So we gave up, knowing that 51% would see it as an act of terror or smth, and even if they didn't, they wouldn't use such software or hardware.
Here in the states, the NSA was allowed to view data on telephone calls 3 or 4 levels out from a terrorist. So, for instance, if a terrorist called A, and A called B, and B called C, and so on? The NSA could track C or D.
The argument against that is that it would cover something like 80 or 90% of the population.
Well, there you go. Assume one trillion connected devices and each device is accessible through a "path" of connected devices over 4 or 5 hops, with a percentage_success and average_network_lag time tracked for each path.
Add in a few GB of buffering and the requirement that every connected device use up 10-20% of its bandwidth on public, anonymous access, and you've got a mesh system that's decentralized.
The only other limit I'd add is probably some kind of rules to prevent DDOSing, say a 64Kb message size and a few other things like that.
It's just a math problem.
Despots would add sinks that suck in all messages, by pretending to be a known plankton/connection.
Also assume that traditional isps would first try to subvert it and then try to replace it by providing a similar walled in service - warning from the dangerous open source network.
The whole thing would have to be constructed in away like the TOR-Network, preventing the identification of sender and reciver before Arrival.
Finally i think the problem remains, that any sufficiently enough supressing regime, would force its citizens to uninstall such software.
Not force to uninstall - rather regulate, requiring licensure for operation; giving people a reason to be complacent. (Likely in the name of counterterrorism/child safety/etc)
Still, you have a decent grasp of the situation, which is much appreciated. Anyone who still thinks interpolitical issues can be swept away by some "just invent X" has either not lived long enough to know better or are doomed to the delusion that "it's the next one" until they die.
People will not mind requiring a license for "thing X" (esp. when airwaves are involved), and will not run software that can get them thrown in jail.
Sociopolitical problems do not have a naiive tech solution. [0] People do not cease being people if you retreat further into technology.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14220269
TL;DR people will not act to maintain an "illegally unregulated" system that has consequences as soon as you give them a licensure-regulated "safe" consequence-free alternative, see radio wave regulation
TLTLDR: the monkeys with sticks do not magically disappear if you build a new box
How does it route, i hear you asking? It routes by likelihood of connection to social plankton. Social plankton is every group your device ever connects to- and is constituted by those members of the group, which who can gather the most "Yes"-votes about theire prediction, of the behaviour of the group. Take a bus filled with people driving to work. They always constitute from slightly diffrent devices, but the time is always the same, the amount of devices is always the same- and there is always that one deciding device - belonging to the social plankton "transportation-company" without the plankton would never come together.
Now lets take the greatest possible counter example: A convention of bus drivers, riding on a bus to the first convention of its kind. They would debate alot, and agree upon it beeing a bus- but neither could secure a majority - which bus it is. None of the driving by social plankton - called houses and cars, is able to identify the bus of busses, thus a new social plankton class is created.
How does a adress in this add-hoc net look like? It consists of a Unique identifier, wrapped into layers of social plankton, sorted by likelihood. The social organism city is likely to know the social organism university within. The key ingredient is, that inner-plankton, can be encrypted and decrypted only after arrival at the outter plankton.
So this allows for -extremely slow, in extremely big burst- communication to happen. Without any IP-Provider or Infrastructure Controll authority having a hand on it.
Even better, it allows for Meta-Organisms to host services. Lets say, i have a shard of Wikipedia on my cellphone, and im part of the opt-in plankton "FreeSociety", any request to a wikipedia server, that bounces with no return off the web, could bounce back through the social organisms internal, until it reaches me, gets a package returned, and the web is down but the gate is up.