Interview with Gustavo Narea: the mind behind Relaynet
Our growing interest in Human Rights and Citizenship brought us even closer to Relaynet’s project whose aim is to help those affected directly by internet shutdowns. In case you’re a little lost you can follow this link and read a bit about this pioneer project that we have the pleasure to be working with.
We often hear accusations against technologists and how much they focus on digital, leaving behind the humanity of things. Well, we want to be “anti” that. We want to share stories about our projects and clients and bring people from all walks of life into the discussion. What better way to gain more knowledge about world events, raise awareness and create more empathy with the public?
Digital is not so bad...after all we’re all human and that’s why it is so important for us to develop useful, empowering products that can improve our lives.
Gustavo Narea, the mind behind Relaynet, kindly agreed to answer some questions that will help us understand how it all began and when it will be ready!
B: Before collaborating with Relanet we weren’t really aware of what Internet Shutdowns were and I think most people haven’t heard much about it. Why tackle internet shutdowns?
G: My family is all over the world and so I know how important the internet is and how much of a central role it plays in communication. When the internet is unavailable, for whatever reason, it becomes a problem for many people that, like me, have relatives in many different countries. not knowing the whereabouts or in what condition they might be, is a feeling nobody wants to face.
When in 2014 I first heard of internet shutdowns I started to do some research but I couldn't find anything on how to reestablish communication if the internet were cut off by the local governments. At the time I was in a full time job whilst getting ready for a degree so I didn't have much time to really invest into it.
B: From simple curiosity to idealizing goes a long way. How did you come up with the idea for relaynet?
G: It's hard to say because it was a long process. I hardly spent any time researching in 2014 due to my lack of spare time and the lack of options.
But I spent a bit more time on it in 2017 because I had decided to do my master's degree on this and I had to have an idea of what I’d do so I could request approval for my project. But that early design I did in 2017 was almost completely thrown away when I started working on the project full-time in late 2018.
B: We all know how difficult it is for a project to actually become something real. Did you ever feel Relaynet could be something more than an Academia project?
G: Initially it was indeed just an academic project. I didn't think that it would be possible to make it a reality given how ambitious it seemed and a complete lack of resources. So there were no plans beyond the dissertation. It was only when, as part of my research, I came across the Open Technology Fund that I decided to actually consider it beyond the dissertation and make it a reality.
B: Now that Relaynet is becoming a reality, what are your main objectives?
G: The top priority right now is restoring connectivity when the Internet is cut off due to human causes, starting with small-scale pilots and gradually scale to cities and countries. This will also require working closely with organisations operating Internet-based services who wish to make their services resilient to Internet blackouts.
This is the core user base we’ll be serving initially, but over time we’ll be expanding to support additional use cases, such as making Relaynet-compatible apps circumvent Internet censorship without Tor or VPNs.
B: We know the courier plays a central part in this project. Can you tell us a bit more about the courier’s main responsibilities? Is there a profile for the courier? Are there any major concerns about this process?
G: The courier’s job is to physically transport data between a region disconnected from the Internet and one connected to it. This job is analogous to couriers in the real world, except for the fact that Relaynet couriers (or anyone who intercepts them) won’t be able to inspect or change the data they’re transporting.
For example, during the 2019-2020 Internet blackout in Kashmir, some people took a train service (informally called the “Internet Express”) to reach a region connected to the Internet. In other Internet blackouts, I’ve also heard of people travelling to another region and bringing along the laptop of a friend/relative to synchronise emails, or even copy the password to an online service to perform a given task.
With Relaynet, those people who have to travel today could act as couriers. And thanks to the privacy, security and scalability properties of Relaynet, they could potentially connect the whole region with the outside world as well as locally in a secure manner. That means that couriers could be doing this job as a favour to a friend or relative, or to make money by charging for their service.
Unfortunately, that means that the repressive regimes will try to block couriers by whatever means they have at their disposal. There are some significant measures we have in place to protect couriers, but there’s a lot more that we can and will do.
Another thing that worries me is though is that the courier may be going to people's places and offering to deliver the data, but they may not be actually doing it because, for example, the government may be paying them to just delete the data in order to make people believe that Relaynet doesn’t actually work. It’s just a concern, something we need to pay attention to, not really a safety or functional issue with the technology. Even the deleted data will be recovered as soon as it detects that the data is not arriving.
B: We know you’ve recently presented a demo of Relaynet at RightsCon. Tell us about that. Was the feedback positive? Any conclusions from the conference?
G: The conference went very well, I really enjoyed connecting with people who are interested in similar fields. I got to speak to academics that have been documenting internet blackouts and also technologists working in this field. It made me think twice about my assumptions and other contexts that I have never thought of before. It was a really enriching experience and Relaynet can certainly benefit from this feedback to improve.
B: When will relaynet be ready to run pilots?
G: I think we’re not too far from finishing the Android implementation. Given the external support we need, realistically it could be ready to run pilots January of next year.
But we still have a lot of work ahead. One thing I would like to stress is that we need applications that are compatible with Relaynet. We are currently building the foundation but in order to carry on with it we need software, like social networks, either a new or preexisting one. For example, I used Twitter when I did the proof of concept and I didn’t have to get authorization from Twitter to do this. We need internet based services that are interested in supporting those devices.
But you can also use Relaynet for things that are not necessarily about communicating with individuals, such as money remittance, telehealth or tele-education, for example.
Thank you Gustavo for this chat. It’s good to be a part of this! 😄