White Box is a paid, anonymous, wireless internet box that can be deployed anywhere, to raise awareness about the internet censorship.

It takes its connectivity from 3G/Ethernet, uses Tor for anonymity, and broadcasts the anonymous internet using its wifi antenna, acting like a wifi hotspot. It has a coin acceptor, and a small screen. Once the user inserts 50¢, White Box generates a unique wifi password valid for 15 minutes, and displays it on its screen. Its timer starts once the user joins the wifi base station, and it disconnects the user automatically when the time is up. It doesn’t save any user data on it unlike a “black box”, hence the name a “white box”. Although the box is real, and it is fully functional, it’s not built to be manufactured en-masse like a commercial product, and this project is intended to be a critical engineering / design fiction project made possible to raise awareness around the topic of internet censorship.

Inspired by the amazing works of Julian Oliver, Danja Vasiliev and Gordan Savicic. With guidance of Aisling Kelliher. Many thanks to Adafruit for their Onion Pi.