Internet communications and being clandestine

[Fulanito]

Thanks for taking me to school.

No problem. I didnt mean to sound too direct...just writing fast n sloppy.

[Housertl]

No problem. I didnt mean to sound too direct...just writing fast n sloppy.

No way, bro...I'm a medic, not a comms guy. I can use the gear, and I can follow protocols, but I don't know a lot about the ins and outs of setting up those protocols. Those were just my uneducated guesses.

[barnetmill]

Do you think if you were a terrorism/guerrilla/insurgent suspect they would not do this?

Don't forget parking lot/other store cameras when/if you go back to a vehicle.

Hey I am not an insurgent or terrorism person and I for sure do not want to become a suspect. What I am worried about is setting up an internet profile for myself that might attract attention. If they are already on my case for some reason which is most unlikely, yes the additional surveillance that would be brought to play would make my efforts moot. Sometimes when after a serous crime has been committed and there are no real clues, an innocent person that has come to someone's attention up high can get reamed. Even if it never came to an indictment or trial, the legal costs, unpleasant interrogations, jail time, is something to avoid. To date the only terrorism in my areas some years ago was bombing of abortion clinics and killing the doctors. But it shows me that there are crazy people about and things may happen and who knows where it goes from there.

[bae]

My only comment to all this, as somebody who has a significant amount of electronic surveillance experience in apprehending people, is don't mistake your basic skills set and knowledge in this subject area for being more than they are.

As one of the guys who helped design and dig the rabbit hole, I encourage you all to listen to CWS above :-)

"You don't know what you don't know..."

[OdieWon]

My only comment to all this, as somebody who has a significant amount of electronic surveillance experience in apprehending people, is don't mistake your basic skills set and knowledge in this subject area for being more than they are.

Now we're getting to the CHEDDAR! We need to have a class on the subject! What are the possibilities?

Odie

[Dorkface]

It would take more then one class. In two 8 hour days you'd only scratch the surface. I have a few degree's and I still don't know it all lol.

[OdieWon]

OK, so how about some of those Infidel Media Books that aren't on Amazon.com and some authors and models that always have fake names (can't remember the word for that at the moment, it's getting past my bedtime) and blurry faces?

[fidalgoman]

It was in tech pubs quite a few years ago that all HP printers printed imperceptible yellow dots on each print that ID'd the printer used. As far as I know they and others still do the same. So do all internet communications AFAIK. Surveillance is ubiquitous and deep, and has been for some time. Just smile for the camera.

It's like knowing there are bears in the woods, being prepared beats fear any day. The bears are still there but you have a plan for avoiding or dealing with them if needs be. Mostly they don't care much who or what you are unless you meet a behavioral profile. I profile constantly. It started as a hobby to understand how people tick and grew from there. It's called street smarts.

Knowing what's up is half of street smarts. Knowing what to do in a given situation to CYTA is the other half. Paranoia will screw you up.

[Nick Randall]

It was in tech pubs quite a few years ago that all HP printers printed imperceptible yellow dots on each print that ID'd the printer used. As far as I know they and others still do the same. So do all internet communications AFAIK. Surveillance is ubiquitous and deep, and has been for some time. Just smile for the camera.

It's like knowing there are bears in the woods, being prepared beats fear any day. The bears are still there but you have a plan for avoiding or dealing with them if needs be. Mostly they don't care much who or what you are unless you meet a behavioral profile. I profile constantly. It started as a hobby to understand how people tick and grew from there. It's called street smarts.

Knowing what's up is half of street smarts. Knowing what to do in a given situation to CYTA is the other half. Paranoia will screw you up.

That idiot BTK killer in Kansas sent an 'anonymous' e-mail with attached Word document, in which the 'Properties" feature of the Word document showed his true name.

[BillyOblivion]

There are still plenty of ways if one uses there head lol.

If you're not a computer guy, and don't have a really, really good one on hand you're likely to fuck up something fierce.

I am a computer guy, and I work at least partially in Security. I've been doing it a long time and I've worked on a wide variety of OSs, hardware (in my lab right now we've got stuff ranging from a SGI UV1000 to a Compaq ES40. I don't know either really well as the UV is brand new (to us) and the Compaq is almost old enough to drink).

I used to hang out with a bunch of folks interested in crypto and internet privacy.

It's really, really fucking hard.

Look, most folks can't even manage to run their computer without getting the occasional virus, or getting an account compromised (I've had my antistotle@gmail account compromised, but never my personal or my professional accounts). There is no way they're going to be able to maintain good key security, different passwords on most accounts with critical accounts not sharing passwords (how do you have a husband and wife accessing critical account information w/out sharing passwords?) etc.

You probably keep stuff away from your wife, some shithead private detective, or a potential employer. You might be able to get it past the local police, but if what you are doing is going to attract the attention of TLAs, you're playing with folks who break this shit for a living.

Ask yourself this, what chance would you have in a gunfight with a SEAL? Not much, but you might get lucky, right?

Ok. A Ranger battalion? Uh huh. There hasn't been that much luck in the world since God took one of Adam's ribs and made woman.

But, if you really want to, here's how you start:

0) Do not do ANY more research before taking the next several steps:
1) Drive to the next city over, preferably on a heavy shopping day (any saturday between now and christmas is good) and find a library, or if you know where the are already a couple of stores that sell computers pick one "at random" and go buy a mid range laptop. Since you will ONLY be using this machine for one task, don't worry much about screen size (the smaller the better in this case, but get one with at least 2 GiB of ram and preferably 4.).
2) Buy a copy of Linux on DVD. Whatever variant makes you happy, but since you wont' be doing much at *this* level I'd suggest Centos or Scientific Linux if you don't have any experience with it. Debian will also work.

3) Buy 2 32GiB or larger thumb drives.

4) Get some cool stickers, the stickier the better and put them on the computer such that it would be MUCH more difficult to open it w/out you knowing. Even better if they're rare/hard to come by

5) Install Linux, doing a minimal "desktop" install. Now figure out how to set up an encrypted filesystem (Centos and Debian can do this). Do NOT encrypt your home directory, this way lies madness. Encrypt BOTH of the thumb drives.

6) Install VMware Player or Virtual Box (from Sun/Oracle). Create a Virtual Machine that lives on the (encrypted) thumb drive. From now on ALL of your communications for the identity you wish to protect goes through that VM. This identity has COMPLETELY different passwords from your other accounts. It uses different providers. It starts from day ZERO using HTTPS, SSL, PGP etc. ALL THE TIME. Nothing goes onto the wire that is not encrypted.

7) Also use the non-VM linux for stuff. Play around with it "learn" stuff on it. Teach yourself C or Python, or programming or something. Anything to have a reason to have a linux box with you, but spend VERY little time on the internet with it.

8) Here's the hard part. That USB keys never leave your control you even take them into the bathroom when you shower. If you think your laptop may have been compromised, buy another (using the above methodology) and sell your first one off RIGHT AWAY.

9) Map (somehow, there are lots of ways) all the open/free wifi spots in your area.

9) Never send or receive email on that account while at home, or at your office. Don't use webmail, use mail clients like Thunderbird or Mutt (that come with Linux) that can do "pop" (and you want to do pop mail, not IMAP in this case--the less time the mail is sitting on the mailserver the better. And yes, I know that mail can be archived by providers, but I also know how unlikely most of them are to do that without a warrant. Also you can use something like http://www.httrack.com/ to grab websites you may want to read but don't want in your regular cache. This way you can pull into range of a wifi spot, grab all your email and web reading, then drive off. If you find a powerful one and get a good external antenna for the wifi you might even get away with not stopping (Pull into McDonalds when they are busy, order a coke and and two cheese burgers with no pickles. Since this is special order it will take longer. Yeah, that should do it).

10) At this point you should be able to get Skype or some sort of VOIP up and running in the VM.

That is about the minimum I would do if I really wanted to set up a clandestine channel. Yeah, some if it's overparanoid (I'm almost certain that my current machines haven't been compromised, but it depends on the threat level.)

Thing is what are you hiding from? I mostly use this nym to keep my name from popping up in web searches saying things some potential employers may not like. I suspect there are three or four people here who have an idea of who I might be.