Stealth signals are bypassing Iran’s internet blackout

Of course not. From the article:

Because the technology is banned by the government, access remains limited and carries risk; Iranian authorities have recently arrested Starlink users and sellers.

I expect not to be honest.

Not saying the cause is wrong necessarily but let's just call a spade a spade - this is aimed to help one side and one side only, "freedom" has nothing to do with it

One would think this is exactly the sort of circumstances under which store-and-forward/delay-tolerant routing would be useful. Years before Jack Dorsey thought of bitchat[0] I had the same idea, but never pursued it because I live in a western country but not in a "tech city", in other words, nobody around here is interested in being an early adopter of an app primarily of use only to preppers or people living under repressive authoritarian regimes.

Anyways, it's a great idea in theory, as the techno-anarchist preppers that LARP with off-the-shelf lilygo LoRa tranceivers will be happy to tell you. But in practice nobody who actually could benefit from these seems to adopt these things. Or at least I never hear about it, if they indeed do. Perhaps today's internet blackouts are too transient for a 2026 version of samizdat to develop?

Do the people you know inside Iran plan to just wait it out, or do they have some other solution ready for a total blackout?

[0] https://bitchat.free/

Which is neither new nor novel.

PlayCable was doing this to download console games over analog cable systems <checks notes> 46 years ago.

TeleText says hello.

Teletext [1] was extremely popular in Europe before the Internet was widely available for private households. Also piggybacked on TV.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2026/01/what-hap...

The number was given over two days, not one.

The protests were in over 200 cities with 5 million+ participants, WE KNOW they fired live rounds this is undeniable if you only had 200 deaths per city you would reach a death toll north of 40k already. Yes it's not verified yes there isnt a video of exactly 30000 identifiable bodies side by side. But the number really isnt as unachievable as people make it out to be.

From another article: The 30,000 figure is also far beyond tallies being compiled by activists methodically assigning names to the dead. As of Saturday, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said it had confirmed 5,459 deaths and is investigating 17,031 more.

https://www.aol.com/articles/iran-protest-death-toll-could-1...

The mass murdering of 5,400 people is nothing to scoff at, on any level, even over two days.

For clarity 3,900 tons over four raids and 1,500 planes.

I’m not sure how to translate that into modern munitions but I’m also uncertain why a strategic bombing death toll should tell us anything about Iranian protester deaths. Iran isn’t doing strategic bombing of their citizens, they’re using small arms across hundreds of locations.

The linked article cites a source [1] with detailed methodology for their actual claim of 7,000 deaths and mentions that other unmentioned sources claim it could go as high as 30,000. I don’t see any claim of that being in a single day.

Given the timeframe and widespread nature of these protests it doesn’t seem implausible.

[1]: https://www.en-hrana.org/the-crimson-winter-a-50-day-record-...

It is true that shutting off your Internet prevents cyber-attacks, but imagine if it happened in the USA: it would effectively shut down much of our commerce and everyday living activities. In the West, Internet access is becoming more of an essential utility than the icing on the cake, or a recreational forum for malcontents and ne'er-do-wells. Or perhaps it's both at once.

Can you elaborate how such thing plays out?