Decentralized Mobile Search and Retrieval Using SMS and HTTP to Support Social Change

Recent events have demonstrated the utility of mobile devices to coordinate mass gatherings and organize protests in support of social change and the cause of democracy. However, a common attack against the social networking abilities of mobile phone wielding protesters has been government action to censor centralized search and social networking sites. This paper describes a decentralized search and retrieval system, named iTrust, that provides greater resistance against the vulnerabilities inherent in centralized services. In particular, it describes the iTrust with SMS interface and the iTrust SMS-HTTP bridge, which enable any SMS-capable mobile phone to communicate with other nodes in the iTrust network. It also describes an Android mobile phone interface that builds on the basic SMS capabilities of a mobile phone and that offers a user-friendly way of accessing the iTrust with SMS implementation. Finally, the paper presents an evaluation of the iTrust search and retrieval system.

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