The Privacy Problem

MeshEnvy operates a public mesh across Nevada. The mesh is comprised of both MeshEnvy equipment and equipment supplied by individual community members. The mesh is open and anyone can extend it by adding their own equipment.

In order to reason about and understand the mesh, it is helpful for individual sites to share a name and location publicly. Then others can see where the mesh is dense, where it is sparse, and plan how to extend it. Without knowing where a certain site is located, it is more difficult to conduct legitimate mesh-building work. Builders have a reasonable basis for wanting site names and locations.

On the other hand, our equipment sits on partner towers, tribal lands, public lands, and private parcels. These partners express concerns over beacons leading a way to their sites. Many have dealt with trespass, theft, and vandalism. They don't want to add to the list of reasons someone might come uninvited, either intentionally or unintentionally.

We don't have to look far to see the problem, either: MeshEnvy members have recently been doxxed and received threats against family and property in retaliation for mesh-related disagreements. Even threats against equipment are very serious to me. We are working to add repeaters in remote locations where access to the mesh might literally save someone's life. So a threat to equipment feels like an indirect threat to something much more serious than a $50 piece of lost gear.

The security and privacy concerns are real. We don't think that someone should need to volunteer themselves as a target in order to participate in building the public mesh. When balancing openness vs safety, safety has to come first. Publishing location information asks people to step blindly into an unknown future with unknown actors. Against the backdrop of past and present threats, it gets uncomfortable.

When the original policy was drafted, MeshEnvy was managing active threats against personnel and equipment. At the same time, and unrelated, partners were raising their own concerns over exposure. The answer seemed clear enough: "this is why we can't have nice things". To help secure the safety of everyone involved, MeshEnvy stopped providing public information about sites. We knew it wouldn't be popular with the community, but there seemed to be few other viable choices and an immediate response felt necessary.

Mark's perspective

I had lunch with advisory board member Mark Spencer at Rosie's Cafe yesterday. He is old HAM and old military, but relatively new to mesh. He wanted to share his perspective as a newcomer with a steep learning curve ahead of him. He wanted to explore privacy alternatives because he could experience first hand how they were impeding his willing participation. He wanted something not 100% open, but not 100% private either.

Mark's military and HAM backgrounds mean locations and identities are strictly managed. To him, it seemed that operating in the ISM band carried no right to privacy. He also shared concerns based on historical precedent that if ISM users begin to go "underground" en masse, it may prompt a review by the FCC and the whole thing could be shut down, and then we all lose our toys. If the mesh becomes a tool for criminal activity, we might lose our toys anyway. All the more reason to encourage everyone in your community to avoid threats, impersonation, and harassment.

It was interesting listening to Mark's perspective, because my immediate reaction was that government overreach begins when someone says "if you're not doing anything wrong, you shouldn't care about privacy". We've been down that road before and the lesson is clear that a desire for privacy should not be used as evidence of guilt. While it might be true that all guilty people desire privacy, not all those desiring privacy are guilty.

Mark countered that he agrees, but that private use of a public resource is a different thing.

As I think of it now, that may be the crux of the persistent rumor that MeshEnvy has aims to convert a public resource into a private club. That is not and has never been the goal of MeshEnvy NCC, and we would immediately be shut down on multiple legal fronts if we tried, but at least I can understand the concern better now, even if it is not an actionable idea.

Maybe Mark is right. If you are doing things using a public resource, maybe it is everyone's business. I'm not sure how far that goes, but Mark's point still stands that ISM usage might be justification for some measure of public disclosure.

Still, the question remains. How do you do that in a climate of threats to person and property? If you disclose information, you are putting yourself in harm's way. If you simply leave the ISM band, you are ceding a public resource to special interests who use violence and coercion to control things. Neither solution works for me.

Mark's idea

Mark presented his middle ground:

• Publish location data within 1.5 miles accuracy
• Use site names that are helpful for mesh planning, but not for personal identity
• Publish an aggregate coverage map that shows where the mesh reaches, not individual transmitter locations

That seems like a reasonable middle ground to me. Something I know about myself is I often need to take the long way to arrive at a simple conclusion because the underlying reasons matter to me. Mark's reasons are persuasive, and so I change.

Many in the community voiced their opinions and Mark was the one who ultimately broke it down while I ate a Rosie's burrito and listened.

We still do share detailed site information under agreement with partners and cooperating agencies who have a legitimate need. If that is you, please reach out.