Posted by us321 1/15/2026
Also, for something like this you don't want a platform that requires you to essentially use the App Store and nothing else.
Briar is available on Google Play for devices running Android.
The guy lost 20 years of life history due to US tech workers at Google wrongfully blocking his account and then ignoring his pleads for reactivation.
When US tech workers can show up to take cash and bonus payments from Google, they can also show up to take responsibility for Google's impact.
I worry that some of these things are well meaning but ultimately a waste of time like Elon's submarine doodad.
Looks like clients re-host posts to their friends in a p2p fashion.
If it works via tor it's probably also slow, but that's a small price to pay for not relying on a central server for people with legitimate concerns or problems with connecting.
The forums and private groups do bidirectional syncing and merging of all updates with anyone in the forum/group, so that gives you the equivalent of near-infinite multihop among trusted peers for large forums/groups. And it means every person has a complete copy, so it's nearly impossible to find all copies to censor it. With the blogging of reblogged RSS feeds, you can even have people acting like news carriers for viral-ike person-to-person information transfer as well. Even if that does require a little more manual curation by the "transmission vectors" than forum/group posts.
Remember too that when things get bad enough people become ready to give up thier lives if necessary, and this may just be a way to reduce (but not eliminate) the need to actually sacrifice thier life for their cause. Large groups of people may collectively believe it's worth being individually captured and imprisoned or murdered to ensure the larger group is aware of what's happening.
https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-coding-dissent-art-technology-an...
Coding Dissent: Art, Technology, and Tactical Media
This presentation examines artistic practices that engage with sociotechnical systems through tactical interventions. The talk proposes art as a form of infrastructural critique and counter-technology. It also introduces a forthcoming HackLab designed to foster collaborative development of open-source tools addressing digital authoritarianism, surveillance capitalism, propaganda infrastructures, and ideological warfare.
In this talk, media artist and curator Helena Nikonole presents her work at the intersection of art, activism, and tactical technology — including interventions into surveillance systems, wearable mesh networks for off-grid communication, and AI-generated propaganda sabotage.
Featuring projects like Antiwar AI, the 868labs initiative, and the curatorial project Digital Resistance, the talk explores how art can do more than just comment on sociotechnical systems — it can interfere, infiltrate, and subvert them.
This is about prototypes as politics, networked interventions as civil disobedience, and media hacks as tools of strategic refusal. The talk asks: what happens when art stops decorating crisis and starts debugging it?
The talk will also introduce an upcoming HackLab initiative — a collaboration-in-progress that brings together artists, hackers, and activists to develop open-source tools for disruption, resilience, and collective agency — and invites potential collaborators to get involved.
And no, I know these things as a matter of fact for reasons that will need to remain my own.
## Government Funding and Transparency
Briar openly discloses its funding sources on its website, listing support from the Open Technology Fund alongside other organizations like NLnet Foundation, the European Commission's Next Generation Internet programme, Access Now, Internews, and others [1][4]. This transparency is notable—the project does not hide its connection to U.S. government-funded initiatives. The OTF itself supports numerous widely-used internet freedom tools, with over two billion people worldwide reportedly using OTF-supported technologies daily [5].
## The Security Trade-off Question
Your skepticism about government-funded privacy tools reflects a legitimate concern that civil liberties advocates have raised [6]. However, Briar's open-source nature allows independent security audits—it was examined by Cure53 in 2017 and received positive assessments [2]. The project was developed by researchers and activists including Michael Rogers and Eleanor Saitta starting in 2011, with stated motivations around supporting freedom of expression and protecting activists and journalists [4][7].
## Technical Design vs. Political Origins
The technical architecture of Briar—peer-to-peer encryption, mesh networking capability, and operation over Tor—represents genuine attempts to resist surveillance regardless of funding sources [8]. Unlike some mesh networking apps that researchers have found vulnerable (such as Bridgefy, which had serious security flaws allowing impersonation and surveillance), Briar's design philosophy emphasizes decentralization [9]. The question becomes whether government funding necessarily compromises such tools, or whether open-source transparency and independent auditing can mitigate such concerns.
Citations: [1] About - Briar https://briarproject.org/about/ [2] Briar (software) - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briar_(software) [3] Open Technology Fund - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Technology_Fund [4] About Us - Briar https://briarproject.org/about-us/ [5] Trump's Reshuffling of US Foreign Aid Endangers Internet Freedom https://dgap.org/en/research/publications/trumps-reshuffling... [6] US: Fight Continues for Open Technology Fund's Independence https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/08/20/us-fight-continues-open-... [7] 3 - Concealing for Freedom – Mattering Press https://www.matteringpress.org/books/concealing-for-freedom/... [8] Briar Desktop got another round of funding https://briarproject.org/news/2022-briar-desktop-nlnet-fundi... [9] The privacy perils of using a mesh network – and why we urgently ... https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/the-privacy-peril... [10] Briar - NLnet Foundation https://nlnet.nl/project/Briar/ [11] Briar Darknet Messenger Client For Android Secures Chats With ... https://hothardware.com/news/briar-darknet-messenger-client-... [12] History · changelog · Wiki - briar https://code.briarproject.org/briar/briar/-/wikis/changelog/... [13] Mesh Networks Won't Fix Internet Security - CITP Blog https://blog.citp.princeton.edu/2014/04/22/mesh-networks-won... [14] Congressional Remit | OTF - Open Tech Fund https://www.opentech.fund/about/congressional-remit/ [15] Radio Free Asia | OTF - Open Tech Fund https://www.opentech.fund/security-safety-audits/radio-free-... [16] RCFP supports Radio Free Asia's lawsuit challenging funding cuts https://www.rcfp.org/briefs-comments/radio-free-asia-v-unite... [17] The Trouble With the Open Technology Fund https://www.afpc.org/publications/articles/the-trouble-with-... [18] Trump restores funding for Radio Free Europe, Tech Fund - The Hill https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5217360-trump-a... [19] Trump administration under pressure to restore funding to groups ... https://kesq.com/news/national-politics/cnn-us-politics/2026... [20] Supporting the Open Technology Fund https://www.thefai.org/posts/supporting-the-open-technology-...
It mentions Bluetooth and Wifi. My guess is that it tries to find other Briar devices connected to the same Bluetooth and wifi hotspot but what if the users are not on the Bluetooth/wifi? Does it share ALL messages encrypted with every Briar user in the hope later they come in contact with the final user?
So it seems it's more effective for blog posts because everyone is sharing the same blog post.
I'm not sure what happens with direct messages.
In fact, (smartphone) software distribution over ad-hoc networks is itself of some importance.