with patched drivers, with the risk of getting people mad cause they
were bricking them'

we also thought about a Wifi interconnected cellphone net approach, but the coverage range was frustrating.

We saw people working on different mesh related projects and we thought
'One solution shouldn't discard another one but it should try to complement it,
to add interoperatibility and to allow heterogenous systems'.
As different serious projects are looking for solutions based on 802.11 standards we said,
'WTF lets try to reinvent the wheel for exploration and fun'.

But to reinventing the wheel you need freedom. a freedom which we don't have much of in on our world
of telecommunications, which is over-regulated by evil organizations like the FCC and similars shits around the world.
So we choose the good ol' trusted ancient technology to start free.

Radio transceivers.
yeah, these shits rock.
we chose to sacrifice bandwidth for freedom.
Tune the frequency.
Define a protocol.
Transmit.
Enjoy.

So yeah we connected our 897Ds to our computers, we shouted out to our bros to tune in and then we started playing around.

We ended up with a simple protocol packet: the Lulzpacket. This simple packet
contains information to verify there was no corruption during the transmission
and a random code to pseudo-identify the packet. We define the addresses of
nodes in the net by their ability to decrypt a given packet. Addresses are
derived from the hashes of asymmetric encryption keys, Every radio node
defines its own address by the pair of keys it has generated for itself and
the addresses change if users choose to regenerate their keys. Each node only
cares for what is being received. No hardware identification, no transmitter
plain identification. only packets matter. transmissions are anonymous. whenever
an address is needed to reply to a packet, it is encrypted inside the packet.
Packets targetting specific addresses are encrypted and they must be decrypted
by the private key only the target possesses. Anyone trying to spoof an
address will not be able to decrypt the packet.
Symmetrical encrypted packets are available also and can be used as an extra
layer too. General non-encrypted packets also available by default for general
broadcasting and community discussion. (also for those people on some countries
where laws forbid encryption on certain radio frequencies, etc).
Disclaimer:
we dont give a fucking shit about prohibitions over the use of encryption. fuck you NSA.

So the choice is yours. You can use it with encryption or without.
Encryption is part of the routing solution approach, non encrypted packets are linked
to general broadcast.
(remember that when you are in the middle of a massive crisis you probably wouldn't care much about the stupid FCC)

Airchat is our first service which implements this protocol. The current release right now focuses on
messaging and it can be used as a simplistic message board inside a LAN and to rely communications
between radio nodes. It has built-in internet gateway capabilities to offer users access to some basics such as tweeting,
retrieving twitter streams, downloading news, community related articles, etc.
This gateway can can be used whenever an Airchat running station gains a working internet connection and choose to share it.
(this internet access can be anonymized via Tor and the built in proxy support).

The first release will be a minimal set of useful functionality, so that we can see what people
can do with it and what they would like to be able to do. We will continue to add more features based on your feedback.

So far we have played interactive chess games with people at 180 miles away. we have shared pictures
and established encrypted low bandwidth digital voice chats. We have 3D printed over distances of 80 miles and
transmitted medical orders at distances of over 100 miles.
All without phones or internet access.

So how does it feel when you are communicating freely?
it feels great...fucking great.