CZM Book Club: Escape, part two

appreciate it much. No, it really doesn't. But you know, it's like so big anything you put in there, it's just it's fine.

go back and listen to it. And it is based on the idea that all of anarchists and presumably a lot of other sort of political and desirables are suddenly rated and declared illegal within the United States, a reasonably near future sort of a could happen tonight kind of timeline.

And I brought Greg on because this piece talks a lot about a lot of different technological solutions to various problems, and I wanted to talk through how realistic those different solutions are if there's other solutions, but not to necessarily. I like this piece because I like that people are writing pieces like this, and I think that this is a kind of conversation that we need to be having

more and more. I'm actually sort of hoping I get to run more book clubs talking about kind of similar things in the near future, or I'm hoping that everything bad goes away and I'm just writing about the bad old world anyway where we last left our heroes. There's three different groups of people, and they've all gone on the run, and they're all kind of going, now what now that they've all just barely escaped. So this section chapter,

as it might be called, is called communications. Jake doesn't have to trust the new app everyone's using while signals down. Long ago, everyone in his Affinity group created GPG key pairs, then verified each other's keys and signed them. They also created private back up email accounts on other platforms, only to be used in emergencies. Jake's rise up account may be down, but his GPG keys or in the encrypted folder on his cached USB, along with a list of

back up email accounts of his comrades. He goes through each one, encrypting a message to that person's public key and sending it to their back up email. After a couple hours at the cafe, one of them sends a message back to him. Ethan is still free. Jake asks to know if he knows anything about Big C's supposed posts. Ethan says he'll check with someone in Bigc's crew. He's also in contact with. Ash. Ash emails back with a public key for Big C. She signs his key with

her own. Ethan checks it and sees that it matches the public key for Ash that he's signed. Then he signs big C's key and sends it to Jake. Jake messages Big C on the new app everyone is using. I'm just gonna interject here. See how that's confusing Anyway, it's hard to follow, Okay, anyway, back to it. On the other hand, I end up writing meetings, so I can't really talk shit. Writing meetings into fiction is very complicated. Writing GPG into fiction is very complicated. Okay, now, Actually,

back to it. Ash emails back with a public key for Big C. She signs his key with her own Ethan checks it and sees that it matches the public key for Ash that he's signed. Then he signs big C's key and sends it to Jake. Jake messages Big C on the new app everyone is using. Instead of sending anything in clear text, he encrypts a message to the key he has for Big C. He adds his own public key on that same app. In the general channel they're all using, someone's screaming that another account is

a honeypot. People stop posting if they move to a different channel or a different app. They never send Jake anything about it, but that doesn't matter because Big C responds his message likewise encrypted using GPG and then pasted within this new app. Jake decrypts and checks that it was signed by the same key for Big C that his friend Ethan certify. There's a time and location back room of a donut shop a couple punks work app

eleven PM. Jake spends most of the day at the cafe, trying not to attract attention, and he scarfs down some fast food and gets a bus across town to the doughnut shop. He gets off a couple stops early and circles around it on backstreets, looking for any car or person that could be staking things out. He decides to wait a little longer in an alley, but the alley isn't empty. Ethan's there, smoking a cigarette and also scoping things out. They hug, You're the first person I've seen

in like two days. Man. Ethan's heard a rumor about some kind of legal defense committee being set up, but he can't stand one of the people he thinks is in it. Jake quietly regales him with the saga of his nearly new escape. They look at the doughnut shop down the street. If it's a trap, maybe only one of us should go. I'll go. If it's chill, I'll come back out and get you. Maybe they raid us only once we're all inside. Do you want to wait

out here all night? Fuck man? I don't know. Jake goes in a punk he doesn't know ushers him through the employee's side door. It's just three big c usually known as Cookie, the unknown punk, and Ash. Ash is chowing down on donuts. Nervously. Cookie gets up and extends out a hand, then turns it into an awkward hug. They don't really know each other like that, but Jake accepts, surprisingly eager for physical touch. Are we waiting for anybody else?

Who'd you share this with? I don't fucking know. I told Ash and Sydney, and Sidney said she just told her band, But like, I don't trust them to Hey, Mitch's cool. Yeah, sure, Mitch is cool. I'm just saying I don't trust them not to tell someone random, you know, Jesus, says the punk Jake doesn't know, looking out the cracked open employee door. What it's Zoe. She's down the street, but she's coming this way some shared glances. No one

wants to let Zoe in, Well let her in. Half an hour later, the tiny donuts store back room is swampy with seven nervous anarchists Ethan and Clue. What are we fucking doing? Sid's running and hiding. I say we make distractions, make them feel like they got the wrong folks. They're not the threat, so what they've already grabbed everyone. It's not like they're going to let them go to get us. Instead, they'll just keep them detained and then

use all their resources on the few of us. No last thing we need to do right now is remind them they didn't get all of us to what fucking end. Solidarity means attack. Look, if you think of some way to bust people out, I'm all for it, But like right now, we can't even keep ourselves safe. We bust people out, we have no way to house them. They're just rating random, totally apolitical squats. They just cleared the

last house lesson campment at the airport. Look, you can run and hide if you want, honestly, honestly I mean that. I don't judge, but I know if I was captured right now, the number one thing I'd want to see in this world would be cop cars on fire in the county jail parking Lite. The meeting ends a couple hours later. They have sorted into two groups and a lone individual. One group will focus on risky active strikes. The other group will try to build an underground capable

of keeping people safe. Ash is going to run a clearing house email account to take submissions and push out notifications only people within the signed network of gpgkeys. If they shut down her email, she'll just pivot to a different one using the same keys and sending to the same recipients. They can't shut down email wholesale, too much of capitalism runs on it. She'll try to maintain a public counter info site for certain announcements marked to be public,

but no promises. Two of the punks present are going to be showed how to use GPG. Jake and Ethan head out into the night. Ethan's got a van they can sleep in. Kat said that Vera could stay as long as she needed, but they've never actually lived together before, and as the weeks go by, little frictions keep coming up. Vera forgot she sided with the bandmate of Cat's old boyfriend that one time, but Cat hasn't. Cat doesn't approve of the lengthy showers Vera takes. Vera had no idea

that Cat was such a morning person. Normally these would be nothing, but the isolation in background stress is taking a toll. Vera feels like it's hard to keep her head together, hard to be her. Without the reference points of her normal life, she feels unmoored and frazzled, always a step behind saying things she would have thought through more. Cat doesn't have a Netflix account, and Vera has nothing to do all day but pace around Cat's basement and

read Cat's books. Cat doesn't use the internet much, and Vera's trying not to suddenly flood Cat's router with a ton of activity. Every morning around the time Cat said she sometimes checks her work email, Vera takes the new laptop Cat bought for her and connects to the internet. In so far as the raids are getting attention, it seems to be mostly because some prominent journalists got detained too.

It joins the background shrieking about journalists' rights being under attack, but the news outlets mostly just want to use that narrative to bolster their subscriptions. With social media effectively gone, there's little coverage of the massed attentions of anarchists, save some conservatives chortling that it was about time and see the old establishment was deliberately choosing not to fight terrorism the whole time. She's careful to build a profile of

Internet activity that doesn't match her prior use. She chooses different websites for news, even to check weather reports. She doesn't want to deviate too far from Kat's previous activity. If Kat used bing for searching about mushroom harvests, so will she. If Kat didn't use an ad blocker, she won't add one. The goal is to slowly build up Cat's Internet usage so she can use it more frequently. While stuck at home, She holds herself back from checking

radical websites. In the last three weeks, Vera has almost never left Cat's house. One afternoon, there was an unusual car parked all day within view of the front door. Even Kat was convinced it was sketchy. Cat's home cooking is very cumin and vegetables oriented, but she picks up the Thai food Vera loves a couple times with cash, not card Vera is hesitant about booting Tails off the USB she had on hand and connecting on the home

network because she's worried that will draw attention. Instead, she gets Kat to go to a nearby cafe during the day and write down the Wi Fi password. Then in the middle of the night, she goes out with Cat's crusty old laptop, sits behind the cafe's dumpster, boots Tails

and connects to the open inner. A lot of anarchist's websites are gone, and the foreign ones are thin on substantive reportbacks, meaningful news, or how two guides are overshadowed by essays that triumphantly advocate one or another grotesque alliance and declare the time of principles to be over. This provokes, in turn, angry evocative screeds that fetishize death to survive as a betrayal of our fallen says one. It's our duty to die beautifully together. Someone else is aggressively promoting

a Patreon in her back up email account. There's an encrypted message to her, signed by her old comrade, Matthew. He survived the raids that got every other anarchist in their town and has taken formal sanctuary in the basement of a Quaker house. The cops seem to know he's there, though, or at least suspect it. They keep a squad car parked out front at all hours and have followed the two old Quakers who come and go. He's heard from a friend who escaped the raids in another city and

has been riding the rail. Matthew has a normy friend, a former movement lawyer who has fallen off the radar doing corporate work for a decade, but who he is certain would put his other friend up. It's just that he's got no way to contact him. He has another friend who made it down across the southern border but is penniless. Needs a money transfer to get an apartment and look for a job. It could be cryptocurrency, even a mailed check. Is it possible to get an anonymous

money transfer? When Kat gets home, Vera is ready with questions. In the middle of the night, Julie and Maggie have to leave the farm. They drive out with six of their friends lying flat in the back of their truck, supplies and blankets packed on top of them. Every time they swerve around a bend on a back road and see headlights. They flinch, waiting to see if it is the cops or the local militia who promised to kill

all of them. The sudden collapse of two major cities from back to back environmental disasters has killed but it has also resulted in the establishment of an immense internal refugee camp in the South. The rumor is that the authorities can't demand id because so many people have lost theirs. There are enough white people in the vast camp, with enough friends and family outside that it looks unlikely they

will be purged like so many immigrants had been. If they just keep their stories straight and avoid speaking with an accent, they should be safer there than at the farm where they have lived for the last year. The roads are too chaotic, the internal border checkpoints too overwhelmed. The eight of them make it south intact. They buy taco bell and doughnuts along the way. When they get to the camp, the armed guards shake them down, pilfering whatever they think might be of value from the shoddy

posters everywhere. They quickly discover that there are out leftists in the sprawling camp, the kind that want to be an armed gang and won't countenance any organizing that isn't under their umbrella. Every few weeks one of the men's up dead, and it's rarely from the guards or conservatives. The better relief organizations are all fatigued and finn on resources. They keep getting squeezed out by Christian groups and political

organizations looking to gain contracts or legitimacy. It's unclear to what extent this is the ruler's accolytes cannibalizing a federal project in an orgy of corruption, and to what extent the powers that be here deliberately inflicting pressure on the refugees. Buses with corporate branding on the sides promise quick work contracts to those in the camps. People come back bone weary, but they do come back through the security cordons and fencing that surrounds the camp. The ruler brags at this

program is finally providing jobs for real citizens. It's said that Amazon is restructuring its national supply chain to center around the concentrated, cheap labor that the refugee camp provides. Julie and Maggie keep their head heads down, forming a tight circle with their friends from the farm. When administrators try to split them up into separate tracts of tin sheds,

they find a way to meet up again. When the guards took their jewelry and cash, they left them with their bulk filtration system, chemical water purifying tabs, and beaten laptop. These turn out to be worth more than gems within the camp. Being able to purify gallons of water every

day makes their crew self sufficient. What remains of the Internet and the rest of the nation isn't much to speak of, but there's almost nothing in the camp besides a single app that takes over your phone, charges you dearly, and pronounces news headlines from a single source. Julie and Maggie ignore phones entirely, sticking to Maggie's Cassio watch in their laptop. They disable the Wi Fi on it and

pretend it is just for showing pirated shows. Electrical power is available in the camp for a hefty charge, but folks rig up DIY tin can and magnet turbines in the river that can recharge batteries if you wait long enough. Once you're in camp, you can't leave, but smugglers promise to get letters or even packages to and from the outside world. Rumor has it that many of them steal whatever you entrust to them and turn anything incriminating over

to the cops for rewards. Julie and Maggie have signed GPG keys with everyone they lived with at the farm, and those who didn't flee with them to the camps are now vital relays to a wider network. The uncle of the three girls they saved has left the adjoining farm to join up with the family further east. His white father's name and address is above suspicion. So far, they operate a rudimentary onion network mailing USB's out with the smugglers. First they encrypt a message to the final recipient.

Then they encrypt that encrypted message plus a note about how to relay it to them to a friend like the uncle. This encrypted file they hide is a malformed gift among other memes and similar drunk of the sort that has passed around the internal refugee camp. If the smugglers or anyone else inspect the USB on its way to the uncle, they just see some memes in a broken gift. It's crude and not every message makes it,

but enough do. Soon enough, Julie and Maggie are writing reports on the camps that are getting to anarchist journalists and infosites in other countries. One of the companies that oversees the camp's most hated enforcement drones, gets its supply lines attacked in the Mediterranean. The CTO is assassinated at a gala. When news reaches the camp, even conservative Grannis, who are always on about racist conspiracy theories, are suddenly

praising those anarchists. A communicate from distant Comrades makes its way back through the laborious series of USB exchange solidity. It reads means attack, dun, dun, dunn. But you know what doesn't mean attack, but instead means shifting to advertisements. It's when I shift to advertisements like now.

you could do this. I was thinking of a story though, So during the Edward Snowden links he was trying to get his stuff out to journalist and Glenn Greenwald now has gone off the deep end, but back then he was a person to talk to about these sorts of things. And Edward Snowden and a researcher from the EFF both tried to get Glenn Greenwald to understand GPG and they

couldn't do it. So I think that there's like, you know, and these both very technical people and they're like, okay, we're going to teach this journalists how to eat GPG. They couldn't do it. So I'm very impressed in this section of like how much they're like, oh yeah, we're going to teach these two punks GPG in an evening, and like maybe you can do that. But again, like you as you interrupted yourself in the piece, this stuff is complicated and it's complicated to get right and maintain.

Like I think that's also it's like you do it and you're like, okay, it's done, and then you don't think you have to think about it, but then you lose your key, or you lose your private key, and then everything's borked, or you sign somebody's key and they change keys or something like. It's just it. It's very complicated, and like this piece tries to break it down, and I appreciate that, but I would really like to see

sort of like a broken down guide. And I think that at the end of this piece they go into it a little bit and I didn't go through that, but I want to challenge, you know, people who aren't really familiar with this stuff on a day to day basis, go through that tutorial and see how easy it is, because I don't know if you would make it through the first first pass. Yeah, I know, what were your thoughts.

And they talk about not everything getting through and things like that, and I think I think having signed gpgkeys with your friends in affinity group and stuff like that makes a certain amount of sense. I think that there's a use case that actually is kind of interesting about GPG, about how you can use it in these other apps. Right, Oh, I don't trust this other thing that people are doing,

so I'm going to you know, use this thing. But I also I think that it presumes like a complete omniscient state actor.

my touchdown is more history reading than anything else. Right, because of my other podcasts, they should listen to cool people did cool stuff. And one of the things that I feel like comes up is that shit gets done when people trust people more than they think they should. Yeah, and this idea of like only trusting the most secure and I'm not even saying the author is saying this, but like this like level of like only the most

secure thing. Like, look, if you are planning certain kinds of stuff, which spoiler they start planning in this story, maybe that's the kind of thing you are planning with like absolute complete opsee right, But like this getting news in and out stuff, it might not need to be so complicated, like I would suspect a more likely way is that it is clear text and it comes with a bribe, you know. Like, Yeah, I don't know. I find the GPG USB thing really interesting and I think

it's like an interesting framework. But I also think that like where's mesh networking in this where is well, I guess radio is going to come up in a little bit, but like mesh networking seems more interesting to me, right, Yeah, I don't know.

as long as you're keeping the key together. And again I guess it's you know, you don't get the advantage of a public and private key, but you still get

some security. And I do think that like there may be a technique though for this of like getting out of information is maybe you want it as public as possible sometimes because it sounds like in this world they're in a space where it's like it's a media blackout almost and it's like maybe it's a sticker you put on every single package or something that's going out of a particular place, or like my mind went to also HF radio, which is with a very little wattage, you

can get across the world a message and then you could at least get it out. Yes, there is ways to triangulate a radio station if it was broadcasting all the time, but I think that that would come up

as well. So yeah, there's something to be said with like this is a little bit of like you using technical terminology, but like having a data classification standard for the types of messaging you're saying, so like you know, like you got to consider like what's public information versus private information essentially, So it's like, you know, you don't want to put your social security number out there or your name and address, but like information and news maybe

as something that's a different data classification standard and can be like, oh, okay, these are the precautions that I'm going to take at these different levels of the who needs to know?

like understanding threat models at different levels. I think that like sometimes you're like, oh, I just kind of need to make sure the algorithm doesn't catch like I don't trigger any like flags of like an AI that's snooping on me and looking for algorithm like looking for changes in behavior or something like that.

And this is one of the reasons that TAILS has a standard window size that it does not change, like it always gives a certain resolution, so it's the exactly the same So anybody using TAILS shows up in exactly the same way, because there are like you give up when you go to a website, your device gives like the the browser, you know, the version number, and like you have cookies in your browser that tell different information. And then also it's like things like they can determine

different people based on like they're your screen size. Yeah, and so I did appreciate it that part, and its like she understood this threat model, like Okay, these are the different ways that like things can be tracked, and I'm just going to use it exactly like this person,

so it doesn't look like anybody else. I think that's there are more technical ways to implement that, and I think TAILS does that, of course, But thinking about that, I think is a good idea, especially if you and again I don't think it's saying this in the piece, but I think we're supposed to be expecting that, like, yes, we're in a very heightened monitoring state, which maybe we don't exist in today, but like I know, like Chinese Internet,

for example, is more heavily monitored than United States Internet, at least at an explicit level.

the easiest way to interact with police. I can't think of a hitch hiking trip I went on where I didn't end up searched or at least stopped and had my ID run, you know, And that's without living in like fascist dystopia. Look for the anarchist land and riding trains is a really good way to go to jail in the modern world. I've read a lot of fiction

where people are like, we gotta go off grid. I know, let's ride the rails, and everyone's like yeah, And I'm like, there isn't a good easy way to get around without drawing attention to yourself or being surveilled like bicycles or you know, draw some attention to yourself anyway.

shooting war, they'd be shooting at me. Yeah, you know, not that they are currently that that's currently what's happening, But if there was one, they'd be shooting at me. I'm like, okay, well it's the enemy, you know. Yeah, And if they're not that, then it's not ignore the conflict.

emerged from the burning ruins. Every night, we are still alive to cherish this as a gift, they tell each other. It makes freezing on a punctured air mattress and throwing centipedes out of their bedding a little more tolerable. Before they had escaped the city in their increasingly suspect van, stencils had started appearing of the dying Mare's face on the newsreel. Printed underneath was no pity. Food is a problem.

Though they rapidly pick the surrounding valleys clean of dandelions, miners, lettuce, chickweed, and blackberries. After they almost get caught rating a dumpster for something with calories in it, they realize they need a better system. Once a month they make their way through the forest to the outer suburbs of the city. Cookie leaves two plastic bags of food and stove gas canisters for them to pick up in a forested nook

just outside an army graveyard. Peanut butter, chocolate, granola, olive oil, instant rice chili. Sometimes there's also a book or a board game. There's never any tea for Ethan, though it's impossible to get hormones for anyone these days. Back at the buried van, they carefully ration their laptop use, laboriously rebuilding battery charge from a damaged solar panel. They hook up to the Baufang radio at specific times. With email effectively banned, Ash is now running communication bursts in the

region via radio. About once a week. She bikes out to random locations around the edge of the city and fires off a blast of noise over ham radio before taking off. A few drones now circle the city, taking pictures triangulating her signal each time she sends it. She's in a race against time with them. This noise is encrypted, of course, and decrypted via private keys now shared by

a wider set of anarchist survivors. Each communication bursts includes the time of the next burst, though not the place. Jake and Ethan connect their radio to a program on their laptop each time, waiting to read and to crypt. Most nights, it's just news from the wider world ferried in via underground networks, warnings of systemic sweeps planned for certain neighborhoods or local highways being closed by militias. But one night it's something new. The ruler of the new

regime is coming for a photo op. They're going to drag out one of the comrades that kept alive from the original raids and execute her as the mastermind of the attack on city Hall. There will be a ton of security, but maybe not enough for six different shooters.

It's dangerous to keep connecting to the Wi Fi in the middle of the night at the same cafe, so Via rotates cafes, making sure that Kat doesn't get the Wi Fi password on the same days and doesn't bring a phone or device when she does go with tour blocked. Vera knows that every time she uses the Internet at a cafe to check sketchy websites, it's a signal to the authorities. There's a radical still running around her town.

She tries not to check sketchy websites the same nights at the same cafes where she checks the backup email account she's been using to message with Matthew. She writes most of her emails ahead of time to minimize time on the ground, no more than three minutes connected, then back into the night. The cops could catch her if they really put resources into it, but she's banking on their laziness. Then one day her emails are blocked. All

email seems to be blocked. There's new idea legislation that's gone into place. This is the last night Vera goes out to a cafe, but by that point she's already helped build a relay network across town. Every Monday, Matthew hands a USB to one of his Quaker hosts, who slips it down the side of a bench while sipping coffee in a park. Cat checks on the side of the same bench a couple hours later and brings it

home to Vera, who decrypts it. Relay points and drop spots now exist across town because Matthew's efforts to rope in the former movement lawyer have succeeded. There are now two anarchists hiding out on the lamb from other cities in his house. One lives in the attic. The other has changed her hair color, removed some piercings, added a full face of makeup, and is working a job under

the table. A month ago they helped relay the complete archives of a major anarchist collection that had supposedly been purged from a university. It went south with an anarchist backpacking a long mountain trail. Our drives with copies of

the collection are now squirreled away in various places. Another anarchist that their new network loosely knows, has set up a hidden camp on an island in the river, taking a little canoe back and forth into a national park in the wee hours once a week and getting supplies. Kat and the lawyer are finding ways to slip an extra hundred a month to him. Conservatives have been screaming about demolishing the little libraries on people's lawns because liberals

stuck a few banned books in them. They have no idea that Vera's network uses them as flags to notify couriers about drops. A pulp sci fi book with a spine turned inward placed on top of a certain little library means to surreptitiously pick up a USB from a Burger king bag and a trash can down the street. They're getting a whole system going. Vera doesn't need to

know the network beyond her immediate circles. With her pre existing GPG public keys for certain distant comrades, she can just send encrypted messages with a distant city as a public destination and wait for couriers and swaps to copy and circulate it until her recipient can decrypt it. Messages get lost, but some get through through the network. Distant strangers trade tips and tricks they have learned keeping their

local networks up. With so much of the Internet down, normies have started engaging in wider swap networks for saved files. It's almost like the libs are making their own little, really really free markets. It doesn't matter that Kat doesn't have a Netflix account, because now Vera has access to

every show once torrented by local nerds. She keeps the new laptop that accepts such USB as air gapped from everything else, even if it's not the show she'd prefer Vera can watch TV again, have something to do, knowing they can make a difference helping other anarchists as Cat and Vera in a much better mood. Their city is

a locust point in an emerging national underground railroad. That friend of Matthew south of the border that Kat sent cash to he has a job now and his apartment is packed with anarchists who have survived the dangerous trek across the border. They still have internet down there as Vera's little sneaker net devices. Folks begin to loop in around the edges, certain liberals from the pirate networks who have proven they can be trusted, at least with some things,

at least to help relay GPG messages. One of the liberals in the network finds a way to tap into the credit card reader communications network and sneak packages of information back and forth with the programmer friend in another country. When the Quaker house is raided and Matthew is summarily shot inside, it hardly breaks anyone's stride, and soon enough the network of safe houses and dead drop couriers is so well established that a subsection of it can risk moving.

Not just people and money, but guns. Julie holds the wound closed while Maggie applies the glue, a contraband gift slipped into the camp via their smuggler friends. The fallen striker is cursing up a storm, but at least he's not fainting. Where's that blasted Red Cross worker? The crowd around them isn't howling or chanting. They're just jumping up and down in waves, a tactics somehow revived from decades

ago in apartheid South Africa. It makes the earth seem to shiver and shift, an avalanche of people, a force of nature. The usually sandy ground of the camp is already muddy with the reins of the flash flood. All the jumping makes it squelch in a way that adds up to something like the roar of the ocean.

cassio watch is beeping with some irrelevant reminder. Their mud soaked dog is jumping excitedly too, deciding the vast crowd is playing a game with her. Maybe the three of them will survive this too. If that video of the ruler's photo op that was smuggled in is to be believed, anything is possible. Dun dun dune. And also it is worth pointing out that crime Think has attended a specific note the publishers endorse Signal as the most secure, widely

used option for encrypted messaging. But yeah, all right, the fourth and final chapter.

send in that way that they're describing. But if there was a sort of a network of it sounds like they're just talking about two individuals, which I was doing a little bit of research, and it looks like if you have two people holding a radio at like head height that are they're both like about six feet tall, you get about six miles of distance. So that's your area of communication. Now, if you're on top a mountain. I've known people to get like, you know, halfway across

the state through a handheld radio. It's kind of pretty amazing. So you'd have to put that into account as well. And so maybe these people are relatively close by, and then they're using some technology that doesn't exist yet to communicate crypted messages.

maybe like businesses maybe would be exempt. But I that one was a little bit like I just feel like there's so much commerce that up and see a email. I don't know.

It seems like if they can block the tour network, they could probably block sketchy websites from other countries.

or whatever implied until you get to this part. You know, Yeah, and now you have liberals who are like part of the dead drop system, and you have like in Quakers. Yeah, that's true, and like it almost makes sense. This most hopeful section is when they stop only talking to other anarchists and like start working with a broader coalition of people. Yeah, and I really like that the one of the main

references points that they use at the underground Railroad. I actually think that when it comes to this country, we have an incredibly rich history in this country of what resistance to a system that's even worse than what's presented. And this story is like the like genocide, slave nightmare, country that this country was slash is built upon, you know,

and like the underground Railroad wasn't. I mean, yeah, I had a disproportionate number of Quakers, right, but they weren't like, yeah, hey, you better be Quaker or the following type of abolitionist in order to be part of this. You know, there was a lot of trust, and there was a lot of like just being like, well, we're going to do it's right, you know, and like finding people who are going to do it's right. And so I think the underground railroad is a really brilliant touch point.

and often because of this upswell of social movements. Yeah, and especially when the social movements are not afraid of being down with the people who are also doing violence, like for that cause, you know. And I haven't done as much reading about the resistance apartheid South Africa as I would like to, but everything I've read about it, you have groups that are working both above ground and underground, and like, yeah, and you're pulling in political pressure from elsewhere.

And a lot of the Latin American dictatorships that I've read about have fallen in similar ways, you know, where like combination social movement. But then like the people kind of keeping the flame alive are often the people who are burning things down, you know.

this is not quite my threat model. And I'm more concerned about things going very badly than most of the people I know, to be honest, But this is not quite my threat model. But I think it is absolutely worth thinking about a lot of possibilities and thinking about like how we prepare. And I really appreciate this piece is like attempt at just breaking down like I don't know, here's an idea of how to do some technological stuff, and like, I think there's a lot of good ideas

in it. And hopefully it never comes to any of that, but you know, we'll see.

I'm familiar with that. I know what's going on. Or try to send your b rend a message. I don't know, but yeah, I think if we constantly are sort of I guess it is a form of play. If you know, we're we're playing around with these technologies, we're trying to see what works and what doesn't. And you know, in low stake situations where we're just sending each other cat memes, we can maybe figure out how to do things when it does matter.

but I have a fair number of Anyway. Yep, that's it for cools on Media book Club, and next week I will probably get back to my book. The barrel will send what it may unless something like this comes up and then it gets interrupted again, but who knows. Talk to you all soon.