CZM Book Club: Escape, part one

because I do it for you. And this time I mean that more than usual, because I'm going to do some reading and then I'm going to talk with my friend about that reading. I'm going to talk to my friend Greg. Hi, Greg, how are you.

thing to say. Is that a fair way to describe you?

and it's a thought experiment. It's speculative fiction and kind of one of the oldest definitions of that, one of the oldest concepts of that, which is just literally, hey, what would happen if and what kind of like science and technology can we use to address a set of problems?

And before we start, I'll say what I overall think is that I find this a really interesting thought experiment, but one that I have, like I had some maybe critiques of and so that's why I decided to talk to my friend Greg, and so we're going to kind of read this story and then talk it through to you. And this is going to be a two week thing

because this is a slightly longer than normal story. I don't know, Greg, what are your first thoughts going into this thing that people don't know what we're talking about yet.

good job of that. And I think that, like part of the reason why I wanted to talk about this with other people is that I think we could go a little bit deeper and then maybe come out on the other end where people can think about it a little bit more an actionable way in their everyday lives, as opposed to reading this and then you know, going on to the next terrible thing of the day.

just start reading it to you. So there's a little preamble. In November nineteen nineteen, United States President Woodrow Wilson launched mass raids against the entire anarchist movement. The United States police simultaneously arrested thousands of anarchists in many different parts of the country, shutting down their newspapers, organizations, and meeting halls. That part's not fiction, just to interject, that's just the

thing that happened. If similar raids were to take place today, they would occur in a technological landscape involving mass surveillance and targeted electronic attacks. Those who survive would also have to adopt different tools. Section one Escape. When the police battering ram hits his door at four eleven am, Jake is in his boxers on the floor playing an emulated

side scroller. The adrenaline hits and within seconds he has jammed his bedroom window open, sliding down into the backyard and often a run, his socks instantly soaked in the grass. He hears shouting, but doesn't look back to check if there are pigs looking out his window or chasing him from the side of the house. He jumps the back fence more awkwardly than he imagined, getting a splinter deep in his left hand, but he ignores it and dashes over the roof of the neighbor's shed, trying to remember

every detail of the surrounding blocks. In what feels like an instant, he's two blocks away, hiding behind some bushes as a squad car drives by. His breath sounds to him like the loudest thing in the world, and his mind spins as he imagines a neighbor coming out behind him. He's in nothing but boxers and muddy socks, and his hand is dripping blood. Nothing happens. The squad car crawls

down another block. Time to move. Vera is almost home from work, listening to music in her headphones when she comes around a bend and sees the corner of a swat outside her punk house. She pivots immediately down another street, casually continuing her walk while pulling out her phone. She knows she should immediately turn it off, but first she texts a group chat house being raided and then turns it off. Maybe that warning will help someone. Many phone

batteries remain active even when the device is off. She knows right now, some lazy junior officer could be noticing the GPS or her network connection triangulating her as she moves away. Should she throw it? Should she abruptly stomp on her phone out here in the street. There's a drainage vent coming up. She could toss it in and keep walking via hesitates. Her phone is encrypted, but against everyone's advice, she uses a short password. If they dig it out of the drain, she doesn't know how to

pry out the SD card. Stomping on the whole device might draw attention and not even destroy the main memory. Time is of the essence, so she makes a hard choice quickly and tosses the whole thing in the drain. She's just a normal person on a walk, and she keeps walking away vera hears a car rolling up behind her slowly. It takes every ounce of willpower to keep walking normally, not to look back and terror. Maybe she should,

Maybe she should just run for it. The car parks behind her, and there's the sounds of a mom unloading young kids. She's not being followed where to now. Julie and Maggie sit at their dining room table. Just want to point out that I'm not only reading this story because it has a character named Maggie in it, but that was a consideration and a bonus. I really appreciate everyone writing in Maggie's, Margaret's and Magpies. Julie and Maggie are sitting at their dining room table, struggling not to

reflect panic at each other. Only one news outlet is even reporting the nationwide raids, and there's almost nothing there. Messages saying leave and then delete. This group chat keep popping up for both of them, little spatters of reports on raids and then silenced. A friend who is always too frantic is spamming everyone asking for updates. Then suddenly she's silent. There's an hour of nothing. They trade terse

updates with a friend who lives far away. Someone local suddenly appears online, but only to post a meme and a dead channel and then disappear. The same music plays on the same radio stations. The wind blows through the trees, A cousin asks for advice with a preschool situation, totally oblivious. The local news does a puff piece about local business, the neighbors get a pizza delivery, and your favorite podcast is interrupted by advertisements. That's a thing that happens. It's

totally in the story. I totally didn't just I added that. I added it right now, here's the ads.

come for us. We haven't done anything. Their confused dog is whining with shared nerves. Maggie keeps eyeing the go bag by the door they packed together months ago. That afternoon, Julie had made a show of being a good sport, humoring her need to prep. Now all Maggie can think about is everything they're missing. Julie's passport has just expired. Can they get across the border If only they had

done a dry run. They take the dog out on a walk, leaving all devices home, whispering potential plans to one another, trying not to draw attension as a jogger passes them by. When they get home, there's a private message on Instagram from a friend saying they're putting together a legal defense committee. First meeting will be public at a public park. They're inviting some local liberal journalists as shields. Somebody at the local ALLT Weekly says she's writing a story.

There's a lawyer coming from a big name liberal thing. The Internet keeps being really slow, doesn't deliver messages, and then suddenly delivers three all at once. Loading a lot of websites just returns errors. They're so sleep deprived of stress that when they finally crash together on the couch, they sleep right through the Defense Committee meeting. A friend knocks loudly on their door and they nearly die of heart attacks. Assuming it's the cops. His report back is terse.

Almost no journalists showed. Most of the folks who went have been grabbed. One was driven down off her bike on her way home. An old liberal lawyer went to the county jail with a court order and the cops just laughed and arrested her. He's going underground, and he suggests they do too. But Julie and Maggie have a life. They have jobs at least for now, as they've both called out sick, and they have a house. They're normal now,

even law abiding. Burn a few posters, donate a few books to the neighborhood little libraries, to lead a few accounts. Maybe they can pass upstanding citizens. If we leave our shit here and stop paining, we'll lose everything we've built since poverty, plus have to pay some ridiculous fine. If they do get raided, maybe it'll just be a few days in lock up, in and out, just a performance

of a crackdown. The lips will get mad about the lawyers. Surely, neither of them has been able to cook since the raids first started, so they drive out together to grab pickup. Waiting for a light, Maggie stares at something on the side of the street and then leaps out of the truck's passenger side door without a word. Julie is frightened at first, then furious, but when she pulls the truck over and heads back to Maggie, she sees her partner kneeling next to a homeless man lying at an odd angle.

We don't have our phones. We can't call a paramedic, she reminds Maggie, but then recognition dawns on her. It's one of their friends. Under the mess of blisters and swollen bruises, his eyes are open, staring at nothing. He lived in one of the first punk houses that was rated. He never went to anything besides some hardcore shows. He was just a baker. They don't pick up their meal.

They head home, dog go bag some last minute additional ideas, camping gear, encrypted backup drives, medicine, dry food, clothes, blankets, phones, and leftover devices, smashed house key hidden somewhere in the yard for a friend. Maggie looks at her cheap Cassio watch. That's time, we need to go. That's the end of section one, and we're gonna read section two today too, but first we're gonna talk about section one and what should we talk about with it.

in a big mass roundup that includes anarchists. But there is a historical precedent for specifically coming after the anarchists. The first Red Scare was nineteen nineteen nineteen. I want to say maybe eighteen as well, I'm not certain, And they often get called the Palmer Raids. And I don't have all my notes in front of me, which is terribly embarrassing because I had all the time in the world have my notes in front of me, but I

did not. But basically, these were raids that came after primarily an immigrant anarchist group across the country, but especially in York City and specifically Russian anarchists and Russian labor organizing around New York City. And there's all these like great photos you can look up of like, well, there's one, there's this great photo of these like super dapper anarchists hanging out and they're like nice wool coats and nice

hats and stuff, waiting for deportation. Fashion is probably not the most important thing when you look at that particular photo, but they do have nice fashion.

a specific ideological branch of socialism. It's just a catch all word like terrorist or whatever.

know where my shoes are? Or like do I have the right pants on? Definitely something to consider. I think if you're preparing with this particular threat model, and then like, you know, how how do we think about go bags a little bit differently? And you know, I think most of the time when we do go bags, it's like, Okay, you're going to be in a vehicle, You're going to be going to a shelter. But how does this change with this particular threat model.

Right A wildfire is still a more realistic threat model for most people, including most people probably listening to this, or like earthquakes or I don't know, you just like really are antsy and want to get out of town or whatever, or like your friend calls you frantic and needs your help and they are two states away and they're like, or you need to get here now, please come, and you're like, well, fortunately, everything I need to sleep in my car is in the bag right here, plus

my car, you know, so you can throw it into your car and get going. But I do think it's kind of interesting to think about this particular threat model with go bags and preparedness, of the idea of kind of a more urban camping model, which is actually I mean it's literally my own background as a former travel kid or whatever, you know. I slept on a lot

of rooftops and things like that. The idea of traveling with a tent was completely nonsensical to me, because I was like, tent, you put up a tent, they know where you are, you know, because I was just always sleeping illegally in different places, and so like, the sleeping bag was the only object that really.

really interesting to me. I wear boots, and so like I'm not throwing on my boots to run away or whatever, and I'm like, oh, maybe my crocs, you know, maybe that's the move or maybe like kind of slip on running shoes or whatever. But something that you brought up when we were talking about this beforehand was the kind of like, well, it's not like crazy realistic to get out a window and out in the backyard during a house right.

I think that if they're doing like the full swat or whatever, they might, right, But I don't know, And so I think that there is a little bit of a like, I mean, a lot of this is just pure luck, right this character is playing emulated side scrolling games at four fourteen am or whatever it is. But yeah, I don't know. I do like thinking this like sort of different threat model as relates to our go bags.

But I would actually say with this piece in general, right, this is less about we need to change our threat model to include this as what we're doing now, and more like thinking about, well, this might come up, you know, we'll talk about it more when we get into the other sections about the different methods of communication and stuff. But it's like, it's not stuff that we should start doing now. Like I don't think that I'm gonna have to start sleeping with clothes on. I'd hate to start

sleeping with clothes on. That's really just the main problem for me.

you have a map in your car? Like I've thought about getting sort of a a road out list, for example, just in case, like I don't have GPS service because and also I've been in situations where GPS has thrown me on the road that is completely covered in snow, and I'm like, uh oh, maybe I need to know how to get out of here.

because again I have normal person hobbies. Whenever I watch like right wing people's vehicle bug out vehicle prep stuff on YouTube, which to be clear, I don't look for the right wingers, is just to an overwhelming majority of the people who are like, check out my truck, it's full of stuff, are a right of center and they all like have these like back of seat mounted AR fifteen mounts to put their AR fifteen on the back of their seat, And I'm like, that's the pocket that

the at list goes in. Think in your life about the number of times you've needed an atlass versus the number of times that you've needed not only an AR fifteen, but a truck AR fifteen ready for rapid deployment. Like that's a that's a non thing as far as I can tell. Like, if you are going to be rapidly using your rifle in a vehicle, you're in a war and you're not the driver. So yeah. Whenever I see those, I always am like the map pocket. You covered the map pocket. Oh yeah, get a road.

Now for our phones, you mostly open it one handedly. You probably are doing something else, and like most of us, probably either use face unlock. There's fingerprint idea unlock, which those are pretty secure except for if somebody is physically takes your face or your finger inputs it on there.

are just facts. So one thing and kind of going back to the go bags and like I think having a Faraday bag is something that would be useful as well for people. Is like, if you want your phone to be more off or at least not traceable, being able to just throw it into a bag could help it at least not contact other radios. But there's also operating systems, so these are all Android based. You know,

iOS is what it is. And you know, there is questions of whether or not the standard encryption algorithms have

backdoors the police can access. But there is a an OS called graphinos that is commonly recommended, but it does like it does de Google you, So if that is what you're trying to do, you're trying to get away from Gmail and all that you will get there, and Graphios only runs on the latest Google hardware, like the Pixel line of phones, just because they want to keep it very up to date and not have to support a ton of phones. So it's like the three latest

phones or something like that. So if you are sufficiently paranoid and you want to play around with that this kind of stuff, I recommend that. But there's also other ones, like there's linear jos, which is another alternative OS for Android phones that you can you can choose not to download Google apps or not, and then calyx Os, which is another project that's doing similar goals.

over Wi Fi not cell phone networks. Then that particular device would never get that triangulation data from the cell networks, which is interesting, and then it would have you have signal on that phone, and then it just never leaves your house and then it's never on your person. But again, I think that that that is a perfect scenario when most of us are gonna we like the convenience of how itself phone. You would like to be able to look up things and talk to our friends.

person probably does crime because they do this thing. But I would say that like for most people, I think in the current threat model, like the odds of me needing to take a call from my sick family member while I'm out for twelve hours is like, that's more important to me than like that my cell phone hasn't pinged off of any towers recently in the average scenario.

And so, and I think that that's what's interesting about this particular thought experiment piece is that it's presenting a like, well, all of that shit's out the window. And if all of that stuff's out the window, then you're just like in a totally new terrain. And so I think that there's I don't know's it's complicated, but I really do like that. I like that they point out that they're like, Okay, I'm going to throw my phone down the sewer now and all of that.

an abandoned building littered with garbage. Long ago, Jake took two plastic bottles and sealed each inside a ziploc bag with a small amount of cash and two USBs each. Then he buried one bottle in the dirt underneath the rock, and taped another bottle underneath a non functioning vent on

the roof of an abandoned building. In each bottle, one USB contains an encrypted key pass x database with a distinct log in information of every online accounty has, as well as a vera crypt encrypted folder with various files. He wants to make sure he never lost, scans of his IDs, photos of friends, including a GPG key pair. He has encrypted both with a passphrase of five randomly chosen dictionary words committed to memory, veritable sasquatch, humdinger, locality peeps.

He has practiced this every night for weeks, building all kinds of associations and mnemonics. Unencrypted on the drives are executable files to install keypassx vera crypt and GPG on any new computer. On the other USB is a full install of the TAILS operating system. Jake knows he looks a mess in his boxers and muddy socks, but he gets to the park and digs up the bottle without a squad car seeing him or some vigilante neighbor raising a fuss. The twenty and two tens inside will have

to be enough. Luckily, there's a small houseless encampment near by, and an old lady is willing to part with a sweater for ten. A free box happens to have a two large pair of sneakers. He desperately tries to make his boxers look like shorts and walks to a thrift store, quickly emerging with a backpack, a T shirt, a baseball cap, and a pair of pants. A visit to a corner store bathroom with a razor and hair dye, and his

appearance is at least a little different. He buys a cheap first aid kit for the splinter in his hand. With his cash broken into change, he can catch a bus across town. When Jake gets near the first house of comrades, not only are the cops there, but his friends are still in their underwear and hog tied. On the lawn. A cop is violently molesting a friend of his under the pretense of a search, while others laugh. Jake keeps moving. At the second house, there are no

squad cars, but the front door is visibly missing. Jake notices someone sitting in an unmarked car across the street. He keeps walking. The third house he tries belongs to a largely a political friend. It's a struggle to try and get him not to proclaim surprise loudly on the front porch and not to talk near devices. I just need to borrow a couple hundred men. Then I'll be out of your hair. I never saw you, you never

saw me. Please, Jake leaves with a hundred a filled water bottle, a better hoodie, a better pair of shoes with dry socks, and a dusty old laptop. It's not enough bus fare to get to the border. He needs a sleeping bag, but Ori Ei has been implementing stronger anti theft policies, and the longer he focks around town, the more likely he is to get stopped. He's terrified of facial recognition and tracking software on the buses, and his thrift store baseball cap isn't going to protect him forever.

He scopes out the city bust terminal from some distance, but it looks like this one checks id and there's a cop wandering around. Instead, he catches a city bus out to a distant suburb on the edge of rural two lane roads, trying to hitch Hopefully the cops out here aren't actively looking for him and won't harass a hitchhiker. A state patrol car passes him without incident. He has no success for hours, and it starts to grow dark,

so it's back to the city. Worried about cash. In the middle of the night, he climbs the roof of his second stash, but it's missing, probably the tape eroded months ago and it fell off. Hope the person who found it could use the cash if they opened one of the USB's it would just prove cryptic. No way to ever learn what was encrypted. It's a cold night, sleeping rough without a sleeping bag, and in the morning, Jake takes refuge in the back of a cafe where

he still has enough cash for a warm drink. He takes out the dusty old laptop from his friend, the Tails USB, booting it and accessing the Internet over tour. The connection to the Tour network has trouble, so he chooses in figure connection and selects different bridges until he finds one that works. A few anarchist counter info sites are reporting the raids, but a surprising number of sites are down entirely. Local news says almost nothing besides statust blather.

Social media is trash with speculation from those least informed. Foreign no blogs and indie media sites have the most relevant reporting. Signal is down something about centralized architecture. Comments speculate about international law, but it doesn't matter right now. Rise Up allegedly melted their servers with thermite during a raid, and we're all arrested. Proton Mail has apparently been collaborating injecting spyware onto user's devices, and some people are surprised

by this wire is temporary unavailable. A few people leave links urging people to use various apps or tools Jake's never heard of. But do you know what they should use? Greg for all of their secure communication? They should use whatever's advertised next, and we're back. Other people debate the technical merits, but he has a hard time understanding. One new app is blowing up pretty quickly. Lots of people attest to it being good, but this seems mostly based

on them finding it easy to use. One person says they are still trying to use a smartphone, but then goes quiet. One account that was quiet for a while starts speaking differently. In the comments section on a formally obscure site, someone says this is big C. I'm free. A group of US are forming up at a location. Contact me through a secure channel. Jake knows that this is Cookie, a local organizer. After a little struggle, Jake manages to get the most popular new encrypted communication apps

temporarily installed on his tails instance. He joins one of the public channels that some comments encouraged using It's basically like telegram or discord, a flood of posting and arguing. Folks who survive the raids using these new accounts try to imply who they are without saying it openly. It's an amateur hour shit show of oblique flailing. Remember that one time we did that one thing, I was the

one that woked green. Turns out one of the worst assholes in the scene was still free, and he is using the opportunity to crow even when the crewed only you would know x games imply an account as a given Comrade Jake knows that such details could simply be copy pasted from a compromised device via some man in the middle. Attack where the cops sit between two parties, relaying their messages back and forth as if they're the other person. There is not enough to trust in an

Internet post. To meet up, Vera walks immediately to the house of her old friend Cat. She scopes the front from down the street, notices Kat Subaru is missing, and makes her way in through the backyard. Vera has held on to a spare key for years, but their friendship is almost entirely offline. They don't even bring devices when they hang out. As far as the outside world knows, Cat is just another park ranger doing ecological restoration. Ten

years ago, they burn down a condo together. Vera cries and trembles the second she closes the back door behind her, falling into a fetal position. Cat's house is pristine, beautiful, safe. Vera rocks back and forth, trying to remember breathing exercises. Has her heart always been as loud? Is she dying? After an eternity? She gets up and starts doing stretches and exercises. She pictures herself punching through the faces of the cops. Back at her house, she knows she needs

to work out the adrenaline. Cat's house is like a warm security blanket. Everything is just right. Vera lies on the floor of the living room for hours, not moving, listening way too attentively to the sounds of cars going by. Is Cat even in town? Should she make something from her food in the pantry. The slow crunching sound of Kat's subreu coming to rest in the driveway is an

immense relief. Kat is surprised about the raids, but she grasps the severity, hugs Vera and tries to throw lentils and veggies in an instapot while listening and asking questions. While dinner cooks, Cat brings out an old laptop she rarely uses, and they check the major news sights together, careful not to enter search terms or anything that might flag. In some sense, it's a relief to learn the raids

were beyond just Vera's house. They're not targeted at Vera specifically, but no one seems to have been released yet, so it's clearly not safe to leave. Kat makes up a futon for Vera in the basement. Of course, you can stay the night. You can stay as long as you need. Vera takes off her earrings and places them carefully beside her work bag. In each earring is a tiny sliver

of a USB stick. Each of them is just like Jake's encrypted KEYPASSX database, encrypted filesystem, GPG keys, installation executables for Vera, crypt and KEYPASSX. In the morning, Vera will investigate what can be done with Kat's laptop. Julie and Maggie make three stops before heading out of town, first at Julie's bank, where she successfully empties most of her account into five thousand in cash, But at Maggie's bank, the teller disappears for a long while and doesn't come back.

You know what, never mind, I'll go to a different bank, Maggie says to another teller, using her best imitation Karen voice. They drive off heads on a swivel for cop cars. Finally, they slip a note into a friend's mailbox explaining where to find their house key and some instructions for their lease. They collect every credit or debit card they have and tape them together under a seat, never to be used again. They take off quickly back roads to avoid license plate

readers than long country roads. It's hard to navigate without their phones. Each of them picks a personality type and fashion style that signals no political or subcultural allegiance. They make up a backstory about how their friends and try to bicker in convenience stores to avoid looking queer. They pick up a bumper sticker they'd otherwise be livid at and slap it on. At a camp site two hundred

miles away, they go through all their remaining belongings. They have a tarp, a tent, two sleeping bags, a gallon jug of water, a sawyer microfiltration water purifier, a five gallon bucket of rice and beans, a camp stove, a couple pads, trashy books for boredom. They end up buying basic comforts like folding chairs with their cash reserves. It's

just a camping trip until it isn't. They go on a hike with their dog and talk about communities they can flee to a land defense occupation that became permanent, a log cabin squat built deep off of any path on federal land. A friend's organic farm with some partially abandoned yurts. They discuss the pros and cons of various cults they know. In the end, they drive to the furthest option, the organic farm. The drive is long on a thin, winding back road. They stack up behind a

long line of cars. Local vigilantes are performing an inspection to check for antifa. A middle aged white lady with an ar waves them through cheerily. Stay safe out there. The next town has a small rally for democracy along the central drag. Besides in Arby's, a couple dozen liberals and folding chairs hold cardboard placards making puns about the

suspension of a cable news channel. At a gas station, Julie overhears two men confidently talking about the investment opportunities in real estate being opened up as all the cockroaches are removed. One night, they sleep in their car in a Walmart parking lot on the advice of a friendly night auditor. At a cheap motel, new regulations, I can't take a cash deposit, and there's this thing I got

to enter your IDs into that wires them nationally. When they finally arrive at the farm and are allowed the gate, there are already fifteen other people there, extended family of the owning couple, plus a couple of woofer hippies, and two coteries of obvious radicals who are cagey and cold to anyone they don't know. Everyone is antsy, different groups cook different food, panicked envy flickers in some eyes. Two

weeks in and Julie keeps to herself. Maggie spends her time trying to suck up to the owners and befriends an artistic nerd with one of the other radical groups, an old, balding white dude, and a black hoodie keeps snapping at their dog. A trip into town for balk food goes badly after the nerd insists on wearing a mask and a confrontation breaks out with a local. A backed up toilet in the farmhouse makes the owner's dour for a couple of days. One night, the situation boils

over and folks start openly talking about the raids. There's fury over who has a device and who can be trusted to have a device, who is putting everyone else in danger, who has a right to be here, who has a right to anything? After someone brings up land back, someone else screams, who do you think you're fooling? Who are your people exactly? You're not indigenous, You're as white

as me, and an awkward physical fight breaks out. The next morning, there are immigration police visible in the distance at the neighboring farm. One of the hippies finds three young girls hiding down by the river and rushes them into one of the plastic yurts everyone else is hiding in. Dogs bark in the distance. Julie joins the couple that owns the farm and meeting the immigration agents. Her dog

barks at theirs and they put them away. The immigration agents are some of the newly deputized conspiracy heads that barely have any training, and Julie is able to find common cultural ground with them, ranting about how genetically modified organisms or poisoning the land, leaning hard into the persona she's studiously built on the road. The wannabe Jeni side airs laugh at her jokes and leave, waving back to her. The girl's white uncle was allowed to remain a nasty

gash across his forehead. The rest of the family is being taken to one of the deportation camps, where people die of dehydration. He's profoundly grateful for the rescue of his nieces. Over the next month, the adjacent farms begin to merge. A dugout hiding spot becomes a tunnel network. Maybe it'll suffice to hide folks if CoP's return. Some new folks arrive fleeing other things. Tensions break down, relationships

begin to form across the groups. One of the quieter members starts opening up giving lectures on centropic agriculture, and an array of projects rapidly consume all the spare land across the farms. As people get busy developing personal domains and projects to be invested in the overall vibe improves dramatically. Food gets people become more open about what devices they held onto, but it doesn't matter as much because all

of the old Internet is gone. A few specific corporate sites remain accessible whitelisted by telecoms for the sake of commerce, but almost everything else is gone. You can get Amazon deliveries and send Gmail, but it's impossible to reach Wikipedia, much less Athens, indie media, or any no blogs. The farm establishes a consensus on how devices are to be used. The owners maintain all of their devices in the farmhouse,

air gapped from everyone else. News stories and everything else are downloaded to a USB by one person for an hour every day, then passed around the three laptops everyone else shares. There's one burner cell phone for the whole farm, bought with cash at one of the last walmarts where that is possible. It's kept turned off and wrapped in plastic bags under a rock five miles away along the side of the road. It's for emergence and strictly overseen usage. No one will put it simcart in or turn it

on near the farm or its stash location. Having swapped out plates and tags, Julie and Maggie occasionally drive into the local town. They sit behind a cafe in their truck while it's closed at night, and tap into the still active Wi Fi with their laptop running. Tails signal is long gone. Tour is totally inaccessible, even using the latest smuggled bridges on the plane Internet. They've managed to register two Gmail accounts using the farm's collective burner phone.

How can they find other comrades? How can they talk with them?

sort of flag. There's a piece where they're like, oh, the autistic nerd and I'm like, okay, we've all met that, or maybe we are that or whatever, and then it was like ah, then they wore their mask to the store and refused to not And I just want to like the flag that I'm like and could have been phrased a little differently, making the autistic character be the

one who does that. I don't know whatever, Maybe that's me being to twitter brained about it, and I don't know the I have no idea about the neurodivergence or non neurodiversions of the author of this piece.

start using a password manager. Use a different password for every single one of your accounts. And this is not advice as a radical, This is a device as a person who uses computers, if one of your accounts gets popped and you use the same passwords for everything, all your accounts are popped, and also use Tube factor authentics. Okay, speel over, but keep AXC is an encrypted database of all of your passwords. So you use one big password that you hopefully memorize, and then you never have to

remember your other passwords. Now there's some advantage to this. From another perspective is like you don't really know your passwords, so if like somebody were to ask you, hey, what's your email password, You're like, I don't know, and you can legitimately say that you don't know. But I think it's a good practice to use a password manager. So

that's what keyp pass x or keep assexc is. Vericrypt is an application that is used to encrypt files or drives, and so if you wanted to encrypt like a large piece of something, you would use varicrypt and be able to decrypt it like that. GPG is another way to encrypt messages or files that the emphasis is on asymmetric encryption, which I will go with a little nerd moment. In asymmetric encryption, you have a public key and a private key.

You keep private key to yourself and you're able to share your public key out to anybody and then they somebody else will use your public key to encrypt something intended for you. Now, one of the most common ways that this is used is through email. There's been applications in the past, like a nigmail to make this more easy for people. But just know that GPG is used for encrypting files or messages and that sort of thing.

But it's quite manual. It's a process where you have to set up your keys, you have to set up and maintain a public and a private key pair.

to you. It might be sick of people talking about it. Anyway, is that signal is just so much easier to use, and I actually think that there is a for most people in most situations. The ease of use isn't just a convenience, it's actually literally more secure because it's harder

to fuck up. It's really easy to fuck up GPG. However, as the rest of this piece is going to later get into, there might be situations where it's kind of the only thing going yeah, because you kind of can't you can't kill this one.

install it onto a computer. You plug in the USB drive, you boot it up, and it launches the operating system, and when you turn the computer off, everything is wiped, so it doesn't leave data behind unless you tell it to. But yeah, yeah, so.

convenient tools going down. For example, they mentioned proton mail has been injecting spyware onto people's computers, and to be clear, proton mail doesn't really have a they're not really our comrades, you know, but they're also not American, and so from my point of view, and maybe I'm being naive, I'm a little bit like stuff that's not American is going to have like way less of an interest in cooperating with a fascist American government. But maybe I'm being naive about that.

don't see it, but it's happening behind the scenes. Signal does this, proton Mail does it, but again it's a centralized service and we don't know what pressure they may get in the future.

that's very easy to turn on and off. My understanding is that in the United States that'd be a lot harder, and so a general Internet going down scenario would look a lot more like the ISPs themselves, either blocking or

throttling traffic. The cell phone providers are actual easier to shut down, and there's an example in twenty eleven during the Oscar Grant protests in the San Francisco Bay area, the Barrier Rapid Transit System BART shut down their cell phone service on the underground tunnels because they thought that activists were using that to coordinate their protests. They were able to do this because they own the entire cell

phone network that was underground. You don't get cell phone networks from above ground, and so people had no service at that time Signal itself going down, though again I don't know the details of how Signal is hosted, but if it's not distributed enough, you could just shut down a few of the servers depending on it. But I do imagine, given the fact that Signal is open source, that if something like that were to happen, you might see people be spinning up their own versions of Signal.

And I think that the piece also talks about like, oh, there's these other apps that come up, and who knows if they're good or not, and you would definitely see that. Yeah, there's reasons to assume that, like in crisis, people are going to try to figure out other ways to get around things, and you'll have to use your best judgment. But I don't think it's unwarranted that Signal could go away. But I think it would given the fact that we've

seen also government officials utilizing signal. Maybe that's an advantage in the in the realm of like maybe it is critical infrastructure in this way where we wouldn't see it attacked in that way. And like tour for example, is used by the CIA, they have a vested interest in not shutting down the tour network.

We express some details, but like, at the end of the day, you're gonna make your own choices, and maybe WhatsApp is actually the better option for you because you have family internationally and having access to that encryption is super important.