Protests, a form of political expression and social activism, have given rise to governments across the globe surveilling activists through their cellular Wi-Fi connection and threatening to shut down or shutting down the country’s internet.
Internet shutdowns worsened in 2024; the Human Rights Research Center reported that shutdowns across 51 countries have risen from 78 to 296 in eight years. This is about a 280% increase.
In Equatorial Guinea’s small island of Annobón, locals are experiencing a year-long government shutdown after a letter was sent on July 2024, containing complaints of a dynamite explosion by a Moroccan construction company, the Associated Press reported. Locals can no longer access the internet, and phone calls have been heavily monitored.
The Hong Kong 2019 protests about an extradition bill, which would allow fugitives to be sent to China, raised major concerns across the country. During the protests, authorities threatened to restrict internet connection, but never did. However, locals used the mesh messaging app Bridgefy to connect with fellow protestors.
Mesh messaging is seen as a possible solution to prevent the disruption of protests by allowing the protesters to communicate without the internet.
The City College of New York associate professor, Nelly Fazio and assistant professor Tushar Jois, are currently researching Cryptographically Secure Mesh Messaging for Large-Scale Protests. The project was selected as one of the 2025 CUNY Google Cyber Security Grant.
Fazio earned her PhD in computer science at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering. Her previous research focused on cryptographic accumulators, broadcast steganography, and non-commentative cryptology.
Jois received his PhD in computer science at Johns Hopkins University in 2023. His area of research focuses on cybersecurity, privacy and censorship resistance.
The two began working on the project after briefly discussing their shared research interests, and the complementary aspects – they have now worked on the project for two years.
To create the mesh messaging technology, the researchers looked to past protests where governments have shut down the internet and to see how they could be used in their research. They determined that the technology must be lightweight, not use a lot of battery power, and must be compatible with the technology already available on a smartphone.
Jois explained that a major hurdle is to figure out how to achieve the design of the mesh messaging system around the constraints of the phone, while at the same time understand how groups of people move during protests.
“After we develop the cryptography, and the proofs behind why the communication is secure, how we can actually transfer messages from point to point,” says Jois.
“In a protest, everybody moves. And so how do you maintain a stable communication when people move like they usually do, and maybe something happened, and then everybody ran from one location to another,” adds Fazio.
Through simulations, they test to see how their system would work in a real protest. The mesh messaging platform, which is designed to connect through Bluetooth and hop from one device to another before reaching the recipient, is meant only for protestors. However, if activists begin using these platforms more frequently, government officials and officers may obtain access to the platform. The next challenge now is to restrict access.
Currently, they have worked with The Committee to Protect Journalists and with journalists who have operated under “censored regimes.” But for the use of the program, they would like to speak to activists who attend protests.
“An important thing that I think some folks miss is that journalists are there really to document an event and protestors are participating in the event,” says Jois.
To understand the most important component of the design of mesh messaging – the people using it, Fazio and Jois have been working with the committee and former researchers who have worked with vulnerable communities.
According to Jois, the plan is to do this in a ‘snowball’ fashion –speak with one protestor and ask who they would like to speak to and then ask those protestors who they would like to speak to and so on. While no connection has been made yet, this is the current plan to expand their work.
Fazio explained how the connection between computer science and the ability to help other people was what made the project exciting to work on.
“This aspect of connecting computer science, so, with the rest of society, it’s one that it kind of makes me excited about working more on the project,” she said.
After winning the Cyber Security Grant this past summer, Fazio and Jois plan to continue their work and hope for it to one day be an accessible app available for anyone to use, especially during a time when civil unrest is at its highest.
Emma is an undergraduate student at Baruch College, where she is studying Journalism and Psychology. She’s Editor-in-Chief for Dollars & Sense magazine and Business Editor for The Ticker newspaper. As well as a freelance writer at BK Reader.