https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/myanmar-china-watch/mastermind-of-chinas-great-firewall-powering-myanmar-juntas-digital-repression-report.html

cross-posted from: hexbear.net/post/6058319

At Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, Manal Zaqout accompanies her 6-year-old daughter, Aya, for treatment. Aya had been moved to the hospital from the al-Mawasi areas east of Khan Younis after a continuous cough, fever, and fatigue that refused to resolve itself. The child was diagnosed with the flu, but the symptoms were far more severe than regular influenza.

On Sunday, the Gaza Government Media Office said that a “new strain” of the virus is spreading across Gaza amid a severe shortage in medicines due to Israel’s blockade of humanitarian assistance to the Strip.

“The rapid spread is attributed to extreme overcrowding, lack of water and ventilation, and the deterioration of healthcare services due to the war, in addition to restrictions imposed by the occupation,” the Government Media Office said in the statement.

Full Article

Amid ‘unprecedented’ rise in respiratory disease in Gaza, famine is making routine infections life&

Local authorities in Gaza have identified a “new strain” of respiratory virus in Gaza amid worsening conditions of famine and severe malnutrition, which threaten to cause even routine infections to turn deadly.

^{Tareq S. Hajjaj (Mondoweiss)}

I decided to purchase a one-way pager, a programmer, and a paging subscription to satisfy my curiosity about pagers.

In this post, I am explaining my thought process and describing some of what I have learned about how pagers work. This is especially relevant to the national paging network in the Netherlands, but hopefully others also find it interesting.

The cellular network

Cellphones give us the ability to reach others and to remain reachable regardless of our location if within a network's coverage. The network infrastructure is continuously evolving in ways that make it more efficient, secure, and reliable.

One way that the network becomes more efficient is by improving its device tracking abilities to reduce the amount of radio broadcasting resources needed to deliver data to the recipient. Security and reliability are improved by having two-way communication between the network and devices such that devices can be authenticated, data correctly encrypted, and message delivery confirmed.

A participant within this network must accept one or more of their device's unique identifiers (at the very least the IMSI, often also the IMEI) is associated with an approximate location.

Since I do not want to accept these terms, I do not carry a phone with a SIM card on me.

A burner phone and an emergency pre-paid SIM card gives me the opportunity to connect to the network in the case that I need to contact someone immediately.

However, this does not give the opportunity to others to reach me in the case that they need me or worry about me. This is not common, but there have been cases in which being reachable would have been good.

LoRa / Meshtastic

Last year I learned about LoRa radios and the Meshtastic network implementation. These devices allow one to send encrypted messages directly between devices. The range is decent, especially if there is a line-of-sight between devices. With Meshtastic it is possible to create a network of nodes that route messages, and to make use of tunnels over the internet to connect nodes that are very far apart.

So far, my favorite use-cases for Meshtastic are communicating with my partner as I approach an area to meet them, communication during festivals/events, and when travelling in a small town or camping.

It is a great tool in some contexts, but I cannot be reliably reached with it.

The Pager

I am currently living in the Netherlands and so what I say is most relevant to the Dutch paging network 'KPN Nationaal 3'. Messages are broadcast using POCSAG 1200 at 172.450 MHz. I know that the situation with paging networks vary across the world, with paging networks being no longer available in many countries, but I don't know the details. It may be that the system here is rather special and unique.

The paging network is considered a legacy broadcasting system. Messages to the network are broadcast by transmitters distributed across the full coverage range. The message that is broadcast contains the RIC (Receiver Identify Code) and the message in plain text.

Anyone with an SDR (Software Defined Radio) device can decode and log all of the unencrypted messages. Here is an example using SDRConnect + multimon-ng:

Using a programming interface, a user can select the RIC codes that they want their network-tuned pager to be responsive to. The pager will beep and display on the screen messages sent to that RIC. In my case, the seller of the pager assigned a new RIC from their pool to me and programmed the pager to listen to it.

A pager does not have a built-in transmitter, and so it does not reveal any information to the network.

A subscription to the paging network works the following way:
- You get assigned your own 'RIC', which is publicly broadcast with every message
- You get assigned a private number (0665xxxxxx)
- While your subscription is active, you send an SMS or an e-mail to a specific address with your private number + message, and the network provider will broadcast it with the RIC as the recipient.

Then, anyone who knows your private number is able to reach a pager listening to your RIC. The public RIC is not enough information to request a message to be sent to you.

Registering to the network has a monthly cost (typical current pricing of 8 € - 20 €) depending on whether you want to be able to recieve text messages, numeric messages, or only make the pager beep. Your identity and banking information are known to the network provider. I was able to register as an individual without needing to provide any company information. I had to fill-in a short form and send it over e-mail with a photo of an ID to register.

So:
- The network provider knows your identity
- The service has a monthly cost
- The unencrypted message content, when they are sent, and the recipient's RIC are public information
- The network does not confirm delivery
- Inefficient for the network (all transmitters broadcast every message)
- Being a legacy system, the network may not remain alive for too long

But:
- It is possible to reach you at all times without needing to broadcast your location to the network

The pager is a technology that I looked at early on when I started thinking about privacy and I quickly discarded the idea. Giving my identity to a network provider and broadcasting unencrypted messages publicly did not seem logical to me.

Today, I see the value of having a receive-only device that is supported by a network with national coverage. A paging message would contain only enough information for me to know how urgently I need to find a way to communicate - whether I need to activate the burner phone immediately, or whether I can spend some time to go find another way to communicate.

For me, it was a pleasant surprise to discover that this legacy system fills the specific gap of reachability without tracking.

I also recently became aware of the existence of paging networks that rely on volunteer HAM radio operators (like DAPNET), and would like to explore these systems in the future.

The Trump administration is seeking to nominate New York City Mayor Eric Adams to a top ambassadorial role in exchange for dropping his re-election bid ahead of the November race, a new report says.

If Adams were to exit the race, it would clear the path for former governor Andrew Cuomo, who is staunchly backed by pro-Israel groups, to be the main challenger to the leading candidate, Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani.

The New York Times, citing four unnamed sources on Friday, said President Donald Trump's special envoy for peace missions, Steve Witkoff, has been working diligently to persuade Adams to consider being the ambassador to Saudi Arabia - a very plum posting at a critical time for US relations with the kingdom.

Trump offering NYC mayor Saudi ambassadorship to drop re-election bid: Report

^{MEE staff (Middle East Eye)}

The Trump administration is seeking to nominate New York City Mayor Eric Adams to a top ambassadorial role in exchange for dropping his re-election bid ahead of the November race, a new report says.

If Adams were to exit the race, it would clear the path for former governor Andrew Cuomo, who is staunchly backed by pro-Israel groups, to be the main challenger to the leading candidate, Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani.

The New York Times, citing four unnamed sources on Friday, said President Donald Trump's special envoy for peace missions, Steve Witkoff, has been working diligently to persuade Adams to consider being the ambassador to Saudi Arabia - a very plum posting at a critical time for US relations with the kingdom.

Trump offering NYC mayor Saudi ambassadorship to drop re-election bid: Report

^{MEE staff (Middle East Eye)}

Sensitive content Clicca per aprire/chiudere

Eygi, a 26-year-old American Turkish woman, was shot in the head on 6 September 2024 by an Israeli sniper. She had been attending a protest against settlement expansion near Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Eygi’s family feared that securing justice would be an uphill battle. Indeed, one year later, nobody has been held accountable. An Israeli military investigation concluded within days of the incident that it was “highly likely” Eygi had been hit “indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire which was not aimed at her” but rather at others whom it alleged were throwing rocks. (A Washington Post investigation found that Eygi was shot half an hour after any clashes between protesters and soldiers, and that she was standing 200 yards from the soldiers.)

US officials called the killing “unprovoked and unjustified” but, despite her family’s repeated requests, never launched an investigation of their own. (The Turkish government did, concluding that Eygi had been “deliberately targeted”, and it submitted evidence to the United Nations Security Council, the international court of justice and the international criminal court.

One year after Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi was killed, the US has not investigated. Her family wants answers

The American Turkish woman, 26, was shot in the head on 6 September 2024 by an Israeli sniper in the West Bank

^{Alice Speri (The Guardian)}

Eygi, a 26-year-old American Turkish woman, was shot in the head on 6 September 2024 by an Israeli sniper. She had been attending a protest against settlement expansion near Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Eygi’s family feared that securing justice would be an uphill battle. Indeed, one year later, nobody has been held accountable. An Israeli military investigation concluded within days of the incident that it was “highly likely” Eygi had been hit “indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire which was not aimed at her” but rather at others whom it alleged were throwing rocks. (A Washington Post investigation found that Eygi was shot half an hour after any clashes between protesters and soldiers, and that she was standing 200 yards from the soldiers.)

US officials called the killing “unprovoked and unjustified” but, despite her family’s repeated requests, never launched an investigation of their own. (The Turkish government did, concluding that Eygi had been “deliberately targeted”, and it submitted evidence to the United Nations Security Council, the international court of justice and the international criminal court.

One year after Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi was killed, the US has not investigated. Her family wants answers

The American Turkish woman, 26, was shot in the head on 6 September 2024 by an Israeli sniper in the West Bank

^{Alice Speri (The Guardian)}

A rightwing conference recently saw theocratic Christian nationalists, far-right publishers and members of men-only secret societies speaking alongside the Missouri senator Eric Schmitt, the assistant attorney general for civil rights at Donald Trump’s Department of Justice and other senior Republican figures.

The speaker list at the National Conservatism conference in Washington DC raises questions over what distinctions exist between the nationalist hard right in the US and members of the Trump administration and the Republican party.

Rightwing conference reveals muddled lines between Trump and far right

National Conservatism event draws in far-right publishers, members of men-only secret societies – and Trump officials

^{Jason Wilson (The Guardian)}

As part of the war of awareness against the anti-Israel narrative worldwide, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs led by Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar is promoting an unprecedented move in its scope: By the end of December, approximately 400 delegations are expected to arrive in Israel, including over 5,000 participants who will help spread the Israeli narrative in the international media and to international audiences.

The delegations include a wide range of participants, including government officials and elected officials, journalists and influencers, academics, legal, religious, cultural and sports figures. For comparison, so far, in an average year, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has brought only 25 delegations to Israel.

The decision to "concentrate effort" on delegations, with an investment of approximately 135 million NIS, comes after studies that have shown the effectiveness of the tool in the war of consciousness, bringing public opinion multipliers to Israel, who, after their visit to Israel, spread the Israeli narrative on social media and in the communities in which they are active. A notable example of this was Caitlyn Jenner's visit, who was brought to Israel during Operation Rising Lion and her content from Israel were exposed to millions of people.

As part of the war of awareness against the anti-Israel narrative worldwide, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs led by Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar is promoting an unprecedented move in its scope: By the end of December, approximately 400 delegations are expected to arrive in Israel, including over 5,000 participants who will help spread the Israeli narrative in the international media and to international audiences.

The delegations include a wide range of participants, including government officials and elected officials, journalists and influencers, academics, legal, religious, cultural and sports figures. For comparison, so far, in an average year, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has brought only 25 delegations to Israel.

The decision to "concentrate effort" on delegations, with an investment of approximately 135 million NIS, comes after studies that have shown the effectiveness of the tool in the war of consciousness, bringing public opinion multipliers to Israel, who, after their visit to Israel, spread the Israeli narrative on social media and in the communities in which they are active. A notable example of this was Caitlyn Jenner's visit, who was brought to Israel during Operation Rising Lion and her content from Israel were exposed to millions of people.