Please write me a dummies guide to staying out of gizmo. I have a VPN, but that's it rn.
I'm pretty happy about it. I really recommend not being American to everyone.
Assume Mr. FBI is listening to everything you do digitally. If you're going to do things you don't want them to know about keep it away from anything with a battery or a power cord.
And you're phone is a NSA tracking device. Don't bring it to protests. Have a single member of your group with a burner phone to use in case of emergencies.
If you're taking pictures at protests be sure to cover the faces of every non-cop person before you upload them anywhere.
Be careful about driving too. Automated license plate scanners allows mr. FBI to know where your car is at all times.
Walking or biking in densely populated places can be problematic as well because of facial recognition. Meet up somewhere without surveillance cameras, like in the woods, or try to hide or obfuscate your face.
Walking or biking in densely populated places can be problematic as well because of facial recognition. Meet up somewhere without surveillance cameras, like in the woods, or try to hide or obfuscate your face.
Time to become a juggalo. Their makeup defeats facial recognition last I read
i just want to note that the australian police are currently gloating about having caught a whole bunch of organised crime people because they were all using some "secure" communication app that was actually made by the fbi and all their "secure" communication was going straight to the feds
i think always just assume that all your communications have the potential to be monitored, no matter how careful your setup is, so be accordingly mindful of what you say
ps to the agent reading my message history on here, everything i wrote is all satire, sike ;)
communication app that was actually made by the fbi
So I want to say "FOSS or bust" but tbh I have no way of knowing that any given open source app is safe either.
I think the safest method of communication right now might be a courier on horseback.
Inside of you there are two wolves: one doesn't trust the government, the other knows that you shouldn't hand-roll your own crypto
"Secure" communication like Tor is arguably riskier than just a good old VPN or incognito mode and flushing your browser and always logging out. It's a Honeypot for "criminals", and the Feds/NSA have always had backdoors into a large part of "secure" tech (that's why Huawei beating them on 5G makes them so pissed, they're losing their edge)
And if you do have advanced techniques that you're more confident aren't compromised, please do not share them on public forums like this.
It’s a Honeypot for “criminals”
Please let us know when everyone using Tor gets rounded up by the cops. I want to ask one of them if they wish they'd just used incognito mode and deleted their browser history.
Sure, there's no guarantee that anything will preserve your anonymity, especially if you're targeted by a state actor. But you shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. At least make the feds work for it.
And there's also maggots, so you have something else to snack on. :think-about-it:
Let's be real, they have complete control of the internet and all communications. If they really wanted to they could just shut it down. They could easily round up any and all people they deem "A terrorist".
With some things you just have to work with what you have and go with the flow. What happens, happens. Just stay true to yourself.
give no actual information on where you are from or anything that could hint at who you are at all
Also be sure to throw in some lies from time to time, not just how you live in Liberal, MO even though you actually live in Liberal Mountain, but lie about stupid basic details too
Honestly the government can get their hands on whatever info they like. If they're looking into you I don't know if any online protection would make a difference.
But you should be cautious still, because it's still possible someone will try to doxx you. The last thing you want is a fascist finding out your personal details.
I don’t know if any online protection would make a difference
Take a cue from bin ladin. Zero internet presence, all work done through in-person intermediaries in a multi-tier network of couriers.
You can assume that I am at all times taking cues from Bin Laden. All of my posts are dictated through six different messengers who use dead drops and carrier pigeons
haha that’ll be the day...
The Gang Goes to The Gulag
*sunny music *
The feds going after leftists is a century-long tradition in this country. What came out yesterday is bad, but it sounds more like a continuation of that tradition than something new and much worse.
This guide is very good: https://anonymousplanet.org/guide.html
end all your posts with "Joe Biden makes free speech illegal"
Throw a car battery into the ocean.
But really, the best opsec doesn't rely on tech or even opposes it. Tech can help you with plausible deniability, but you shouldn't assume it protects you from the feds.
Don't take your phone to a protest or any activity you don't want to be identified at. Or if you do, take it powered off, battery removed. If you can get a cash burner that you only power on at protests, otherwise keeping the battery removed, that's also fine. If you power it on at home even once they now have your rough location to associate with it.
Wear a mask to protests / actions where you want to avoid being identified. Facial recognition tech is ubiquitous. e.g., you go to a May Day thing and a subset of anarchists start breaking windows, that's when you should've planned ahead and covered your face.
Assume all internet activity is tracked and can be read back to you in a court. Your browser can be fingerprinted, making it possible to identify you even though you used a VPN and incognito and so on. Consider dedicating an entire browser to certain websites, ideally with spoofed browser data like the wrong user agent. This will not prevent tracking but will add some obfuscation. Another measure is to disable JavaScript but this will break basically every website. Keep in mind that using uncommon browsers might actually deanonymize you more than a common one if you ever use your "Chapo browser" to log in to Gmail or something. And remember that this won't actually protect you from the feds coming after you once you're a target, just obfuscate things a bit when your internet history gets read to you in court.
Consider minimizing tech and smart devices in your house, particularly those that can aren't running on open software (and ideally hardware) that you control. The more devices, the more that could be owned, the more metadata for identifying your network and correlating activity. Even if you get rid of your Alexa and smart TV with a microphone and so on, your phone is still loaded with sensors, constantly sends metadata to Google/Apple/your cell company, and has who knows how many potential backdoors, so if you were a target by the feds that would be one of their focuses. If you've been attracted to a dumbphone life, maybe this is a time to try it out. Alternatively, an open alternative platform might help in some regards, but is also yet another rare thing that could be used to identify you, so it'll never be perfect. The most secure smartphone is the one you don't use.
In terms on avoiding getting on feds' lists... I dunno, I think you're probably already on them via browser metadata, direct metadata on what sites you visit (DNS), and that hammer and sickle commemorative pin set you bought on AliExpress. I think it's generally a good idea to focus on local in-person organization and avoid online calls to violence generally, including the state's idea of property violence.
For in-person organizing, don't get arrested. Don't listen to people in the org who make pointlessly risky plans that amount to getting everyone arrested (that's fed shit). Have plans for deescalation, lawyers, and getting the fuck out of there if things head south. Remember that we are a very small movement that needs growth more than anything else. I agree that it's very cool to do certain things against certain property, and I applaud it, but it's usually not worth risking a comrade. It's usually low stakes. It's usually not something that couldn't be effectively replaced by a free breakfast type of program, organizing a tenants' union, getting a comrade on the city council.
I wouldn't worry too much about posting. If they're going after your semi-anonymous posts, you're already fucked.
The biggest thing that you can do is stay cool. That applies triply to anything you do in public. When the block is hot, like it is now, you stay out of the way and let it cool off.
