Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Book Club Club, book Club, book Club club Club. It's
Speaker 2: the Cool Zone Media book Club. Hello, Welcome to cools
Speaker 2: On Media book Club, the only book club where you
Speaker 2: don't have to do the reading because I do it
Speaker 2: for you. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and my guest
Speaker 2: today to talk about tech security as relates to this
Speaker 2: piece of speculative fiction is Greg Hi.
Speaker 3: Greg, Hi, Nice to see you again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nice to see you. I think we called you
Speaker 2: an anarchist technology enthusiast.
Speaker 3: I believe I'm still enthusiastic. I think that's great.
Speaker 2: I'm a like, I'm of two minds all the time
Speaker 2: about technology. I'm both very interested in it. It's like
Speaker 2: one of my hobbies since I was very young. And
Speaker 2: I also think it's bad and we should just distort
Speaker 2: throw or laptops in the ocean. That's I go back
Speaker 2: and forth about these several times a day. It's very
Speaker 2: expensive to go back and forth about it. Spent a
Speaker 2: lot of money on laptops, and the ocean probably doesn't
Speaker 2: appreciate it much. No, it really doesn't. But you know,
Speaker 2: it's like so big anything you put in there, it's
Speaker 2: just it's fine.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, Car batteries in the ocean. That's what I hear.
Speaker 2: What does that actually do.
Speaker 3: Putting a car battery in the ocean, Well, I imagine
Speaker 3: it leaks.
Speaker 2: Is it like electrify the ocean? Is there like like
Speaker 2: a mass of water at which it can no longer electrify?
Speaker 3: I think that electric eels probably take care of that
Speaker 3: enough for us. I think a single car battery is
Speaker 3: not gonna do much. I mean, you're the one who
Speaker 3: told me that you could just touch car batteries and
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, yeah you can. Oh that's right. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I like twelve olt DC electricity or even twenty four
Speaker 2: volt DC electricity in general, that's the stuff I like.
Speaker 3: I mean, DC is the is the one that Tesla of,
Speaker 3: right and Ace was the bad guy? Right? Or did
Speaker 3: I make that up so much?
Speaker 2: I think Edison and Tesla had a pissing match. And
Speaker 2: I'm going to lose all of my long lost seapunk
Speaker 2: cred that I don't remember which one was.
Speaker 3: With jikes, Well, I know that Edison electricut in an
Speaker 3: elephant and he's a nasshole.
Speaker 2: So he also filmed when sho Gosh got executed. Anyway,
Speaker 2: so we are reading from a piece called Escape put
Speaker 2: out by Crime Think, just a anarchist publishing collective, and
Speaker 2: it's a piece of speculative fiction by an anonymous author.
Speaker 2: We started with part one last week. You should really
Speaker 2: go back and listen to it. And it is based
Speaker 2: on the idea that all of anarchists and presumably a
Speaker 2: lot of other sort of political and desirables are suddenly
Speaker 2: rated and declared illegal within the United States, a reasonably
Speaker 2: near future sort of a could happen tonight kind of timeline.
Speaker 2: And I brought Greg on because this piece talks a
Speaker 2: lot about a lot of different technological solutions to various problems,
Speaker 2: and I wanted to talk through how realistic those different
Speaker 2: solutions are if there's other solutions, but not to necessarily.
Speaker 2: I like this piece because I like that people are
Speaker 2: writing pieces like this, and I think that this is
Speaker 2: a kind of conversation that we need to be having
Speaker 2: more and more. I'm actually sort of hoping I get
Speaker 2: to run more book clubs talking about kind of similar
Speaker 2: things in the near future, or I'm hoping that everything
Speaker 2: bad goes away and I'm just writing about the bad
Speaker 2: old world anyway where we last left our heroes. There's
Speaker 2: three different groups of people, and they've all gone on
Speaker 2: the run, and they're all kind of going, now what
Speaker 2: now that they've all just barely escaped. So this section chapter,
Speaker 2: as it might be called, is called communications. Jake doesn't
Speaker 2: have to trust the new app everyone's using while signals down.
Speaker 2: Long ago, everyone in his Affinity group created GPG key pairs,
Speaker 2: then verified each other's keys and signed them. They also
Speaker 2: created private back up email accounts on other platforms, only
Speaker 2: to be used in emergencies. Jake's rise up account may
Speaker 2: be down, but his GPG keys or in the encrypted
Speaker 2: folder on his cached USB, along with a list of
Speaker 2: back up email accounts of his comrades. He goes through
Speaker 2: each one, encrypting a message to that person's public key
Speaker 2: and sending it to their back up email. After a
Speaker 2: couple hours at the cafe, one of them sends a
Speaker 2: message back to him. Ethan is still free. Jake asks
Speaker 2: to know if he knows anything about Big C's supposed posts.
Speaker 2: Ethan says he'll check with someone in Bigc's crew. He's
Speaker 2: also in contact with. Ash. Ash emails back with a
Speaker 2: public key for Big C. She signs his key with
Speaker 2: her own. Ethan checks it and sees that it matches
Speaker 2: the public key for Ash that he's signed. Then he
Speaker 2: signs big C's key and sends it to Jake. Jake
Speaker 2: messages Big C on the new app everyone is using.
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna interject here. See how that's confusing Anyway,
Speaker 2: it's hard to follow, Okay, anyway, back to it. On
Speaker 2: the other hand, I end up writing meetings, so I
Speaker 2: can't really talk shit. Writing meetings into fiction is very complicated.
Speaker 2: Writing GPG into fiction is very complicated. Okay, now, Actually,
Speaker 2: back to it. Ash emails back with a public key
Speaker 2: for Big C. She signs his key with her own
Speaker 2: Ethan checks it and sees that it matches the public
Speaker 2: key for Ash that he's signed. Then he signs big
Speaker 2: C's key and sends it to Jake. Jake messages Big
Speaker 2: C on the new app everyone is using. Instead of
Speaker 2: sending anything in clear text, he encrypts a message to
Speaker 2: the key he has for Big C. He adds his
Speaker 2: own public key on that same app. In the general
Speaker 2: channel they're all using, someone's screaming that another account is
Speaker 2: a honeypot. People stop posting if they move to a
Speaker 2: different channel or a different app. They never send Jake
Speaker 2: anything about it, but that doesn't matter because Big C
Speaker 2: responds his message likewise encrypted using GPG and then pasted
Speaker 2: within this new app. Jake decrypts and checks that it
Speaker 2: was signed by the same key for Big C that
Speaker 2: his friend Ethan certify. There's a time and location back
Speaker 2: room of a donut shop a couple punks work app
Speaker 2: eleven PM. Jake spends most of the day at the cafe,
Speaker 2: trying not to attract attention, and he scarfs down some
Speaker 2: fast food and gets a bus across town to the
Speaker 2: doughnut shop. He gets off a couple stops early and
Speaker 2: circles around it on backstreets, looking for any car or
Speaker 2: person that could be staking things out. He decides to
Speaker 2: wait a little longer in an alley, but the alley
Speaker 2: isn't empty. Ethan's there, smoking a cigarette and also scoping
Speaker 2: things out. They hug, You're the first person I've seen
Speaker 2: in like two days. Man. Ethan's heard a rumor about
Speaker 2: some kind of legal defense committee being set up, but
Speaker 2: he can't stand one of the people he thinks is
Speaker 2: in it. Jake quietly regales him with the saga of
Speaker 2: his nearly new escape. They look at the doughnut shop
Speaker 2: down the street. If it's a trap, maybe only one
Speaker 2: of us should go. I'll go. If it's chill, I'll
Speaker 2: come back out and get you. Maybe they raid us
Speaker 2: only once we're all inside. Do you want to wait
Speaker 2: out here all night? Fuck man? I don't know. Jake
Speaker 2: goes in a punk he doesn't know ushers him through
Speaker 2: the employee's side door. It's just three big c usually
Speaker 2: known as Cookie, the unknown punk, and Ash. Ash is
Speaker 2: chowing down on donuts. Nervously. Cookie gets up and extends
Speaker 2: out a hand, then turns it into an awkward hug.
Speaker 2: They don't really know each other like that, but Jake accepts,
Speaker 2: surprisingly eager for physical touch. Are we waiting for anybody else?
Speaker 2: Who'd you share this with? I don't fucking know. I
Speaker 2: told Ash and Sydney, and Sidney said she just told
Speaker 2: her band, But like, I don't trust them to Hey,
Speaker 2: Mitch's cool. Yeah, sure, Mitch is cool. I'm just saying
Speaker 2: I don't trust them not to tell someone random, you know, Jesus,
Speaker 2: says the punk Jake doesn't know, looking out the cracked
Speaker 2: open employee door. What it's Zoe. She's down the street,
Speaker 2: but she's coming this way some shared glances. No one
Speaker 2: wants to let Zoe in, Well let her in. Half
Speaker 2: an hour later, the tiny donuts store back room is
Speaker 2: swampy with seven nervous anarchists Ethan and Clue. What are
Speaker 2: we fucking doing? Sid's running and hiding. I say we
Speaker 2: make distractions, make them feel like they got the wrong folks.
Speaker 2: They're not the threat, so what they've already grabbed everyone.
Speaker 2: It's not like they're going to let them go to
Speaker 2: get us. Instead, they'll just keep them detained and then
Speaker 2: use all their resources on the few of us. No
Speaker 2: last thing we need to do right now is remind
Speaker 2: them they didn't get all of us to what fucking end.
Speaker 2: Solidarity means attack. Look, if you think of some way
Speaker 2: to bust people out, I'm all for it, But like
Speaker 2: right now, we can't even keep ourselves safe. We bust
Speaker 2: people out, we have no way to house them. They're
Speaker 2: just rating random, totally apolitical squats. They just cleared the
Speaker 2: last house lesson campment at the airport. Look, you can
Speaker 2: run and hide if you want, honestly, honestly I mean that.
Speaker 2: I don't judge, but I know if I was captured
Speaker 2: right now, the number one thing I'd want to see
Speaker 2: in this world would be cop cars on fire in
Speaker 2: the county jail parking Lite. The meeting ends a couple
Speaker 2: hours later. They have sorted into two groups and a
Speaker 2: lone individual. One group will focus on risky active strikes.
Speaker 2: The other group will try to build an underground capable
Speaker 2: of keeping people safe. Ash is going to run a
Speaker 2: clearing house email account to take submissions and push out
Speaker 2: notifications only people within the signed network of gpgkeys. If
Speaker 2: they shut down her email, she'll just pivot to a
Speaker 2: different one using the same keys and sending to the
Speaker 2: same recipients. They can't shut down email wholesale, too much
Speaker 2: of capitalism runs on it. She'll try to maintain a
Speaker 2: public counter info site for certain announcements marked to be public,
Speaker 2: but no promises. Two of the punks present are going
Speaker 2: to be showed how to use GPG. Jake and Ethan
Speaker 2: head out into the night. Ethan's got a van they
Speaker 2: can sleep in. Kat said that Vera could stay as
Speaker 2: long as she needed, but they've never actually lived together before,
Speaker 2: and as the weeks go by, little frictions keep coming up.
Speaker 2: Vera forgot she sided with the bandmate of Cat's old
Speaker 2: boyfriend that one time, but Cat hasn't. Cat doesn't approve
Speaker 2: of the lengthy showers Vera takes. Vera had no idea
Speaker 2: that Cat was such a morning person. Normally these would
Speaker 2: be nothing, but the isolation in background stress is taking
Speaker 2: a toll. Vera feels like it's hard to keep her
Speaker 2: head together, hard to be her. Without the reference points
Speaker 2: of her normal life, she feels unmoored and frazzled, always
Speaker 2: a step behind saying things she would have thought through more.
Speaker 2: Cat doesn't have a Netflix account, and Vera has nothing
Speaker 2: to do all day but pace around Cat's basement and
Speaker 2: read Cat's books. Cat doesn't use the internet much, and
Speaker 2: Vera's trying not to suddenly flood Cat's router with a
Speaker 2: ton of activity. Every morning around the time Cat said
Speaker 2: she sometimes checks her work email, Vera takes the new
Speaker 2: laptop Cat bought for her and connects to the internet.
Speaker 2: In so far as the raids are getting attention, it
Speaker 2: seems to be mostly because some prominent journalists got detained too.
Speaker 2: It joins the background shrieking about journalists' rights being under attack,
Speaker 2: but the news outlets mostly just want to use that
Speaker 2: narrative to bolster their subscriptions. With social media effectively gone,
Speaker 2: there's little coverage of the massed attentions of anarchists, save
Speaker 2: some conservatives chortling that it was about time and see
Speaker 2: the old establishment was deliberately choosing not to fight terrorism
Speaker 2: the whole time. She's careful to build a profile of
Speaker 2: Internet activity that doesn't match her prior use. She chooses
Speaker 2: different websites for news, even to check weather reports. She
Speaker 2: doesn't want to deviate too far from Kat's previous activity.
Speaker 2: If Kat used bing for searching about mushroom harvests, so
Speaker 2: will she. If Kat didn't use an ad blocker, she
Speaker 2: won't add one. The goal is to slowly build up
Speaker 2: Cat's Internet usage so she can use it more frequently.
Speaker 2: While stuck at home, She holds herself back from checking
Speaker 2: radical websites. In the last three weeks, Vera has almost
Speaker 2: never left Cat's house. One afternoon, there was an unusual
Speaker 2: car parked all day within view of the front door.
Speaker 2: Even Kat was convinced it was sketchy. Cat's home cooking
Speaker 2: is very cumin and vegetables oriented, but she picks up
Speaker 2: the Thai food Vera loves a couple times with cash,
Speaker 2: not card Vera is hesitant about booting Tails off the
Speaker 2: USB she had on hand and connecting on the home
Speaker 2: network because she's worried that will draw attention. Instead, she
Speaker 2: gets Kat to go to a nearby cafe during the
Speaker 2: day and write down the Wi Fi password. Then in
Speaker 2: the middle of the night, she goes out with Cat's
Speaker 2: crusty old laptop, sits behind the cafe's dumpster, boots Tails
Speaker 2: and connects to the open inner. A lot of anarchist's
Speaker 2: websites are gone, and the foreign ones are thin on
Speaker 2: substantive reportbacks, meaningful news, or how two guides are overshadowed
Speaker 2: by essays that triumphantly advocate one or another grotesque alliance
Speaker 2: and declare the time of principles to be over. This provokes,
Speaker 2: in turn, angry evocative screeds that fetishize death to survive
Speaker 2: as a betrayal of our fallen says one. It's our
Speaker 2: duty to die beautifully together. Someone else is aggressively promoting
Speaker 2: a Patreon in her back up email account. There's an
Speaker 2: encrypted message to her, signed by her old comrade, Matthew.
Speaker 2: He survived the raids that got every other anarchist in
Speaker 2: their town and has taken formal sanctuary in the basement
Speaker 2: of a Quaker house. The cops seem to know he's there, though,
Speaker 2: or at least suspect it. They keep a squad car
Speaker 2: parked out front at all hours and have followed the
Speaker 2: two old Quakers who come and go. He's heard from
Speaker 2: a friend who escaped the raids in another city and
Speaker 2: has been riding the rail. Matthew has a normy friend,
Speaker 2: a former movement lawyer who has fallen off the radar
Speaker 2: doing corporate work for a decade, but who he is
Speaker 2: certain would put his other friend up. It's just that
Speaker 2: he's got no way to contact him. He has another
Speaker 2: friend who made it down across the southern border but
Speaker 2: is penniless. Needs a money transfer to get an apartment
Speaker 2: and look for a job. It could be cryptocurrency, even
Speaker 2: a mailed check. Is it possible to get an anonymous
Speaker 2: money transfer? When Kat gets home, Vera is ready with questions.
Speaker 2: In the middle of the night, Julie and Maggie have
Speaker 2: to leave the farm. They drive out with six of
Speaker 2: their friends lying flat in the back of their truck,
Speaker 2: supplies and blankets packed on top of them. Every time
Speaker 2: they swerve around a bend on a back road and
Speaker 2: see headlights. They flinch, waiting to see if it is
Speaker 2: the cops or the local militia who promised to kill
Speaker 2: all of them. The sudden collapse of two major cities
Speaker 2: from back to back environmental disasters has killed but it
Speaker 2: has also resulted in the establishment of an immense internal
Speaker 2: refugee camp in the South. The rumor is that the
Speaker 2: authorities can't demand id because so many people have lost theirs.
Speaker 2: There are enough white people in the vast camp, with
Speaker 2: enough friends and family outside that it looks unlikely they
Speaker 2: will be purged like so many immigrants had been. If
Speaker 2: they just keep their stories straight and avoid speaking with
Speaker 2: an accent, they should be safer there than at the
Speaker 2: farm where they have lived for the last year. The
Speaker 2: roads are too chaotic, the internal border checkpoints too overwhelmed.
Speaker 2: The eight of them make it south intact. They buy
Speaker 2: taco bell and doughnuts along the way. When they get
Speaker 2: to the camp, the armed guards shake them down, pilfering
Speaker 2: whatever they think might be of value from the shoddy
Speaker 2: posters everywhere. They quickly discover that there are out leftists
Speaker 2: in the sprawling camp, the kind that want to be
Speaker 2: an armed gang and won't countenance any organizing that isn't
Speaker 2: under their umbrella. Every few weeks one of the men's
Speaker 2: up dead, and it's rarely from the guards or conservatives.
Speaker 2: The better relief organizations are all fatigued and finn on resources.
Speaker 2: They keep getting squeezed out by Christian groups and political
Speaker 2: organizations looking to gain contracts or legitimacy. It's unclear to
Speaker 2: what extent this is the ruler's accolytes cannibalizing a federal
Speaker 2: project in an orgy of corruption, and to what extent
Speaker 2: the powers that be here deliberately inflicting pressure on the refugees.
Speaker 2: Buses with corporate branding on the sides promise quick work
Speaker 2: contracts to those in the camps. People come back bone weary,
Speaker 2: but they do come back through the security cordons and
Speaker 2: fencing that surrounds the camp. The ruler brags at this
Speaker 2: program is finally providing jobs for real citizens. It's said
Speaker 2: that Amazon is restructuring its national supply chain to center
Speaker 2: around the concentrated, cheap labor that the refugee camp provides.
Speaker 2: Julie and Maggie keep their head heads down, forming a
Speaker 2: tight circle with their friends from the farm. When administrators
Speaker 2: try to split them up into separate tracts of tin sheds,
Speaker 2: they find a way to meet up again. When the
Speaker 2: guards took their jewelry and cash, they left them with
Speaker 2: their bulk filtration system, chemical water purifying tabs, and beaten laptop.
Speaker 2: These turn out to be worth more than gems within
Speaker 2: the camp. Being able to purify gallons of water every
Speaker 2: day makes their crew self sufficient. What remains of the
Speaker 2: Internet and the rest of the nation isn't much to
Speaker 2: speak of, but there's almost nothing in the camp besides
Speaker 2: a single app that takes over your phone, charges you dearly,
Speaker 2: and pronounces news headlines from a single source. Julie and
Speaker 2: Maggie ignore phones entirely, sticking to Maggie's Cassio watch in
Speaker 2: their laptop. They disable the Wi Fi on it and
Speaker 2: pretend it is just for showing pirated shows. Electrical power
Speaker 2: is available in the camp for a hefty charge, but
Speaker 2: folks rig up DIY tin can and magnet turbines in
Speaker 2: the river that can recharge batteries if you wait long enough.
Speaker 2: Once you're in camp, you can't leave, but smugglers promise
Speaker 2: to get letters or even packages to and from the
Speaker 2: outside world. Rumor has it that many of them steal
Speaker 2: whatever you entrust to them and turn anything incriminating over
Speaker 2: to the cops for rewards. Julie and Maggie have signed
Speaker 2: GPG keys with everyone they lived with at the farm,
Speaker 2: and those who didn't flee with them to the camps
Speaker 2: are now vital relays to a wider network. The uncle
Speaker 2: of the three girls they saved has left the adjoining
Speaker 2: farm to join up with the family further east. His
Speaker 2: white father's name and address is above suspicion. So far,
Speaker 2: they operate a rudimentary onion network mailing USB's out with
Speaker 2: the smugglers. First they encrypt a message to the final recipient.
Speaker 2: Then they encrypt that encrypted message plus a note about
Speaker 2: how to relay it to them to a friend like
Speaker 2: the uncle. This encrypted file they hide is a malformed
Speaker 2: gift among other memes and similar drunk of the sort
Speaker 2: that has passed around the internal refugee camp. If the
Speaker 2: smugglers or anyone else inspect the USB on its way
Speaker 2: to the uncle, they just see some memes in a
Speaker 2: broken gift. It's crude and not every message makes it,
Speaker 2: but enough do. Soon enough, Julie and Maggie are writing
Speaker 2: reports on the camps that are getting to anarchist journalists
Speaker 2: and infosites in other countries. One of the companies that
Speaker 2: oversees the camp's most hated enforcement drones, gets its supply
Speaker 2: lines attacked in the Mediterranean. The CTO is assassinated at
Speaker 2: a gala. When news reaches the camp, even conservative Grannis,
Speaker 2: who are always on about racist conspiracy theories, are suddenly
Speaker 2: praising those anarchists. A communicate from distant Comrades makes its
Speaker 2: way back through the laborious series of USB exchange solidity.
Speaker 2: It reads means attack, dun, dun, dunn. But you know
Speaker 2: what doesn't mean attack, but instead means shifting to advertisements.
Speaker 2: It's when I shift to advertisements like now.
Speaker 1: And we're back.
Speaker 2: Okay, so that was a chapter. What's your take on
Speaker 2: their onion network of USBs.
Speaker 3: It seems complicated, honestly, it's it's a little, it's a little.
Speaker 3: So this this section starts to think get into a
Speaker 3: little bit of science fiction y, just because I don't
Speaker 3: really know what it would look like now, because it's
Speaker 3: hard for me to sort of imagine it. But yes,
Speaker 3: you could do this. I was thinking of a story though,
Speaker 3: So during the Edward Snowden links he was trying to
Speaker 3: get his stuff out to journalist and Glenn Greenwald now
Speaker 3: has gone off the deep end, but back then he
Speaker 3: was a person to talk to about these sorts of things.
Speaker 3: And Edward Snowden and a researcher from the EFF both
Speaker 3: tried to get Glenn Greenwald to understand GPG and they
Speaker 3: couldn't do it. So I think that there's like, you know,
Speaker 3: and these both very technical people and they're like, okay,
Speaker 3: we're going to teach this journalists how to eat GPG.
Speaker 3: They couldn't do it. So I'm very impressed in this
Speaker 3: section of like how much they're like, oh yeah, we're
Speaker 3: going to teach these two punks GPG in an evening,
Speaker 3: and like maybe you can do that. But again, like
Speaker 3: you as you interrupted yourself in the piece, this stuff
Speaker 3: is complicated and it's complicated to get right and maintain.
Speaker 3: Like I think that's also it's like you do it
Speaker 3: and you're like, okay, it's done, and then you don't
Speaker 3: think you have to think about it, but then you
Speaker 3: lose your key, or you lose your private key, and
Speaker 3: then everything's borked, or you sign somebody's key and they
Speaker 3: change keys or something like. It's just it. It's very complicated,
Speaker 3: and like this piece tries to break it down, and
Speaker 3: I appreciate that, but I would really like to see
Speaker 3: sort of like a broken down guide. And I think
Speaker 3: that at the end of this piece they go into
Speaker 3: it a little bit and I didn't go through that,
Speaker 3: but I want to challenge, you know, people who aren't
Speaker 3: really familiar with this stuff on a day to day basis,
Speaker 3: go through that tutorial and see how easy it is,
Speaker 3: because I don't know if you would make it through
Speaker 3: the first first pass. Yeah, I know, what were your thoughts.
Speaker 2: I think that it's actually the kind of thing that's
Speaker 2: a little bit easier with someone teaching you than reading
Speaker 2: things on the internet about it. Yeah, which is sort
Speaker 2: of ironic considering kind of what it's about. I can
Speaker 2: imagine this kind of working. But I think that the
Speaker 2: like lost nodes, like over all the Internet wants to
Speaker 2: reroute around damage, right, Yeah, this system doesn't seem like
Speaker 2: the way I understand. It doesn't seem like it can
Speaker 2: really reroute around damage, and so it just has damage.
Speaker 2: And they talk about not everything getting through and things
Speaker 2: like that, and I think I think having signed gpgkeys
Speaker 2: with your friends in affinity group and stuff like that
Speaker 2: makes a certain amount of sense. I think that there's
Speaker 2: a use case that actually is kind of interesting about GPG,
Speaker 2: about how you can use it in these other apps. Right, Oh,
Speaker 2: I don't trust this other thing that people are doing,
Speaker 2: so I'm going to you know, use this thing. But
Speaker 2: I also I think that it presumes like a complete
Speaker 2: omniscient state actor.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Actually, one of the things that I was thinking about
Speaker 2: with this piece is like, you know, they're talking about
Speaker 2: like being nervous, meeting up in the donut shop and
Speaker 2: things like that, right, And that makes sense. I would
Speaker 2: be too. I would be incredibly nervous. This sounds like
Speaker 2: the most terrifying thing that anyone could have to well,
Speaker 2: among the most terrifying things that people could have to
Speaker 2: go through. But I also think that I don't know,
Speaker 2: my touchdown is more history reading than anything else. Right,
Speaker 2: because of my other podcasts, they should listen to cool
Speaker 2: people did cool stuff. And one of the things that
Speaker 2: I feel like comes up is that shit gets done
Speaker 2: when people trust people more than they think they should. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and this idea of like only trusting the most secure
Speaker 2: and I'm not even saying the author is saying this,
Speaker 2: but like this like level of like only the most
Speaker 2: secure thing. Like, look, if you are planning certain kinds
Speaker 2: of stuff, which spoiler they start planning in this story,
Speaker 2: maybe that's the kind of thing you are planning with
Speaker 2: like absolute complete opsee right, But like this getting news
Speaker 2: in and out stuff, it might not need to be
Speaker 2: so complicated, like I would suspect a more likely way
Speaker 2: is that it is clear text and it comes with
Speaker 2: a bribe, you know. Like, Yeah, I don't know. I
Speaker 2: find the GPG USB thing really interesting and I think
Speaker 2: it's like an interesting framework. But I also think that
Speaker 2: like where's mesh networking in this where is well, I
Speaker 2: guess radio is going to come up in a little bit,
Speaker 2: but like mesh networking seems more interesting to me, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think mesh networking solves a little bit different of
Speaker 3: a problem of more of just like being able to
Speaker 3: put together sort of a quick ad hoc network. But
Speaker 3: I agree with you, and I also think like I
Speaker 3: was talking to a friend about this piece and they
Speaker 3: were like, oh, I would just use a one time pad.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to go into the details at one
Speaker 3: time pad but yeah, but like one time pads are
Speaker 3: a little bit more simpler, but still offer unbreakable encryption
Speaker 3: as long as you're keeping the key together. And again
Speaker 3: I guess it's you know, you don't get the advantage
Speaker 3: of a public and private key, but you still get
Speaker 3: some security. And I do think that like there may
Speaker 3: be a technique though for this of like getting out
Speaker 3: of information is maybe you want it as public as
Speaker 3: possible sometimes because it sounds like in this world they're
Speaker 3: in a space where it's like it's a media blackout
Speaker 3: almost and it's like maybe it's a sticker you put
Speaker 3: on every single package or something that's going out of
Speaker 3: a particular place, or like my mind went to also
Speaker 3: HF radio, which is with a very little wattage, you
Speaker 3: can get across the world a message and then you
Speaker 3: could at least get it out. Yes, there is ways
Speaker 3: to triangulate a radio station if it was broadcasting all
Speaker 3: the time, but I think that that would come up
Speaker 3: as well. So yeah, there's something to be said with
Speaker 3: like this is a little bit of like you using
Speaker 3: technical terminology, but like having a data classification standard for
Speaker 3: the types of messaging you're saying, so like you know,
Speaker 3: like you got to consider like what's public information versus
Speaker 3: private information essentially, So it's like, you know, you don't
Speaker 3: want to put your social security number out there or
Speaker 3: your name and address, but like information and news maybe
Speaker 3: as something that's a different data classification standard and can
Speaker 3: be like, oh, okay, these are the precautions that I'm
Speaker 3: going to take at these different levels of the who
Speaker 3: needs to know?
Speaker 2: That makes sense to me. I actually think one of
Speaker 2: the things that I liked about this particular piece, this
Speaker 2: chapter of it, the part where they're just changing where
Speaker 2: I think it's Verra is just using cats Internet and
Speaker 2: doesn't want to like change the way that the Internet
Speaker 2: gets used and change the way that the algorithm sees
Speaker 2: it and stuff like that. I feel like there is
Speaker 2: like understanding threat models at different levels. I think that
Speaker 2: like sometimes you're like, oh, I just kind of need
Speaker 2: to make sure the algorithm doesn't catch like I don't
Speaker 2: trigger any like flags of like an AI that's snooping
Speaker 2: on me and looking for algorithm like looking for changes
Speaker 2: in behavior or something like that.
Speaker 3: Do you know about like browser fingerprinting?
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 3: So there's this thing that exists that is basically like
Speaker 3: your browser can be a unique identifier for an individual
Speaker 3: based on things as minute as like the window size.
Speaker 3: And this is one of the reasons that TAILS has
Speaker 3: a standard window size that it does not change, like
Speaker 3: it always gives a certain resolution, so it's the exactly
Speaker 3: the same So anybody using TAILS shows up in exactly
Speaker 3: the same way, because there are like you give up
Speaker 3: when you go to a website, your device gives like
Speaker 3: the the browser, you know, the version number, and like
Speaker 3: you have cookies in your browser that tell different information.
Speaker 3: And then also it's like things like they can determine
Speaker 3: different people based on like they're your screen size. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so I did appreciate it that part, and its
Speaker 3: like she understood this threat model, like Okay, these are
Speaker 3: the different ways that like things can be tracked, and
Speaker 3: I'm just going to use it exactly like this person,
Speaker 3: so it doesn't look like anybody else. I think that's
Speaker 3: there are more technical ways to implement that, and I
Speaker 3: think TAILS does that, of course, But thinking about that,
Speaker 3: I think is a good idea, especially if you and
Speaker 3: again I don't think it's saying this in the piece,
Speaker 3: but I think we're supposed to be expecting that, like, yes,
Speaker 3: we're in a very heightened monitoring state, which maybe we
Speaker 3: don't exist in today, but like I know, like Chinese Internet,
Speaker 3: for example, is more heavily monitored than United States Internet,
Speaker 3: at least at an explicit level.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, I mean, I feel like in the
Speaker 2: US we're just being monitored in a way that they
Speaker 2: just sell our information advertisers.
Speaker 3: But I feel like, yeah, that.
Speaker 2: Threat model could change or is changing. One more thing
Speaker 2: I want to say about this chunk of it. I
Speaker 2: don't think that hitchhiking and hopping trains is a good
Speaker 2: way to move around when you want to avoid police. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I understand why that was used, and I even suspect
Speaker 2: just literally based on the outlet that is crime think
Speaker 2: that the author might have experienced with both of those
Speaker 2: forms of travel. But I also have experienced both of
Speaker 2: those forms of travel, and in my mind, hitchhiking is
Speaker 2: the easiest way to interact with police. I can't think
Speaker 2: of a hitch hiking trip I went on where I
Speaker 2: didn't end up searched or at least stopped and had
Speaker 2: my ID run, you know, And that's without living in
Speaker 2: like fascist dystopia. Look for the anarchist land and riding
Speaker 2: trains is a really good way to go to jail
Speaker 2: in the modern world. I've read a lot of fiction
Speaker 2: where people are like, we gotta go off grid. I know,
Speaker 2: let's ride the rails, and everyone's like yeah, And I'm like,
Speaker 2: there isn't a good easy way to get around without
Speaker 2: drawing attention to yourself or being surveilled like bicycles or
Speaker 2: you know, draw some attention to yourself anyway.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I felt there was another part of this, like
Speaker 3: around the legal defense, and like I felt there was
Speaker 3: like a moment of infighting too. It's like there was
Speaker 3: like an individual who was coming who was like I
Speaker 3: don't like them. Yeah, yeah, And I thought that was
Speaker 3: very on point, because yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Like the realization that you're like, sometimes you just got
Speaker 2: to get over that shit exactly, even though like some
Speaker 2: of that stuff is real, but it's like there's just
Speaker 2: a scale. There's just a scale of like how much
Speaker 2: is this person in your enemy. It's the thing that
Speaker 2: I always go on and on about is de escalate
Speaker 2: all conflict that isn't with the enemy. And people are like, well, well,
Speaker 2: how do you define the enemy? And I'm like I
Speaker 2: kind of defined the enemy as if there was a
Speaker 2: shooting war, they'd be shooting at me. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: not that they are currently that that's currently what's happening,
Speaker 2: But if there was one, they'd be shooting at me.
Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, well it's the enemy, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And if they're not that, then it's not ignore the conflict.
Speaker 3: It's de escalated, all right, exactly.
Speaker 2: You're ready for attack, yes, attack, okay, but you know
Speaker 2: what else you're ready for?
Speaker 3: So solidarity means attack, right.
Speaker 2: And solidarity means ads.
Speaker 3: Oh that's what that's the old saying I forgot.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Did you know that I learned this more recently? Well, no,
Speaker 2: I learned this a bit ago, but I've been very
Speaker 2: happy about it since I'm someone who accidentally sells ads
Speaker 2: for a living through radical content. Do you know that
Speaker 2: all the old radical news papers they alsold ads?
Speaker 3: Makes sense to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're like this local barber is down with the
Speaker 2: like you know, socialist organizing in this town or the
Speaker 2: you know whatever. Anyway, here's ads and if they're for gambling,
Speaker 2: don't do it. Oh man sel get away with saying that.
Speaker 2: And here they are.
Speaker 3: And we're back.
Speaker 2: Attack. It's actually pretty hard to live in the forest.
Speaker 2: Jake and Ethan knew it would be when they drove
Speaker 2: their van far off an abandoned logging road and began
Speaker 2: burying it with dirt and branches to avoid detection by
Speaker 2: overhead drones. But they couldn't live in the city anymore,
Speaker 2: not after the attack on city hall. Every night they
Speaker 2: laugh about the video of the supposedly progressive mayor, the
Speaker 2: one who had approved the executions of so many of
Speaker 2: their friends in black saides or ditches, screaming as he
Speaker 2: emerged from the burning ruins. Every night, we are still
Speaker 2: alive to cherish this as a gift, they tell each other.
Speaker 2: It makes freezing on a punctured air mattress and throwing
Speaker 2: centipedes out of their bedding a little more tolerable. Before
Speaker 2: they had escaped the city in their increasingly suspect van,
Speaker 2: stencils had started appearing of the dying Mare's face on
Speaker 2: the newsreel. Printed underneath was no pity. Food is a problem.
Speaker 2: Though they rapidly pick the surrounding valleys clean of dandelions, miners, lettuce, chickweed,
Speaker 2: and blackberries. After they almost get caught rating a dumpster
Speaker 2: for something with calories in it, they realize they need
Speaker 2: a better system. Once a month they make their way
Speaker 2: through the forest to the outer suburbs of the city.
Speaker 2: Cookie leaves two plastic bags of food and stove gas
Speaker 2: canisters for them to pick up in a forested nook
Speaker 2: just outside an army graveyard. Peanut butter, chocolate, granola, olive oil,
Speaker 2: instant rice chili. Sometimes there's also a book or a
Speaker 2: board game. There's never any tea for Ethan, though it's
Speaker 2: impossible to get hormones for anyone these days. Back at
Speaker 2: the buried van, they carefully ration their laptop use, laboriously
Speaker 2: rebuilding battery charge from a damaged solar panel. They hook
Speaker 2: up to the Baufang radio at specific times. With email
Speaker 2: effectively banned, Ash is now running communication bursts in the
Speaker 2: region via radio. About once a week. She bikes out
Speaker 2: to random locations around the edge of the city and
Speaker 2: fires off a blast of noise over ham radio before
Speaker 2: taking off. A few drones now circle the city, taking
Speaker 2: pictures triangulating her signal each time she sends it. She's
Speaker 2: in a race against time with them. This noise is encrypted,
Speaker 2: of course, and decrypted via private keys now shared by
Speaker 2: a wider set of anarchist survivors. Each communication bursts includes
Speaker 2: the time of the next burst, though not the place.
Speaker 2: Jake and Ethan connect their radio to a program on
Speaker 2: their laptop each time, waiting to read and to crypt.
Speaker 2: Most nights, it's just news from the wider world ferried
Speaker 2: in via underground networks, warnings of systemic sweeps planned for
Speaker 2: certain neighborhoods or local highways being closed by militias. But
Speaker 2: one night it's something new. The ruler of the new
Speaker 2: regime is coming for a photo op. They're going to
Speaker 2: drag out one of the comrades that kept alive from
Speaker 2: the original raids and execute her as the mastermind of
Speaker 2: the attack on city Hall. There will be a ton
Speaker 2: of security, but maybe not enough for six different shooters.
Speaker 2: It's dangerous to keep connecting to the Wi Fi in
Speaker 2: the middle of the night at the same cafe, so
Speaker 2: Via rotates cafes, making sure that Kat doesn't get the
Speaker 2: Wi Fi password on the same days and doesn't bring
Speaker 2: a phone or device when she does go with tour blocked.
Speaker 2: Vera knows that every time she uses the Internet at
Speaker 2: a cafe to check sketchy websites, it's a signal to
Speaker 2: the authorities. There's a radical still running around her town.
Speaker 2: She tries not to check sketchy websites the same nights
Speaker 2: at the same cafes where she checks the backup email
Speaker 2: account she's been using to message with Matthew. She writes
Speaker 2: most of her emails ahead of time to minimize time
Speaker 2: on the ground, no more than three minutes connected, then
Speaker 2: back into the night. The cops could catch her if
Speaker 2: they really put resources into it, but she's banking on
Speaker 2: their laziness. Then one day her emails are blocked. All
Speaker 2: email seems to be blocked. There's new idea legislation that's
Speaker 2: gone into place. This is the last night Vera goes
Speaker 2: out to a cafe, but by that point she's already
Speaker 2: helped build a relay network across town. Every Monday, Matthew
Speaker 2: hands a USB to one of his Quaker hosts, who
Speaker 2: slips it down the side of a bench while sipping
Speaker 2: coffee in a park. Cat checks on the side of
Speaker 2: the same bench a couple hours later and brings it
Speaker 2: home to Vera, who decrypts it. Relay points and drop
Speaker 2: spots now exist across town because Matthew's efforts to rope
Speaker 2: in the former movement lawyer have succeeded. There are now
Speaker 2: two anarchists hiding out on the lamb from other cities
Speaker 2: in his house. One lives in the attic. The other
Speaker 2: has changed her hair color, removed some piercings, added a
Speaker 2: full face of makeup, and is working a job under
Speaker 2: the table. A month ago they helped relay the complete
Speaker 2: archives of a major anarchist collection that had supposedly been
Speaker 2: purged from a university. It went south with an anarchist
Speaker 2: backpacking a long mountain trail. Our drives with copies of
Speaker 2: the collection are now squirreled away in various places. Another
Speaker 2: anarchist that their new network loosely knows, has set up
Speaker 2: a hidden camp on an island in the river, taking
Speaker 2: a little canoe back and forth into a national park
Speaker 2: in the wee hours once a week and getting supplies.
Speaker 2: Kat and the lawyer are finding ways to slip an
Speaker 2: extra hundred a month to him. Conservatives have been screaming
Speaker 2: about demolishing the little libraries on people's lawns because liberals
Speaker 2: stuck a few banned books in them. They have no
Speaker 2: idea that Vera's network uses them as flags to notify
Speaker 2: couriers about drops. A pulp sci fi book with a
Speaker 2: spine turned inward placed on top of a certain little
Speaker 2: library means to surreptitiously pick up a USB from a
Speaker 2: Burger king bag and a trash can down the street.
Speaker 2: They're getting a whole system going. Vera doesn't need to
Speaker 2: know the network beyond her immediate circles. With her pre
Speaker 2: existing GPG public keys for certain distant comrades, she can
Speaker 2: just send encrypted messages with a distant city as a
Speaker 2: public destination and wait for couriers and swaps to copy
Speaker 2: and circulate it until her recipient can decrypt it. Messages
Speaker 2: get lost, but some get through through the network. Distant
Speaker 2: strangers trade tips and tricks they have learned keeping their
Speaker 2: local networks up. With so much of the Internet down,
Speaker 2: normies have started engaging in wider swap networks for saved files.
Speaker 2: It's almost like the libs are making their own little,
Speaker 2: really really free markets. It doesn't matter that Kat doesn't
Speaker 2: have a Netflix account, because now Vera has access to
Speaker 2: every show once torrented by local nerds. She keeps the
Speaker 2: new laptop that accepts such USB as air gapped from
Speaker 2: everything else, even if it's not the show she'd prefer
Speaker 2: Vera can watch TV again, have something to do, knowing
Speaker 2: they can make a difference helping other anarchists as Cat
Speaker 2: and Vera in a much better mood. Their city is
Speaker 2: a locust point in an emerging national underground railroad. That
Speaker 2: friend of Matthew south of the border that Kat sent
Speaker 2: cash to he has a job now and his apartment
Speaker 2: is packed with anarchists who have survived the dangerous trek
Speaker 2: across the border. They still have internet down there as
Speaker 2: Vera's little sneaker net devices. Folks begin to loop in
Speaker 2: around the edges, certain liberals from the pirate networks who
Speaker 2: have proven they can be trusted, at least with some things,
Speaker 2: at least to help relay GPG messages. One of the
Speaker 2: liberals in the network finds a way to tap into
Speaker 2: the credit card reader communications network and sneak packages of
Speaker 2: information back and forth with the programmer friend in another country.
Speaker 2: When the Quaker house is raided and Matthew is summarily
Speaker 2: shot inside, it hardly breaks anyone's stride, and soon enough
Speaker 2: the network of safe houses and dead drop couriers is
Speaker 2: so well established that a subsection of it can risk moving.
Speaker 2: Not just people and money, but guns. Julie holds the
Speaker 2: wound closed while Maggie applies the glue, a contraband gift
Speaker 2: slipped into the camp via their smuggler friends. The fallen
Speaker 2: striker is cursing up a storm, but at least he's
Speaker 2: not fainting. Where's that blasted Red Cross worker? The crowd
Speaker 2: around them isn't howling or chanting. They're just jumping up
Speaker 2: and down in waves, a tactics somehow revived from decades
Speaker 2: ago in apartheid South Africa. It makes the earth seem
Speaker 2: to shiver and shift, an avalanche of people, a force
Speaker 2: of nature. The usually sandy ground of the camp is
Speaker 2: already muddy with the reins of the flash flood. All
Speaker 2: the jumping makes it squelch in a way that adds
Speaker 2: up to something like the roar of the ocean.
Speaker 3: This is it.
Speaker 2: More bullets are going to fly, but the Guards don't
Speaker 2: have enough, and the camp knows it. The gangs have disappeared.
Speaker 2: The leftists who talk endlessly about a mass strike are
Speaker 2: nowhere to be seen. The ruin tattooed fascists who work
Speaker 2: hand in hand with the guards are magically gone too.
Speaker 2: A scrawny white boy who usually proudly hawks black market items,
Speaker 2: is beating his chest wildly as he jumps alongside the
Speaker 2: grizzled Latina dyke who drives the aid workers around. Maggie's
Speaker 2: cassio watch is beeping with some irrelevant reminder. Their mud
Speaker 2: soaked dog is jumping excitedly too, deciding the vast crowd
Speaker 2: is playing a game with her. Maybe the three of
Speaker 2: them will survive this too. If that video of the
Speaker 2: ruler's photo op that was smuggled in is to be believed,
Speaker 2: anything is possible. Dun dun dune. And also it is
Speaker 2: worth pointing out that crime Think has attended a specific
Speaker 2: note the publishers endorse Signal as the most secure, widely
Speaker 2: used option for encrypted messaging. But yeah, all right, the
Speaker 2: fourth and final chapter.
Speaker 3: What you're thinking, Well, one of the things is just
Speaker 3: this is probably my piece punk roots of just like
Speaker 3: I don't think I would be one to be repetively
Speaker 3: watching a video of somebody dying and laughing about it.
Speaker 3: I know, and I think like shit sucks, and it's
Speaker 3: really important that we keep our humanity in times of crisis,
Speaker 3: and I don't know if I would be able to
Speaker 3: do that. But I do think it's important. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: I'm not sad when you know, like Nazis get hurt.
Speaker 3: But I don't know, No.
Speaker 2: There should probably be a heaviness to it, even when
Speaker 2: it's necessary, yeah, in the science fiction story.
Speaker 3: But yeah, then they started talking about this like radio
Speaker 3: noise encryption thing, which I was thinking a lot about. Like,
Speaker 3: I don't know, so a bow thing is a analog
Speaker 3: radio and so you would have to connect it to
Speaker 3: a computer of course, which they do talk about. But
Speaker 3: I don't know of any current protocols that you could
Speaker 3: send in that way that they're describing. But if there
Speaker 3: was a sort of a network of it sounds like
Speaker 3: they're just talking about two individuals, which I was doing
Speaker 3: a little bit of research, and it looks like if
Speaker 3: you have two people holding a radio at like head
Speaker 3: height that are they're both like about six feet tall,
Speaker 3: you get about six miles of distance. So that's your
Speaker 3: area of communication. Now, if you're on top a mountain.
Speaker 3: I've known people to get like, you know, halfway across
Speaker 3: the state through a handheld radio. It's kind of pretty amazing.
Speaker 3: So you'd have to put that into account as well.
Speaker 3: And so maybe these people are relatively close by, and
Speaker 3: then they're using some technology that doesn't exist yet to
Speaker 3: communicate crypted messages.
Speaker 2: I thought you could transmit data, like, I know, isn't
Speaker 2: there a thing where you can like get pictures on
Speaker 2: your phone from the space station that they send down viral?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's slow scan television, So that would be
Speaker 3: a way to do it. Is you could use slow
Speaker 3: scan television send images, but again those aren't encrypted.
Speaker 2: Right, But if you can send data, can't you send
Speaker 2: encrypted data potentially?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I just don't know what exactly that would look
Speaker 3: like today. Like I don't know if there's a way
Speaker 3: to like put GPG into audio, So I'd have to
Speaker 3: look up that. But if anybody knows, maybe they can
Speaker 3: tell us.
Speaker 2: I think you can transmit data over an ANALOGO and
Speaker 2: if you can transmit data, you can then you can
Speaker 2: transmit encrypted data.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know you know more about radios than me.
Speaker 3: I'm just like you definitely can. I just don't know
Speaker 3: what protocol they would be using. That's what I'm curious about.
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like the like the encryption protocol that's used by
Speaker 3: police is digital. It's P twenty.
Speaker 2: Five basically, it's like that's not something a bo fan
Speaker 2: can do, is what you're saying.
Speaker 3: No, Yeah, it also depends on sort of what you're like,
Speaker 3: if you connect an analog radio to a computer, there's
Speaker 3: a lot you can do, Like there's one of the
Speaker 3: main ways that ham radio operators communicate today is through
Speaker 3: computer to computer communication over high frequency bands. Okay, Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: the email blocking thing was interesting to me. I don't
Speaker 3: know if commerce would allow emails to be blocked, but
Speaker 3: maybe like businesses maybe would be exempt. But I that
Speaker 3: one was a little bit like I just feel like
Speaker 3: there's so much commerce that up and see a email.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it would have to be like I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: we're obviously I'm out a fairly different society. I feel
Speaker 2: like society changes very dramatically from the start of the
Speaker 2: story to the end of this story. Yeah, and I
Speaker 2: guess I could imagine, like, well, if there's just like
Speaker 2: other ways that commerce is like communicating, just like different channels,
Speaker 2: different different protocols that are being developed for it or whatever.
Speaker 2: It seems like if they can block the tour network,
Speaker 2: they could probably block sketchy websites from other countries.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but that's like maybe nitpicky.
Speaker 2: I like that they use the underground Railroad. I actually
Speaker 2: like this section a lot. This might be my favorite
Speaker 2: of the four sections in terms of partly because it
Speaker 2: starts breaking out of and now maybe even just being
Speaker 2: critical of it, like as a piece. Again, I like
Speaker 2: this piece. I wouldn't have read it if I wouldn't
Speaker 2: find it interesting. But there's a lot of like ideological
Speaker 2: like us anarchists or the good ones and all the
Speaker 2: like everyone else's kind of a bunch of dumb dumbs
Speaker 2: or whatever implied until you get to this part. You know, Yeah,
Speaker 2: and now you have liberals who are like part of
Speaker 2: the dead drop system, and you have like in Quakers. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's true, and like it almost makes sense. This most
Speaker 2: hopeful section is when they stop only talking to other
Speaker 2: anarchists and like start working with a broader coalition of people. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I really like that the one of the main
Speaker 2: references points that they use at the underground Railroad. I
Speaker 2: actually think that when it comes to this country, we
Speaker 2: have an incredibly rich history in this country of what
Speaker 2: resistance to a system that's even worse than what's presented.
Speaker 2: And this story is like the like genocide, slave nightmare,
Speaker 2: country that this country was slash is built upon, you know,
Speaker 2: and like the underground Railroad wasn't. I mean, yeah, I
Speaker 2: had a disproportionate number of Quakers, right, but they weren't like, yeah, hey,
Speaker 2: you better be Quaker or the following type of abolitionist
Speaker 2: in order to be part of this. You know, there
Speaker 2: was a lot of trust, and there was a lot
Speaker 2: of like just being like, well, we're going to do
Speaker 2: it's right, you know, and like finding people who are
Speaker 2: going to do it's right. And so I think the
Speaker 2: underground railroad is a really brilliant touch point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I wanted to talk about that a little
Speaker 3: bit too, because like at the end of the piece,
Speaker 3: it seems like they're sort of like having a gorilla war,
Speaker 3: and you know, we have the example of Spain, the
Speaker 3: Spanish Civil War of having a period of you know,
Speaker 3: at least winning or progress or not being completely annihilated.
Speaker 1: But like.
Speaker 3: I just get really, I guess despondent about the fact
Speaker 3: that like win fascism has been sort of like stamped out.
Speaker 3: It's been because of other states, like in World War Two,
Speaker 3: like there was a lot of resistance movement, but if
Speaker 3: it weren't for the other governments what would have happened.
Speaker 3: And I think that, like the it's a two tiered
Speaker 3: system that needs to happen. I'm not trying to say that,
Speaker 3: like the only resistance to fascism is more state, but.
Speaker 2: Certainly the fascist governments that fell quickly, you know, Italy
Speaker 2: and Germany, And by quickly I mean twenty years and
Speaker 2: ten years yeah each you know, my numbers aren't exact, sorry,
Speaker 2: And those fell because they andrew to war that they lost, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: A lot of times dictators last until they die, but
Speaker 2: dictatorships do fall, just often a generation or two later,
Speaker 2: and often because of this upswell of social movements. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and especially when the social movements are not afraid of
Speaker 2: being down with the people who are also doing violence,
Speaker 2: like for that cause, you know. And I haven't done
Speaker 2: as much reading about the resistance apartheid South Africa as
Speaker 2: I would like to, but everything I've read about it,
Speaker 2: you have groups that are working both above ground and underground,
Speaker 2: and like, yeah, and you're pulling in political pressure from elsewhere.
Speaker 2: And a lot of the Latin American dictatorships that I've
Speaker 2: read about have fallen in similar ways, you know, where
Speaker 2: like combination social movement. But then like the people kind
Speaker 2: of keeping the flame alive are often the people who
Speaker 2: are burning things down, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, and the burning things down and feeding people
Speaker 3: and taking care of people's kids and like totally, Like
Speaker 3: I think that there's definitely totally I like to see about,
Speaker 3: you know, the network. You know, that it's not just
Speaker 3: one thing that is needed. And what this piece I
Speaker 3: think does really well is kind of calls out like
Speaker 3: we do kind of need everybody to do whatever they're
Speaker 3: good at or whatever they yeah, you know, feel like
Speaker 3: is important totally.
Speaker 2: And You're looking at our three protagonists groups doing three
Speaker 2: different things. Two of them are like burning stuff and
Speaker 2: shooting people, one of them is you know, two of
Speaker 2: them are just moving information around, and two of them
Speaker 2: are like participating in a broad coalition social like movement. Yeah,
Speaker 2: which I do think is a strength of this piece.
Speaker 2: And seeing how like the three of them relate, well,
Speaker 2: hopefully all that stays science fiction. When I look at this,
Speaker 2: this is not quite my threat model. And I'm more
Speaker 2: concerned about things going very badly than most of the
Speaker 2: people I know, to be honest, But this is not
Speaker 2: quite my threat model. But I think it is absolutely
Speaker 2: worth thinking about a lot of possibilities and thinking about
Speaker 2: like how we prepare. And I really appreciate this piece
Speaker 2: is like attempt at just breaking down like I don't know,
Speaker 2: here's an idea of how to do some technological stuff,
Speaker 2: and like, I think there's a lot of good ideas
Speaker 2: in it. And hopefully it never comes to any of that,
Speaker 2: but you know, we'll see.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's always good to practice. And
Speaker 3: I think that if you're somebody who isn't as familiar
Speaker 3: with these technologies, or haven't done your own threat models,
Speaker 3: or you know, have had a passing interest in this
Speaker 3: stuff but never sat down with it, it's totally useful
Speaker 3: to just say, like, I think one good piece of
Speaker 3: homework would be try to learn how to use PGP,
Speaker 3: you know, and understand at least what's going on under
Speaker 3: the hood. When somebody mentions it, you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm familiar with that. I know what's going on. Or
Speaker 3: try to send your b rend a message. I don't know,
Speaker 3: but yeah, I think if we constantly are sort of
Speaker 3: I guess it is a form of play. If you know,
Speaker 3: we're we're playing around with these technologies, we're trying to
Speaker 3: see what works and what doesn't. And you know, in
Speaker 3: low stake situations where we're just sending each other cat memes,
Speaker 3: we can maybe figure out how to do things when
Speaker 3: it does matter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I would say in general, I think radio
Speaker 2: communications and a lot of these things can be fun
Speaker 2: to play with. Also, those people who lived in a
Speaker 2: van would have done great if they had cashed a
Speaker 2: bunch of stuff in the woods ahead of time, or
Speaker 2: kept their van more prepared if their van had is
Speaker 2: a very good place to cash things is a van.
Speaker 2: You have many five gallon buckets of beans and rice
Speaker 2: you can fit in a van. How many I don't know,
Speaker 2: but I have a fair number of Anyway. Yep, that's
Speaker 2: it for cools on Media book Club, and next week
Speaker 2: I will probably get back to my book. The barrel
Speaker 2: will send what it may unless something like this comes
Speaker 2: up and then it gets interrupted again, but who knows.
Speaker 2: Talk to you all soon.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
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