Internet In A Suitcase

Occupy DC doesn't have a drum circle, but it does have a dictator-proof shared local network of wireless internet nodes that was funded by a State Department grant.

See Wired.com's post, U.S.-Funded Internet Liberation Project Finds Perfect Test Site: Occupy D.C.:

When Sascha Meinrath saw the Occupy encampment in D.C., he saw something few others would — a testbed for technology.

Meinrath has been chasing a dream for more than a decade, ever since he was a liberal arts grad student in Urbana, Illinois: community wireless networks. From that small beginning, Meinrath now runs a State Department-funded initiative to create an Internet in a Suitcase — the Voice of America of the digital age.

If he has his way, Meinrath’s project will lead to low-cost, easy-to-use wireless connections around the globe, all lashed together in mesh that can withstand the whims of dictators willing to pull the plug on the internet to quash dissent. He and a team of software engineers are developing open-source software to turn cheap wireless access points and Android smartphones into nodes on the network, which could then be used by dissidents to evade censorship and to spread low-cost connections everywhere around the world. Proponents of the plan include the U.S. State Department, which has given Meinrath a $2 million grant to develop the code.

That's the most interesting thing going on in McPherson Square.

The website for the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative is here.