Can We Avoid Government Surveillance By Leaving The Grid? (counterpunch.org) 264
Slashdot reader Nicola Hahn writes: While reporters clamor about the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, NSA whistleblower James Bamford offers an important reminder: American intelligence has been actively breaching email servers in foreign countries like Mexico and Germany for years. According to Bamford documents leaked by former NSA specialist Ed Snowden show that the agency is intent on "tracking virtually everyone connected to the Internet." This includes American citizens. So it might not be surprising that another NSA whistleblower, William Binney, has suggested that certain elements within the American intelligence community may actually be responsible for the DNC hack.
This raises an interesting question: facing down an intelligence service that is in a class by itself, what can the average person do? One researcher responds to this question using an approach that borrows a [strategy] from the movie THX 1138: "The T-H-X account is six percent over budget. The case is to be terminated."
To avoid surveillance, the article suggests "get off the grid entirely... Find alternate channels of communication, places where the coveted home-field advantage doesn't exist... this is about making surveillance expensive." The article also suggests "old school" technologies, for example a quick wireless ad-hoc network in a crowded food court. Any thoughts?
This raises an interesting question: facing down an intelligence service that is in a class by itself, what can the average person do? One researcher responds to this question using an approach that borrows a [strategy] from the movie THX 1138: "The T-H-X account is six percent over budget. The case is to be terminated."
To avoid surveillance, the article suggests "get off the grid entirely... Find alternate channels of communication, places where the coveted home-field advantage doesn't exist... this is about making surveillance expensive." The article also suggests "old school" technologies, for example a quick wireless ad-hoc network in a crowded food court. Any thoughts?
somewhere... (Score:3)
a neckbeard with a handle like KE5ISQ is smugly stroking said neckbeard.
RTFA this time (Score:3)
Here's a sample:
"Just remember that the collective mood of society will change as the climate gets warmer and factions of billionaires compete over dwindling resources. The unenlightened self-interest of the global elite will compel the misery index ever upwards in their never-ending quest for economic efficiencies and infinite growth. Itâ(TM)s not a matter of âoeifâ an uprising will occur but rather âoewhen.â Ultimately people will mobilize as a matter of survival. And so your humble narrator, as he watches the baleful telescreens multiply, leaves this guidebook for future activists. Here are some tools. Get out there and use them. Good luck."
This guy belongs on Above Top Secret. Go off the grid? Riiiiight. I'm sure everyone will get right to it. Take an axe so you can chop your own firewood, too.
Re:RTFA this time (Score:4, Insightful)
Chopping your own wood is a valuable skill - as is accessing safe drinking water when the electricity cuts out. Not saying that people should live this way daily, but keeping the skills available is actually a good thing. If you haven't chopped wood in 20 years, then suddenly need to do so, you might find that there's more to it than finding and swinging an axe.
Re:RTFA this time (Score:4, Interesting)
If you haven't chopped wood in 20 years, then suddenly need to do so, you might find that there's more to it than finding and swinging an axe.
Umm... no. That really is all there is to it. Your muscles may need a few weeks to build back up if you haven't been exercising them, but chopping wood with an axe isn't a hotbed of technological innovation. It's pretty much worked the same way since the stone age, even though the tools have gotten a bit better.
Re: (Score:2)
Your muscles may need a few weeks to build back up if you haven't been exercising them, but chopping wood with an axe isn't a hotbed of technological innovation.
Your hands will blister long before your muscles get sore. Get a nice pair of leather work gloves, and get them NOW. When civilization goes to shit, it will happen much faster than you think, and you won't be able to rush to Walmart and buy what you need. The shelves will already be empty. Try to be like The Little Red Hen [enchantedlearning.com], and plan ahead.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:RTFA this time (Score:5, Insightful)
No, but having the axe will. Not as much as having an AK-74, a SSG 82 and a few hundred 5.45Ã--39mm rounds.
But you know what? Actually living in a close knit community with nearby farming land and no large cities nearby is even better... And yet, somehow, I have no desire to leave Southern California which is a death trap if civilization goes to shit, for South Carolina, where I own property in an area which is perfect for survival (and where my firearms and bows are stored, since my wife does not want them around our infant daughter. When she is ten or so, we will have that conversation again, though)
I'm afraid that I will be like most other people here - my head firmly in the sand until it is too late to do anything about anything.
Re: (Score:2)
I laugh when I see preppers with their automatic weapons. Where do they think they're going to get the ammo for those when they run out?
If you really expect civilization to go to hell, use arrows.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You're thinking short term. Fine for things like hurricane recovery or a bit of civil unrest, but not for world went to hell. How many YEARS worth of ammo can you squirrel away?
Re: (Score:3)
Re:RTFA this time (Score:4, Informative)
So you expect to never need to hunt for food? To not need more than a single 22 round to kill an intruder (or food)?
It's giggle time!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You propose that you will aim a .22 for the EYE at any significant distance and not go through a few dozen boxes of ammo in short order! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
As for deer, I see them often enough in my back yard. Once the people who are lost if the nuker and electric can-opener don't work are gone, the deer will multiply significantly.
Again, you're thinking short term. What do you expect to be doing in 10 years? 20? Remember, we're not talking civil unrest or natural disaster, civilization went to hell.
A
Re: (Score:2)
Let's say you are 12, because you act like it. Then, let's (wrongly) assume life expectancy doesn't change after an apocalypse. So that's 67 years, or about 25,000 days. So if you average 1 shot per day, that's 25k bullets/arrows. If you average 10 shots per day, that's 250k. Your arrows are less lethal than the
Re:RTFA this time (Score:4, Insightful)
You missed the obvious. You can pull an arrow out of your dead target and use it again. It also doesn't instantly telegraph your location to everyone in the area. Your idea of one shot one kill under adverse conditions with a 22 is ludicrous.
I assume you think I'm 12 because I made you feel stupid and you have to take it out on someone in your mind. Sorry I deflated your internet tough guy routine with facts. You were the one chest thumping about piling up rotting corpses everywhere. You'll be needing more than 10 shots a day if that's your plan.
I'm not a prepper either. I do know how to shoot gun and bow. I know someone who was shot by a .22 and didn't realize it until he sobered up. He got better without going to a doctor. Admittedly, he was hit in his leg, not gutshot, but it does suggest limited stopping power. An arrow would have impeded his movement enough to notice.
Re: (Score:2)
Food... intruders? Potato, pahtahdo...
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
You can pull an arrow out of your dead target and use it again.
Yes, you could, how many times will it work? Twice? Ten times? Once, for fun, I shot at a tree. 0% of the arrows were re-usable after that.
Sorry I deflated your internet tough guy routine with facts.
Yeah, your magic indestructible arrows, and 10,000 people per day lining up to break in, but they wait orderly in a line so you can shoot them all, one at a time, and take your magic arrow out and re-use it for the next.
My simple point is that:
1) you underestimate the amount of ammunition hoarded by the preppers.
2) Your magic arrow solution is much more stupid than
Re: (Score:2)
That pile of rotting corpses would serve as more than that. It's a distinct health hazard and good luck getting someone to come in and treat you when you live like like that.
If you have to kill 10 people a day, you're seriously besieged. Any normal war would mean that probably 100 people would actually be trying to take you out if you were managing a 10-person kill ratio. And if there really are 10 people trying per day, it's virtual certainty that they'll start ganging up. How many can you take out at once
Re: (Score:2)
You can also put five arrows in a deer and have it run off with all your arrows, or have the arrows snap on impact. Arrows also have significantly less range and a much higher skill requirement. Crossbow bolts probably would be better, though the crossbow may not last forever.
Re: (Score:2)
All the more reason that subset of preppers wanting more automatic weapons than they have people and such are laughable. Nothing says "I'm going to be a problem for you if I'm not taken out" like being holed up somewhere with weapons mostly suited to killing people.
Bow and arrows, perhaps a hunting rifle, etc suggests someone who won't be a dead weight and willing to be part of a community.
Re: (Score:2)
I laugh when I see preppers with their automatic weapons. Where do they think they're going to get the ammo for those when they run out?
A lot of preppers also have reloading kits.
Re: (Score:2)
Reloading requires supplies. Primers and powder for example. Hard to make out in the woods.
Re: (Score:2)
In a real zombie apocalypse scenario, nothing will leave you undisturbed except living well into the mountains. It's a PITA to get there at the best of times, and a lot of people are going to drop trees across roads if things get super sketchy. Anything on flat ground is going to be overrun.
Re:RTFA this time (Score:4, Interesting)
Depends on how much "to shit" you are preparing for. Hurricanes happen, and that can result in anywhere from a couple of days to a few months of "camping in your own home" afterwards. I doubt we'll all be hunting Pokemon one day and playing Mad Max in real life the next, it's probably going to be a bunch of little shocks that bring civilization down, bit by bit. And, the less civilization we've got, the longer it will take to recover from disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, floods, guys at the electrical sub-station screwing up and blowing the grid, etc.
Re: (Score:3)
I'd wager that your preparation might need to be a little more than that.
I have prepared more than just the gloves. Specifically:
In my pockets:
wallet
cellphone (can also serve as a flashlight)
fine tip sharpie pen
on keychain:
64GB USB thumb drive
Re: (Score:3)
Might want a rooster if you want chicken and eggs in the long term.
Re: (Score:2)
Might want a rooster if you want chicken and eggs in the long term.
I live in San Jose, CA, and roosters are illegal here. Too noisy.
Re: (Score:2)
No solar panels? They are good for USB charging, even if they take a long time. Add a USB battery charger and you can keep your batteries topped up too. Eneloop are the best rechargeable cells available, they hold their charge and are extremely reliable.
A battery powered radio wouldn't go amiss either. Those foil blankets they give out at sporting events can be bought online for next to nothing, and fold down very compact.
Re: (Score:2)
7 Billion people chopping wood, well, the entire planets trees will last a few weeks, what happens next, I know, use those axes on each. Community keeps you safe now and it is the only thing that will keep you safe in the future. Fuck the axe et al, work with local people to rebuild the community, the one and only priority.
When it comes to surveillance, misinformation is always going to be the number one tool for privacy, tainting information makes it unreliable and worthless. Lying on the internet, the n
Re:RTFA this time (Score:4, Interesting)
If the last time you swung an axe you were 35, and now you're doing it at age 55, without decent sleep the night before, slightly hungry, and pre-occupied with other things while you're trying to get the wood split... it becomes a very different thing. Compound that with the risk of injury being much higher due to lack of available medical care...
If you had just split a half-dozen logs last month, you'll know better your limits of exhaustion, technique to back up the log while holding it at a good height for cutting, how much to worry/not about sharpening the axe, whether an axe is the right tool for this job or maybe a 6lb maul works better on this kind of wood, etc. etc.
The water thing I personally experienced - after a Hurricane, my uncle pulled out his old pitcher pump and screwed it onto the wellhead - easy access drinking water. Literally thousands of nearby homes had no clue how to do that, even if they had a pitcher pump, which they didn't. Most of them, given a pump and a clue of what it's for, still wouldn't have known where to find their well head, and when they did find it, would have had to obtain extra plumbing bits to get it hooked up. If they had bothered to do a little bit of post-catastrophe prep, they wouldn't have had to wait for the National Guard to arrive with water for them to drink. Of course, half these idiots didn't realize that they had 40 gallons of clean water in their heater tank, either... and with no electricity, getting word around to them about that was basically impossible.
Re: (Score:2)
Literally thousands of nearby homes had no clue how to do that, even if they had a pitcher pump, which they didn't.
My well is 160 feet deep, you insensitive clod! Nothing is coming out of there without a pump. I do have a backup generator, though.
Re: (Score:2)
These fools were sitting on a high water table, maybe 15' of head required to get it out, the wells themselves may go down to 200', but it's the final lift that counts. We have a well that's 170' deep, but all we have to do is open the valve and it flows - about 11 months of the year. We've got shallow pumps for the other month.
Re: (Score:2)
All good points - it's not just finding something that looks like an axe and starting chopping... that list of tree-felling equipment is rather long and not easy to come by during times of short supplies.
I thought I was pretty good at felling trees with my chainsaws & rope, the first 10 or so that I took down were all "easy lies" they wanted to fall where I wanted them to fall. The last big one I took down was leaning toward the house (had already dropped a major chunk of canopy during a storm and put
Re: (Score:2)
I did see recently a video in which someone drops a bowling ball on an axe, chopping the ball in half. I think I will manage to survive using that technique with wood.
Re: (Score:2)
I guess the points are:
1. did you duplicate this bowling ball / axe demonstration for yourself?
2. do you even know where to lay hands on an axe to try with?
3. have you extended this demonstration to use on wood?
4. wood that you can collect yourself (not purchased at a store?)
when you try any of these things, you'll usually find that DIY doesn't work the first try like it does on YouTube.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Listen to Joe. When I was living up in Connecticut last year, my wife wanted wood from the fireplace and I thought I could still split some logs, no problem. After a few, I decided I'd rather be watching the Patriots pre-game show and made a phone call to order firewood.
Fell asleep in the chair well before kickoff.
Re: (Score:3)
But, hey, he's first to break the news about Julian Assange's sex change:
(emphasis mine).
Re: (Score:2)
The author should take his own advice and get off the grid, then we wouldn't have to read his silly articles!
Off the grid = mall (Score:5, Insightful)
Article talks about getting off the grid and mentions ad-hoc network in a mall's food court... I think most people have a very different idea of what it means to live off the grid.
WiFi across the food court (Score:2)
The FBI busted Russian sleeper agents using the WiFi across the food-court trick.
As such, I don't think the WiFi across the food-court would help the DNC.
See the story. [independent.co.uk] There are many articles on the cell. Only a few mention the WiFi link. Quite a few debate whether the agents were actually sleeper agents.
Re: (Score:2)
Living in proverbial woods won't work (Score:2)
Telegrams? Pony express? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The problem stated in the summary was just to make surveillance more "expensive" not impossible for the spying parties. An ad hoc communication/information system that doesn't pass through, e.g Facebook/Google's servers fits the bill. A step up would be a system that doesn't use commercial ISPs, e.g. mesh networks. So there's still a world of choice before you start using your CB radios or narrow-casting using lasers.
No. What have you to hide Citizen? (Score:3, Insightful)
To start, no, you are paranoid if you think the Government is interested in you as a person. You as a person have no value. Marketers also have no interest in you as a person. The Government and Marketers are interested in your social networking. If you live off the grid, you actually draw attention to yourself in ways you might not consider.
The average person:
- Buys groceries on their credit card or perhaps a debit card with their name on it
- Has a cell phone
- Pays for internet service through that phone, or through a wireline
- Has a television or a computer, may or may not subscribe to a television service.
The paranoid individual:
- Pays cash for a used RV, doesn't insure it, takes the plates off it and drives it into the middle of the boonies, and then takes a nailfile and grinds the VIN numbers off the RV in case someone finds it.
- Buys a years worth of food, in cash, primarily canned and dehydrated MRE's, since frozen food won't be an option
- Owns no phone, no mailing address, nothing with a serial number
Which one is going to be the suspected terrorist? The one that is paying in cash but can't be located. So let's say our cash-paying friend wants to grow a garden so they stay off the grid longer. They will have to buy fertilizer. Who else buys fertilizer? Terrorists making bombs.
Where as your typical person who lives in a city might buy 1KG of fertilizer and have a patio garden, the off-the-grid paranoid guy will buy enough fertilizer to grow an acre of food. (That's roughly 1kg per square meter, or about one square yard.) Intelligence services are really interested in that guy who is buying fertilizer.
It is better to hide in plain sight. If you are up to no good, instead of covering your tracks, you obscure your tracks so that someone following them has no probable cause to investigate where they lead. To take the "food court wifi hotspot" example, you would use a public WiFi spot to communicate with other "off the grid" people by having a preshared key to hotspot that exists in a space that nobody is actively aware of. Someone with a WiFi sniffer would certainly see it, and thus would raise suspicion if it's "Gustav's Secret WiFi", but not raise any suspicion if it's just "Dairy Queen POS" or something of that nature.
Likewise if you wanted to avoid the government or marketers invading your privacy and monitoring your purchases, first of all you'd buy pre-paid credit cards with cash, and second of all you'd attach those cards to ApplePay or something similar so that the transaction record looks like a regular card.
Prepaid Debit and Credit cards is the marketers gift to terrorists and paranoid people. Withdraw cash from your bank account at one end of the city, pay with cash a prepaid card at the other end of the city, nobody will know unless the bill's serial numbers were tracked.
Which they are. If you want to avoid being tracked by all means necessary, only pay in quarters.
Re:No. What have you to hide Citizen? (Score:4, Funny)
Which they are. If you want to avoid being tracked by all means necessary, only pay in quarters.
This sentence is pure, beautiful, trollish, poetry. (Because the ridges on quarters are like barcodes.....better pay in nickels or pennies).
Re: (Score:2)
You're just talking crazy! There's no way in hell that I'm using a nail file to take the VIN off an RV. That would take forever. I would use a grinder because I've got a garden to plant.
Not possible if you want to stay connected. (Score:2)
Even the evasion tactics they discuss wouldn't really work. Optical networking that isn't easily detected is one of your only hopes.
There really isn't anything you can do and participate in society at the same time... if you are a person of interest. The question is really if you can avoid being a person of interest at all.
Why should we have to do all of that to begin with (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
The moment government invented superior weapons, like nuclear bombs, the government has been out of the control of citizens.
Third parties are afterthoughts, and even the wrong first party candidate loses support. The citizen cannot vote for change. Minor change, sure, but that barely registers.
The revolution will not be televised. It will happen so slowly that any concept if control goes out the window. There is no control, only the occasional nudge.
We can avoid the iceberg if a lot of people take over the
Re: (Score:2)
The moment government invented superior weapons, like nuclear bombs, the government has been out of the control of citizens.
I only partially agree with you. Nukes are not useful in a civil war because the point of a civil war is to gain/regain control of the country-- nukes defeat the point by destroying the resources. That's not to say that a couple cities won't be nuked if we do have another civil war, but it'll only be a handful of cases at most. The war will still be fought and won with conventional weapons in a scenario very much like Syria.
We can avoid the iceberg if a lot of people take over the wheel, or if a few start it turning at the first warning. So far, neither has happened. Not significantly.
Agreed.
Can we affect changes by going offgrid? (Score:3)
Fighting injustice is what should be done, not running away from it.
If in the fight you have to go off-grid for a while, then go off-grid. But don't run away from your government forever.
Maybe Opposite (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Different isn't probable cause, but could be a cause for more (legal) surveillance. If a crime is committed, it will quickly be possible to rule out the great majority of on-the-grid people because law enforcement will know their location and activities at the time of the crime. That could then lead law enforcement to look very carefully at off-the-grid people because they don't have an electronic alibi.
Depending on the surveillance laws in place at the time, this could be completely legal.
what are you trying to accomplish? (Score:2, Flamebait)
You can get off the grid: become a homeless bum, move to a third world country, etc. But there are obvious disadvantages associated with that. If you own a house, have a salary, drive a car, take a plane, see a doctor, own a gun, use a credit card, etc. you are being tracked. NSA surveillance is really the least of your worries. And the thing to recognize that most of that tracking has nothing to do with terrorism, but with financial regulations, taxes, mandatory insurance and retirement plans, gun control,
Re: (Score:2)
Nonsense. Unless you insist on means testing and demand a zillion measures to prevent 'cheating' (that cost more than the cheating), the whole thing can be more or less anonymous.
Re: (Score:2)
The social welfare state isn't just "welfare", it includes public health care, public education, public utilities, public retirement programs, gun control, tax breaks for desired behavior, sin taxes, financial regulation, strict income tax enforcement, etc. Those cannot be "more or less anonymous", they require government to keep t
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, if income tax is replaced by sales tax, that kills a lot of tracking. Forget the tax breaks and sin taxes. go to basic income and you can get rid of retirement programs. Gun control isn't intrinsic, it's just a common feature. It is entirely feasible for government to not even know where you live (only what P.O. box you have).
Will they actually respect privacy to that degree? Doubt it, but neither will the other choices. But that isn't INTRINSIC.
Re: (Score:2)
Sales taxes are highly regressive; one of the major tenets of progressivism and social welfare states is the reduction of inequalities, and that requires progressive income taxation.
Yes, these features are INTRINSIC for progressive welfare states because the premise of such states is that the government makes rational, science-based decisions that maximize the welfare of society and protects individuals a
Re: (Score:2)
I see you have redefined your terms to suit. If you eliminate the reasons for sales taxes to be regressive, they are no longer regressive. For example, if you don't tax staple foods and other basics and give everyone a basic income, then it need not be regressive. And, I would say at a guess most of the Libertarians I run across would rather rip out their own livers with a spoon than implement a basic income.
The government would need a great deal of information in aggregate, but not so much personally ident
Re: (Score:2)
No, you keep redefining terms to suit your argument. If you eliminate the reasons for sales taxes to be regressive, they are no longer regressive. For example, if you don't tax staple foods and other basics and give everyone a basic income, then it need not be regressive.
Sales taxes already exclude staple foods and other basics; if you restrict them any further, they turn into luxury taxes. But be that as it may, of course they are still regressive, for the simple
Re: (Score:2)
the progressive social welfare state is inextricably linked with government tracking and surveillance: government can't right the supposed wrongs in society, manage the economy, and help everybody to become healthy and smart without detailed information about what people do and want.
This is, of course, ignorant and stupid and wrong. For instance, drug testing for welfare recipients. When we do that we find out that virtually none of them can afford drugs, and that it costs vastly more to find that out than to not bother. Or, welfare in general. If you move to a minimum guaranteed income then the only fraud cases you'll have are people collecting benefits for people who are dead. It greatly simplifies the problem and makes enforcement comparatively cost-free.
building inspections, etc.
Oh, you want your house to b
Re: (Score:2)
No, what is "stupid and wrong" is that you keep confusing the "social welfare state" with the US welfare system. The term "welfare" in the "welfare state" and the "welfare system" are largely unrelated.
Great idea. (Score:2)
By all means, you should get off the grid. The sooner the better. In fact, if you could do it by Wednesday, that would be great. I'm willing to kick in a case of canned peaches to the first 50 people who get the fuck off the grid and stay off.
We've been using only "feature phones". (Score:3)
My wife and I have been using only 2G "feature phones" since we got cell service just before the turn of the millenium. (A cellphone is for use as a PHONE, darn it!.) And some "toy" bling from years ago that blinks a light when it hears them transmit. (Was interesting for looking at the schedule of their checkins with the cells, and confirming that they hadn't been activated as a room bug, which required much more air time.)
Still no guarantee. But there's less on them to be hacked, and you can always pull the battery if you don't want them to keep the net informed of your whereabouts or possibly act as a bug.
If we wanted to go cross-country without being tracked we'd have to shut 'em down. If we were serious about it we'd also use the old car that predates the serial-number-broadcasting, federally-mandated, tire pressure monitoring devices in the wheels, and avoid routes with licence-plate reading cameras.
We wouldn't do this lightly: The cellphones, in cooperation with the "Sync" entertainment center, also do the equivalent of OnStar, so we wouldn't have automatic 911 calls in a crash that rendered us unconscious. (But at least we can CHOSE to go somewhat dark - unlike those who have a real OnStar device, which has its own built in cellphone.)
But AT&T is shutting down their 2G service at the end of the year. So we'll have to buy and switch to something more recent (and no doubt more infiltrated by NSA.)
I'm considering going to an android phone running Replicant, to minimize (if not eliminate) the spyware opportunities. Not so much to keep NSA out. (I figure if they really want in they'll manage it, but they're reasonably good at not publishing what they find outside the spook community.) But more to impede other actors, such as identity thieves, industrial spies, private investigators, ....
Re: (Score:2)
If we wanted to go cross-country without being tracked we'd have to shut 'em down. If we were serious about it we'd also use the old car that predates the serial-number-broadcasting, federally-mandated, tire pressure monitoring devices in the wheels, and avoid routes with licence-plate reading cameras.
Also: Put the automatic toll collection trasponder in a metal box and avoid toll roads, lanes, and bridges (which use database-connected licence-plate-readers as a backup for toll transponders that have faile
Re: (Score:2)
I wouldn't worry too much about malicious apps, you obviously dont need to install any. ... The built in software on my BlackBerry Classic does everything I need already: read docs, email, photos, etc.
ROFL!
We're talking about going off the grid - and out of the sight of state actor surveillance. That means aftermarket apps aren't (so much) the issue. Much of the concern is spyware built into the device and the network, along with network monitoring and intervention devices (such as stingray).
Blackberry ha
Re: (Score:2)
2m ham autopatches for the win!
Re: (Score:2)
Re The cross-country part is getting interesting with random internal boarder checkpoint questions about citizenship far from any international boarder.
Face, passengers face, plates get captured on approach for long term storage by a few different agencies. New CCTV networks at a city, town level will do the same.
Avoiding "them" (Score:2)
Living off the grid means you're worthy of attn (Score:2)
It's pretty simple - living off the grid, whether as an exercise of vanity and paranoia, or because one actually has something worth hiding, makes people more worthy of surveillance.
Re: (Score:2)
Get off the grid? No. Play with the grid. (Score:4, Interesting)
It is nearly impossible to leave the grid. You will leave traces. Few and subtle ones, but you will.
There is an alternative, though. As a statistician by education, I know that there is something that is far, far more devastating than not getting much information. With little information, you can still work something out. The worst you can give me is poisoned information. Information where I cannot determine which is genuine and which is fake. This is by some margin the worst kind of situation you can put anyone in statistics (or profiling) in. Because then he really has nothing to work with. Worse, he may already have worked out a pattern or profile and doesn't even know that it doesn't fit.
How can this be pulled off? Well, it takes effort. Think of it as some kind of reverse SEO. Your goal is to get as many bogus information points to your name as possible while at the same time putting as few genuine ones in as you can. In the end, this evens out, if done right.
I would not recommend doing the old joke of buying whipped cream, condoms and doggy treats, but that's basically the direction this is going. What you do is you start a second (and third, fourth, depending on your creativity) persona. Give them hobbies and make sure you know a thing or three about those fake hobbies you're picking up. Let them go on vacation, find some pictures of the areas and tack them to your Facebook page. Express your interest in opera. Be creative, start playing an instrument for all I care. The more well rounded and believable your new persona is, the more likely it will be considered real while the few tidbits that surface about your real life would be considered false information or misplaced.
Yes, that's quite a bit of an effort. I didn't say you should do it, you asked how to escape surveillance.
Re: (Score:2)
The worst you can give me is poisoned information. Information where I cannot determine which is genuine and which is fake. This is by some margin the worst kind of situation you can put anyone in statistics (or profiling) in.
Sort of like what I managed to do to facebook at one point. It thought I was looking for a Gay Jamaican Jewish lover as for a couple of months that is all I saw ads for.
Desensitization vs been very unique (Score:2)
If the federal gov and its priva
p2p social sharing (Score:2)
Middle age efficient technique (Score:3, Interesting)
Once upon a time, the absolute kings where having a grip of iron on population and would jail anyone having sedditious thoughts.
They would spy and jail people for what they were saying regulating every printed media.
But the populations found ways: speaking their own crafted language
Langue de feu (Fire tongue), javanais for some merchants
Verlan, (play on rules of construction) for priests and litterates
Slang for the thieves (using a lot of ambiguous use of legitim words else sending IA in the wild of misiinterpretation)
dialect and patois for various religious minority (elsacian, cevenols, yiddish)
François (initial french speaking) for François Villon my favourite polemist
Cockney for the dockers in London
Now think of it: what if you learned Navajo? NSA & else may have the capacity to intercept communication, but what if the clear text message is requiring costly human interpretation or making the IA get crazy because of the apparent non sense?
If going apple and pear is going upstairs, what the automatic NLP will understand?
Re: (Score:2)
And here I was reading the title like you're talking about being in one's 40s. The whippersnappers can't figure out all the shit old people say?
Geez I hate Mondays.
Yes. (Score:2)
The city of Amsterdam has, by its own last estimate, 100000 people living in it that it has no idea of. And I don't mean the homeless: these people live in houses, pay and receive money (cash), have cellphones and children that go to school, and show up in hospitals which provide them with free healthcare (which those hospitals then have to balance against the people that /do/ pay). There are laws (and local regulations because, hey, it's Amsterdam) in place for each and every one of those aspects of their
The Grid. (Score:2)
A digital frontier. I tried to picture clusters of information as they moved through the computer. What did they look like? Ships? motorcycles? Were the circuits like freeways? I kept dreaming of a world I thought I'd never see. And then, one day...
- Kevin Flynn
my solution: (Score:2)
Being off-grid is esy. (Score:2)
Re:Drones (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
If you don't care, why do you bother posting about how much you don't care? A lot of people do care and your post's sole purpose is to say how much you don't want to participate in the conversation.
So you are saying only one side of the conversation (do care) should weigh in?
Re: Drones (Score:4, Insightful)
And on the plus side maybe they can tell me who robbed me three years ago
If they were trying to solve crimes perhaps but this mass surveillance has little to do with solving crime and a lot to do with supporting the police state that we draw ever closer to. Stasi would be proud. Keep in mind that we spend billions on perceived problems while actual mundane real problems get ignored. For example, illegal immigrants have killed far more US citizens than terrorists yet we spend many times more dollars "fighting terrorism". The illegal immigrant drunk driving deaths exceed 9/11 every year.
citation:
http://www.wnd.com/2006/11/39031/
Filthy Casual!! (Score:5, Informative)
Cover your body with tinfoil so they can't find you!
Re:Drones (Score:5, Insightful)
The real answer is to be politically active. If you are willing to put your life at such a disadvantage to live off the grid, you might as well put your effort in being politically active with the goal of creating safeguards in the system to insure our privacies are met and convince the general public that their privacy is more important than losing it for getting a marginal benefit of safety from the government enemies.
Re: (Score:3)
Being politically active is more than just trying to get people elected. But trying to convince others that they should change their minds, and as a population to change the direction.
For example in just the past generation, the growth in LBGT rights wasn't because of protests, and the political officials, but because of a brave group of people willing to show that these were normal people with normal needs and wants in life, and not sexual deviants.
It means humanizing the group, and putting there best foo
Re: (Score:2)
You need to convince me that being politically active (Voting for the right persons? Staging protests? Lobbying your representative?) is effective.
Cody Wilson proved that there's more ways to be politically active than just opening your mouth.
In other words: research ways to keep Second Amendment rights active even if the powers that be don't want citizens to have weapons. Armed citizens are free citizens.
But bottom line: civilization is a team effort. If everyone else on the team wants to go one way and you want to go another then there's absolutely nothing you can do except leave the team and hope there's another team out there that's running thi
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Only if they know where to look. If you walked to Brazil and lived in the Amazon, nobody would ever find you there.
Fuck that, too much work. I decided to get a job at an Amazon fulfillment center. Once in, I just never left. Nobody notices me, because I fit in. I'm typing this in on a cellphone I snarfed from my bin and I'm living on bottled water and energy bars. Just gotta avoid the supervisor, I think she's on to me.
Re: (Score:2)
Milton, is that you?
Re: Drones (Score:3, Funny)
Turn around and look out the window. Hi there.
Re:Horrible idea (Score:4, Interesting)
If you try to avoid being tracked, that makes them suspicious, and they'll track you even more.
Reminds me of the early days of networking and mailing lists.
My wife and I ran a mailing list on a controversial subject, from a server in our home. This was back when civilian encryption was very new and deployment uncommon. We made a point (and made it clear to our subscribers) that NO encryption was used. Reasoning was this:
- If the police decided to check the mailing list (or other communications with us) for something of interest, and it was unencrypted, they could get what they wanted with a passive tap. They'd prefer that, because if they DID find something to go after, they wouldn't tip off the target, while if they didn',t there'd be no sign they had even snooped.
- If the police decided to check and anything was encrypted, the easy way to get it would be to raid the place and seize everything that might be evidential: computers, printers, backup media, answering machine, printed paper - and smash up everything else while they were at it. They'd have found nothing - but caused lots of loss for us. And of course they'd have trashed our reputation - deliberately - both to get a warrant in the first place and to head off claims of police misconduct.
So we "ran bare", made the rule that nothing illegal, nor confessions of doing anything illegal, could be on the mailing list, and ENFORCED that rule: To the point of ejecting a number of people, and one actually shutting down the list for a week (when a participant made it clear he was about to violate the terms) and only bringing it back, reluctantly, under a new name and new terms after being petitioned by many more reasonable users.
(Eventually a law change made it, in our opinion, too much risk and work to continue, and we shut it down permanently, after advance warning and migrating our users to another list, started by some of our users more dedicated to the underlying subject. Then I was free to use an encrypted tunnel when a job, shortly after, required it.)
Re: (Score:2)
If you try to avoid being tracked, that makes them suspicious, and they'll track you even more.
^This! My plan is to hide in plain sight. Unless They (tm) have a specific reason to single me out, I'm just one of 300M Americans, lost in a big crowd.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
US swimmers robbed at gunpoint last night.
Awaiting your mea culpa.
The Brazillians just wanted to make sure that the American athletes felt right at home.
/ducks