[willvarfar]

A government - or even just a sufficiently motivated individual - can trivially jam all phone, wifi, bluetooth etc communication.

Or they could just 'listen in' to record the signatures of all detected phones, so they can work out and identify who is in the crowd etc.

Military systems use frequency hopping etc and would be a more difficult target. But doubtless motivated governments could hamper their use in crowds too. Here's a fun comment I just found when I googled that: https://www.quora.com/Is-noise-jamming-an-AESA-radar-possibl...

[abdullahkhalids]

Absolutely, but I can ask a bit more nuanced question.

In any society, there is state-"friendly" communication and state-"unfriendly" communication. Also there are state-"essential" communications like state-propoganda [1]. Is it possible to build communication networks that allow for secure and anonymous state-unfriendly communication, such that trivially jamming it also jams state-friendly and state-essential communications?

As you might realize, a yes answer to this question is sufficient for protestors communication needs. Not the harder question of completely unblockable communications - which as we know is impossible. Of course, in the real world, the answer to my question might not be a "yes/no" but a resource-tradeoff.

[1] which every country in the world democratic or dictorial engages in. If you don't agree, please read Manufacturing Consent.

[willvarfar]

I don't believe so. I think the state would be comfortable denying phone and wifi usage to protesters congregating in public places, and the state has plenty of 'state-essential' communication mediums like loudhailers, billboards, riot police beating their truncheons against their shields etc, to fall back on.

That air-drop does work in the Hong Kong protests really just says that the state wasn't really prepared, but they probably will be next time.

Although, really, China is so far ahead in the practical application of face recognition and making protesters disappear or arranging counter-riots etc that I guess airdrop is not really where they think the fight goes?

[abdullahkhalids]

> I think the state would be comfortable denying phone and wifi usage to protesters congregating in public places

I don't entirely agree. It's a resource tradeoff scenario where the state has to expend political-capital (because they are also blocking people living nearby) to prevent the protestors from communicating. In fact, the protestors in Hong Kong have been protesting in different neighborhoods so non-protestors can see first hand the brutality of the state.

I agree with your larger point though that communication jamming is probably a minor point right now in the Chinese state's gameplan for dealing with these protests.