this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2026
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(Pushing back for the sake of understanding)
In what context would you recommend using this in organizing? The barrier to entry is high enough that it wouldn't be the main channel for most folks. Maaaybe for particularly sensitive discussion between a few folks? But then they should probably just meet in person.
Needing to be part of the network doesn't seem inherently more secure from a stingray-style mitm attack. Encryption is what provides security, and the encryption isn't fundamentally different from e.g. signal. From what I can tell, this seems to provide security through obscurity.
I guess I'm mostly not convinced that this is inherently more secure than signal vs an adversary targeting a specific conversation, as long as that adversary is in the same general area.
I'm not familiar with the underlying stack, and it's possible that selecting a specific route to avoid the mitm somehow helps (tor-style routing...?), but even then you're still transmitting over rf and an adversary can listen in. In that case, we're just back to security hinging on encryption, which e2ee apps also use.
Maybe with a sufficiently dense network, but tracking down and disabling nodes is feasible.
Shutting down the entire internet, even if we assume it's easier logistically, is much more disruptive to the general population. Shutting down the mesh network only affects those on the network, and would be unnoticeable to virtually everyone.
That said, I could imagine a scenario where it's deemed acceptable to shut down the internet but mesh networks are still functioning (at least for a while)... but it's a very dark scenario. Unfortunately not out of the realm of possibility, though.
Security is a concern of course, but think about resiliency too. If a natural disaster knocks out the grid, mutual aid networks could leverage solar powered nodes to maintain comms.
I completely agree that meeting in person and leaving the phone at home is by far the safest way to communicate. I was thinking more of using this sort of tech during large protests for example to coordinate them without relying on the internet.
I'd argue it's more secure because it takes more effort, like actually having to physically have equipment on the ground. If you have the same software security in both cases, this adds a hardware component to it. For mitm attacks, you actually have to compromise individual devices in the distributed mesh. This is a lot more difficult to do at scale than compromising centralized infrastructure run by companies that are working with you. If anything, I'd argue Signal is one thing you absolutely should not use for any sort of organizing because it's tied to your phone number. Even if the messages themselves are secure, it reveals the graph of people communicating.
And in terms of resilience, that is a factor of the number of people using the network, and the nodes connecting it. So, encouraging active use now, will make it a more powerful tool later on.