HERMES: Secure, Long Distance Data Communication Over HF Radio

Peter Bloom

Rhizomatica has been working on a completely autonomous communication system called HERMES (hermes.radio) since 2017. HERMES is a fully FLOSS stack that has been built to use HF radio to create secure and very long-range (about 500 kilometers) digital communication links. HERMES has been deployed in the Amazon to support land defenders, on boats in Bangladesh to provide critical communications to fishermen, in war zones in Africa as part of early warning systems, etc. Due to current geopolitical situations that have us all concerned, it’s clear that HERMES can be a critical tool for hackers, privacy activists, and the general public to create autonomous and secure digital communication networks that are much harder to monitor or shut down compared to corporate-controlled ISPs.

Friday 1200 Gramercy Park Suite


Peter Bloom is a community autonomy activist based in Mexico working around the world with his colleagues at Rhizomatica since 2009 to create free and open digital communication tools and deploy infrastructure for autonomy for communities and their social and political movements.