Google has found a unique way to get back at the NSA for its snooping activities. Make snooping exponentially harder!
Or at least that is how I read: Introducing Project Loon: Balloon-powered Internet access:
The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem.
There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity—jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month’s income.
Solving these problems isn’t simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we’re unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access.
We believe that it might actually be possible to build a ring of balloons, flying around the globe on the stratospheric winds, that provides Internet access to the earth below. It’s very early days, but we’ve built a system that uses balloons, carried by the wind at altitudes twice as high as commercial planes, to beam Internet access to the ground at speeds similar to today’s 3G networks or faster. As a result, we hope balloons could become an option for connecting rural, remote, and underserved areas, and for helping with communications after natural disasters. The idea may sound a bit crazy—and that’s part of the reason we’re calling it Project Loon—but there’s solid science behind it.
If successful (30 balloons went up this week), some of the consequences might be:
- Cheaper than satellites, enabling global private networks.
- Lower level than satellites for private video surveillance.
- Bandwidth will increase, along with demand, increasing electronic chaff.
- There will be no main router stations or pipes for easy interception of signals.
- Anti-balloon weapons and people who hijack anti-balloon weapons.
- How the NSA, CIA, China react to near total loss of control over communications?
By the end of the decade, high-speed wireless communication maybe too cheap to meter.
Let’s see the NSA collect all that data!