Download Bitchat to communicate in an emergency

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With PBS shutting down after losing federal funding and the administration threatening broadcast licenses, the possibility of compromised communications isn’t hypothetical anymore. If you want a backup plan, there’s Bitchat — a free mesh networking app announced last summer by Jack Dorsey.

Available for Android and iOS, it sends encrypted messages over Bluetooth, bouncing data between nearby devices running the software. No cell towers, no wifi, no cloud. The catch: it only works if other people nearby have the app installed. Alone in the woods, you’re out of luck. But if your neighbors all download it, you can check in with each other when the grid fails.

Bitchat has already proven useful. During protests in Nepal last year, 50,000 people downloaded it before the government cut internet access. Now hundreds of thousands in Uganda are doing the same in anticipation of a similar shutdown. The Ugandan government claims they’ll block Bitchat too — a bold statement about a protocol that doesn’t need a cloud connection to operate.

The app isn’t perfect. It doesn’t support group chats yet, and there have been concerns about authentication security. But it’s open-source and actively developed. As any Linux user will tell you, pretty good open-source software is often good enough.