In the Sunday New York Times front-page story on “shadow” internet and mobile phone networks being deployed abroad by the State Department, it may have been easy to miss that the New America Foundation has a major role in the endeavor.
With only a quick mention in a long article, it would have been easy to lose that it’s the think tank’s project, the Open Technology Initiative (OTI), that is responsible for developing the “Internet in a briefcase” technology that would allow dissidents to circumvent the restrictions of repressive regimes around the world by making internet networks portable across borders--literally in a suitcase.
The young men at OTI (all are men except one, according to the website’s staff page), have developed the suitcase that “would include small wireless antennas, which could increase the area of coverage; a laptop to administer the system; thumb drives and CDs to spread the software to more devices and encrypt the communications; and other components like Ethernet cables.
