Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media book Club, the club Club Club Club
Speaker 1: Club Club Club that'll never get old. Everyone loves it.
Speaker 1: Everyone loves thinking back to the era of when every
Speaker 1: conversation had to be on zoom and you realized you
Speaker 1: couldn't sink anything. This is Cool Zone Media book Club.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Marta Kiljoy, and this is the book
Speaker 1: club that you don't have to do the reading for
Speaker 1: because I do it for you. And this time I
Speaker 1: mean that more than usual, because I'm going to do
Speaker 1: some reading and then I'm going to talk with my
Speaker 1: friend about that reading. I'm going to talk to my
Speaker 1: friend Greg. Hi, Greg, how are you.
Speaker 2: I'm doing well? How about you?
Speaker 1: I'm doing good. I'm up late, so I have like energy,
Speaker 1: which of course is logical and will serve me. Well, no,
Speaker 1: it isn't. I'm going to crash really hard after we're
Speaker 1: done recording, but other than that, I'm okay. So the
Speaker 1: story that I want to read to you, Greg is
Speaker 1: a story that you've already read. And I know that
Speaker 1: because when I read this story, I reached out to
Speaker 1: you because my friend Greg, for anyone who's listening, is
Speaker 1: let's call you an anarchist technology enthusiast that's a normal
Speaker 1: thing to say. Is that a fair way to describe you?
Speaker 2: Yes, If it has a circuit, I probably opened it
Speaker 2: up or played with it or learned how it works.
Speaker 1: Awesome. This is a science fiction story, rather a speculative
Speaker 1: fiction story that appeared on the website crimethink dot com
Speaker 1: earlier this week. It appeared on March twenty.
Speaker 2: First.
Speaker 1: If you want to go and read it yourself, it's
Speaker 1: at crimething dot com, slash whatever stuff. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Just search it, but don't google it. As we'll talk about,
Speaker 1: you should probably duck duck go it. This is a
Speaker 1: story called Survival, a story about anarchists enduring mass raids,
Speaker 1: and it's a thought experiment. It's speculative fiction and kind
Speaker 1: of one of the oldest definitions of that, one of
Speaker 1: the oldest concepts of that, which is just literally, hey,
Speaker 1: what would happen if and what kind of like science
Speaker 1: and technology can we use to address a set of problems?
Speaker 1: And before we start, I'll say what I overall think
Speaker 1: is that I find this a really interesting thought experiment,
Speaker 1: but one that I have, like I had some maybe
Speaker 1: critiques of and so that's why I decided to talk
Speaker 1: to my friend Greg, and so we're going to kind
Speaker 1: of read this story and then talk it through to you.
Speaker 1: And this is going to be a two week thing
Speaker 1: because this is a slightly longer than normal story. I
Speaker 1: don't know, Greg, what are your first thoughts going into
Speaker 1: this thing that people don't know what we're talking about yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say that my first thoughts are about
Speaker 2: the same. I think that it's always good to write
Speaker 2: out things, to imagine scenarios that you might be in,
Speaker 2: so you can preemptively think through how you would deal
Speaker 2: with them. And I think that this story does a
Speaker 2: good job of that. And I think that, like part
Speaker 2: of the reason why I wanted to talk about this
Speaker 2: with other people is that I think we could go
Speaker 2: a little bit deeper and then maybe come out on
Speaker 2: the other end where people can think about it a
Speaker 2: little bit more an actionable way in their everyday lives,
Speaker 2: as opposed to reading this and then you know, going
Speaker 2: on to the next terrible thing of the day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point. We had to start this
Speaker 1: late because I had just reinstalled everything on my computer
Speaker 1: and part of my process of de googling, and I
Speaker 1: encourage people to not necessarily do exactly that. But this
Speaker 1: is a really good moment in your life. Whoever you are,
Speaker 1: you probably interact with technology, you actually do because you're
Speaker 1: listening to this, and it's a good moment to readdress
Speaker 1: the ways that you do it. So this story, we'll
Speaker 1: just start reading it to you. So there's a little preamble.
Speaker 1: In November nineteen nineteen, United States President Woodrow Wilson launched
Speaker 1: mass raids against the entire anarchist movement. The United States
Speaker 1: police simultaneously arrested thousands of anarchists in many different parts
Speaker 1: of the country, shutting down their newspapers, organizations, and meeting halls.
Speaker 1: That part's not fiction, just to interject, that's just the
Speaker 1: thing that happened. If similar raids were to take place today,
Speaker 1: they would occur in a technological landscape involving mass surveillance
Speaker 1: and targeted electronic attacks. Those who survive would also have
Speaker 1: to adopt different tools. Section one Escape. When the police
Speaker 1: battering ram hits his door at four eleven am, Jake
Speaker 1: is in his boxers on the floor playing an emulated
Speaker 1: side scroller. The adrenaline hits and within seconds he has
Speaker 1: jammed his bedroom window open, sliding down into the backyard
Speaker 1: and often a run, his socks instantly soaked in the grass.
Speaker 1: He hears shouting, but doesn't look back to check if
Speaker 1: there are pigs looking out his window or chasing him
Speaker 1: from the side of the house. He jumps the back
Speaker 1: fence more awkwardly than he imagined, getting a splinter deep
Speaker 1: in his left hand, but he ignores it and dashes
Speaker 1: over the roof of the neighbor's shed, trying to remember
Speaker 1: every detail of the surrounding blocks. In what feels like
Speaker 1: an instant, he's two blocks away, hiding behind some bushes
Speaker 1: as a squad car drives by. His breath sounds to
Speaker 1: him like the loudest thing in the world, and his
Speaker 1: mind spins as he imagines a neighbor coming out behind him.
Speaker 1: He's in nothing but boxers and muddy socks, and his
Speaker 1: hand is dripping blood. Nothing happens. The squad car crawls
Speaker 1: down another block. Time to move. Vera is almost home
Speaker 1: from work, listening to music in her headphones when she
Speaker 1: comes around a bend and sees the corner of a
Speaker 1: swat outside her punk house. She pivots immediately down another street,
Speaker 1: casually continuing her walk while pulling out her phone. She
Speaker 1: knows she should immediately turn it off, but first she
Speaker 1: texts a group chat house being raided and then turns
Speaker 1: it off. Maybe that warning will help someone. Many phone
Speaker 1: batteries remain active even when the device is off. She
Speaker 1: knows right now, some lazy junior officer could be noticing
Speaker 1: the GPS or her network connection triangulating her as she
Speaker 1: moves away. Should she throw it? Should she abruptly stomp
Speaker 1: on her phone out here in the street. There's a
Speaker 1: drainage vent coming up. She could toss it in and
Speaker 1: keep walking via hesitates. Her phone is encrypted, but against
Speaker 1: everyone's advice, she uses a short password. If they dig
Speaker 1: it out of the drain, she doesn't know how to
Speaker 1: pry out the SD card. Stomping on the whole device
Speaker 1: might draw attention and not even destroy the main memory.
Speaker 1: Time is of the essence, so she makes a hard
Speaker 1: choice quickly and tosses the whole thing in the drain.
Speaker 1: She's just a normal person on a walk, and she
Speaker 1: keeps walking away vera hears a car rolling up behind
Speaker 1: her slowly. It takes every ounce of willpower to keep
Speaker 1: walking normally, not to look back and terror. Maybe she should,
Speaker 1: Maybe she should just run for it. The car parks
Speaker 1: behind her, and there's the sounds of a mom unloading
Speaker 1: young kids. She's not being followed where to now. Julie
Speaker 1: and Maggie sit at their dining room table. Just want
Speaker 1: to point out that I'm not only reading this story
Speaker 1: because it has a character named Maggie in it, but
Speaker 1: that was a consideration and a bonus. I really appreciate
Speaker 1: everyone writing in Maggie's, Margaret's and Magpies. Julie and Maggie
Speaker 1: are sitting at their dining room table, struggling not to
Speaker 1: reflect panic at each other. Only one news outlet is
Speaker 1: even reporting the nationwide raids, and there's almost nothing there.
Speaker 1: Messages saying leave and then delete. This group chat keep
Speaker 1: popping up for both of them, little spatters of reports
Speaker 1: on raids and then silenced. A friend who is always
Speaker 1: too frantic is spamming everyone asking for updates. Then suddenly
Speaker 1: she's silent. There's an hour of nothing. They trade terse
Speaker 1: updates with a friend who lives far away. Someone local
Speaker 1: suddenly appears online, but only to post a meme and
Speaker 1: a dead channel and then disappear. The same music plays
Speaker 1: on the same radio stations. The wind blows through the trees,
Speaker 1: A cousin asks for advice with a preschool situation, totally oblivious.
Speaker 1: The local news does a puff piece about local business,
Speaker 1: the neighbors get a pizza delivery, and your favorite podcast
Speaker 1: is interrupted by advertisements. That's a thing that happens. It's
Speaker 1: totally in the story. I totally didn't just I added that.
Speaker 1: I added it right now, here's the ads.
Speaker 2: And we're back.
Speaker 1: What ads, Greg, do you think that we should add here?
Speaker 2: It's probably for Signal, Yeah, and ad for Signal and
Speaker 2: potatoes and sweet potatoes and wearing a mask. Those would
Speaker 2: all be good ads I would support.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, this is brought to you by all
Speaker 1: of those things. I know we'll talk about a little
Speaker 1: bit more later. But Signal is having a moment right
Speaker 1: now in the news because of some major OPSEP fails
Speaker 1: on the part of the government. But it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that Signal itself is broken. Everyone. Signal is the current
Speaker 1: most effective and encrypted thing. Honestly. The fact that our
Speaker 1: enemies use it is part of the evidence of that.
Speaker 1: All right, But the story, they're probably not going to
Speaker 1: come for us. We haven't done anything. Their confused dog
Speaker 1: is whining with shared nerves. Maggie keeps eyeing the go
Speaker 1: bag by the door they packed together months ago. That afternoon,
Speaker 1: Julie had made a show of being a good sport,
Speaker 1: humoring her need to prep. Now all Maggie can think
Speaker 1: about is everything they're missing. Julie's passport has just expired.
Speaker 1: Can they get across the border If only they had
Speaker 1: done a dry run. They take the dog out on
Speaker 1: a walk, leaving all devices home, whispering potential plans to
Speaker 1: one another, trying not to draw attension as a jogger
Speaker 1: passes them by. When they get home, there's a private
Speaker 1: message on Instagram from a friend saying they're putting together
Speaker 1: a legal defense committee. First meeting will be public at
Speaker 1: a public park. They're inviting some local liberal journalists as shields.
Speaker 1: Somebody at the local ALLT Weekly says she's writing a story.
Speaker 1: There's a lawyer coming from a big name liberal thing.
Speaker 1: The Internet keeps being really slow, doesn't deliver messages, and
Speaker 1: then suddenly delivers three all at once. Loading a lot
Speaker 1: of websites just returns errors. They're so sleep deprived of
Speaker 1: stress that when they finally crash together on the couch,
Speaker 1: they sleep right through the Defense Committee meeting. A friend
Speaker 1: knocks loudly on their door and they nearly die of
Speaker 1: heart attacks. Assuming it's the cops. His report back is terse.
Speaker 1: Almost no journalists showed. Most of the folks who went
Speaker 1: have been grabbed. One was driven down off her bike
Speaker 1: on her way home. An old liberal lawyer went to
Speaker 1: the county jail with a court order and the cops
Speaker 1: just laughed and arrested her. He's going underground, and he
Speaker 1: suggests they do too. But Julie and Maggie have a life.
Speaker 1: They have jobs at least for now, as they've both
Speaker 1: called out sick, and they have a house. They're normal now,
Speaker 1: even law abiding. Burn a few posters, donate a few
Speaker 1: books to the neighborhood little libraries, to lead a few accounts.
Speaker 1: Maybe they can pass upstanding citizens. If we leave our
Speaker 1: shit here and stop paining, we'll lose everything we've built
Speaker 1: since poverty, plus have to pay some ridiculous fine. If
Speaker 1: they do get raided, maybe it'll just be a few
Speaker 1: days in lock up, in and out, just a performance
Speaker 1: of a crackdown. The lips will get mad about the lawyers. Surely,
Speaker 1: neither of them has been able to cook since the
Speaker 1: raids first started, so they drive out together to grab pickup.
Speaker 1: Waiting for a light, Maggie stares at something on the
Speaker 1: side of the street and then leaps out of the
Speaker 1: truck's passenger side door without a word. Julie is frightened
Speaker 1: at first, then furious, but when she pulls the truck
Speaker 1: over and heads back to Maggie, she sees her partner
Speaker 1: kneeling next to a homeless man lying at an odd angle.
Speaker 1: We don't have our phones. We can't call a paramedic,
Speaker 1: she reminds Maggie, but then recognition dawns on her. It's
Speaker 1: one of their friends. Under the mess of blisters and
Speaker 1: swollen bruises, his eyes are open, staring at nothing. He
Speaker 1: lived in one of the first punk houses that was rated.
Speaker 1: He never went to anything besides some hardcore shows. He
Speaker 1: was just a baker. They don't pick up their meal.
Speaker 1: They head home, dog go bag some last minute additional ideas,
Speaker 1: camping gear, encrypted backup drives, medicine, dry food, clothes, blankets, phones,
Speaker 1: and leftover devices, smashed house key hidden somewhere in the
Speaker 1: yard for a friend. Maggie looks at her cheap Cassio watch.
Speaker 1: That's time, we need to go. That's the end of
Speaker 1: section one, and we're gonna read section two today too,
Speaker 1: but first we're gonna talk about section one and what
Speaker 1: should we talk about with it.
Speaker 2: So one thing that came up for me initially is
Speaker 2: that I'm not really familiar with the nineteen nineteen raids,
Speaker 2: and so I was wondering if you could talk a
Speaker 2: little bit about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So there is one of the things that
Speaker 1: about this particular piece that I think kind of stood
Speaker 1: out to me is like, not necessarily, it's a thought experiment, right,
Speaker 1: and it's projecting the idea of like what if they
Speaker 1: came for the anarchists? And I think actually, as we
Speaker 1: go further into the piece, we'll learn that it's talking
Speaker 1: about like what if they came for the radicals in general, right,
Speaker 1: in a big mass roundup that includes anarchists. But there
Speaker 1: is a historical precedent for specifically coming after the anarchists.
Speaker 1: The first Red Scare was nineteen nineteen nineteen. I want
Speaker 1: to say maybe eighteen as well, I'm not certain, And
Speaker 1: they often get called the Palmer Raids. And I don't
Speaker 1: have all my notes in front of me, which is
Speaker 1: terribly embarrassing because I had all the time in the
Speaker 1: world have my notes in front of me, but I
Speaker 1: did not. But basically, these were raids that came after
Speaker 1: primarily an immigrant anarchist group across the country, but especially
Speaker 1: in York City and specifically Russian anarchists and Russian labor
Speaker 1: organizing around New York City. And there's all these like
Speaker 1: great photos you can look up of like, well, there's one,
Speaker 1: there's this great photo of these like super dapper anarchists
Speaker 1: hanging out and they're like nice wool coats and nice
Speaker 1: hats and stuff, waiting for deportation. Fashion is probably not
Speaker 1: the most important thing when you look at that particular photo,
Speaker 1: but they do have nice fashion.
Speaker 2: That's really cool. Not the raids, but the fashion. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's good context because yeah, I think that this piece
Speaker 2: tries to open with that and contextualize I believe also,
Speaker 2: you know, international policing was invented to hunt down anarchists
Speaker 2: around the world, so yep, But nowadays do we really
Speaker 2: feel that this is sort of like, like our anarchists
Speaker 2: a threat in this same way that they were in
Speaker 2: nineteen nineteen.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of less about whether or not we
Speaker 1: are a threat and whether or not we're perceived as
Speaker 1: a threat. And a few years ago, like last Trump ter,
Speaker 1: he absolutely was mentioning anarchists by name, although kind of
Speaker 1: in that catch all way of like these anarchists and antifa,
Speaker 1: you know, without any like the whole thing that the
Speaker 1: government is always trying to do and everyone's always trying
Speaker 1: to do is sort of pretend like we're not actually
Speaker 1: a specific ideological branch of socialism. It's just a catch
Speaker 1: all word like terrorist or whatever.
Speaker 2: And why was I going on about that?
Speaker 1: Mostly because it bugs me, But like, I think it's
Speaker 1: completely possible that they would come for like Antifa, I
Speaker 1: think personally, a much more realistic threat model is what
Speaker 1: we're seeing now, which is coming after organizers, coming after
Speaker 1: people who are specifically related to specific protest movements, which
Speaker 1: of course very much includes an awful lot of people
Speaker 1: that we know and care about who may be anarchists.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's fair, But.
Speaker 1: Okay, what else? Okay, so we've got the context. Okay,
Speaker 1: So in the first scene.
Speaker 2: The person jumps out the window with no shoes and
Speaker 2: no pants and no shirt, and it got me thinking
Speaker 2: sort of around how when we do preparedness, we're usually
Speaker 2: prepared for a disaster, and I think of it, like,
Speaker 2: you know, one of the things that I keep in
Speaker 2: my bedroom is a fire extinguisher because I figure for
Speaker 2: most scenarios, a fire extinguisher is going to be useful.
Speaker 2: But like in this case, maybe I need a pair
Speaker 2: of slippers by my bed, which in the if I'm
Speaker 2: woken up in the middle of the night, do I
Speaker 2: know where my shoes are? Or like do I have
Speaker 2: the right pants on? Definitely something to consider. I think
Speaker 2: if you're preparing with this particular threat model, and then like,
Speaker 2: you know, how how do we think about go bags
Speaker 2: a little bit differently? And you know, I think most
Speaker 2: of the time when we do go bags, it's like, Okay,
Speaker 2: you're going to be in a vehicle, You're going to
Speaker 2: be going to a shelter. But how does this change
Speaker 2: with this particular threat model.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, like, one of the things that's nice
Speaker 1: about go bags is that they theoretically are useful for
Speaker 1: all kinds of situations. And like, most of the time,
Speaker 1: for most people and in general, I think, including right now,
Speaker 1: the primary purpose of a go bag is for disaster stuff.
Speaker 1: Right A wildfire is still a more realistic threat model
Speaker 1: for most people, including most people probably listening to this,
Speaker 1: or like earthquakes or I don't know, you just like
Speaker 1: really are antsy and want to get out of town
Speaker 1: or whatever, or like your friend calls you frantic and
Speaker 1: needs your help and they are two states away and
Speaker 1: they're like, or you need to get here now, please come,
Speaker 1: and you're like, well, fortunately, everything I need to sleep
Speaker 1: in my car is in the bag right here, plus
Speaker 1: my car, you know, so you can throw it into
Speaker 1: your car and get going. But I do think it's
Speaker 1: kind of interesting to think about this particular threat model
Speaker 1: with go bags and preparedness, of the idea of kind
Speaker 1: of a more urban camping model, which is actually I
Speaker 1: mean it's literally my own background as a former travel
Speaker 1: kid or whatever, you know. I slept on a lot
Speaker 1: of rooftops and things like that. The idea of traveling
Speaker 1: with a tent was completely nonsensical to me, because I
Speaker 1: was like, tent, you put up a tent, they know
Speaker 1: where you are, you know, because I was just always
Speaker 1: sleeping illegally in different places, and so like, the sleeping
Speaker 1: bag was the only object that really.
Speaker 2: Mattered to me out of all of that.
Speaker 1: Maybe a tarp if it's going to be really wet,
Speaker 1: but I wouldn't even string up the tarp. I would
Speaker 1: just tacco in it. I'm not recommending this. I was
Speaker 1: like twenty years old, but like, reading this particular piece
Speaker 1: has made me think more about threat models where you're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: well I gotta go and I might need to sleep
Speaker 1: rough for a couple nights in different places. You know,
Speaker 1: what do I need for that. The shoe thing is
Speaker 1: really interesting to me. I wear boots, and so like
Speaker 1: I'm not throwing on my boots to run away or whatever,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh, maybe my crocs, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: that's the move or maybe like kind of slip on
Speaker 1: running shoes or whatever. But something that you brought up
Speaker 1: when we were talking about this beforehand was the kind
Speaker 1: of like, well, it's not like crazy realistic to get
Speaker 1: out a window and out in the backyard during a
Speaker 1: house right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean I feel like in house rates, they
Speaker 2: surround the house and they try to, you know, shock
Speaker 2: you into compliance. So yeah, this person seems like they're
Speaker 2: very good at parkore, which is, you know, something I
Speaker 2: wish I was more limber for.
Speaker 1: I get the impression that this particular character is a
Speaker 1: graph kid and it's okay, yeah, a little bit used
Speaker 1: to I'm going to move very quickly and stealthily and like.
Speaker 1: And I actually wonder because when I watch videos of
Speaker 1: house raids, because I have a normal person's brain and
Speaker 1: do normal hobbies, I don't think they always surround the house.
Speaker 1: I think that if they're doing like the full swat
Speaker 1: or whatever, they might, right, But I don't know, And
Speaker 1: so I think that there is a little bit of
Speaker 1: a like, I mean, a lot of this is just
Speaker 1: pure luck, right this character is playing emulated side scrolling
Speaker 1: games at four fourteen am or whatever it is. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I do like thinking this like sort
Speaker 1: of different threat model as relates to our go bags.
Speaker 1: But I would actually say with this piece in general, right,
Speaker 1: this is less about we need to change our threat
Speaker 1: model to include this as what we're doing now, and
Speaker 1: more like thinking about, well, this might come up, you know,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about it more when we get into the
Speaker 1: other sections about the different methods of communication and stuff.
Speaker 1: But it's like, it's not stuff that we should start
Speaker 1: doing now. Like I don't think that I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: to start sleeping with clothes on. I'd hate to start
Speaker 1: sleeping with clothes on. That's really just the main problem
Speaker 1: for me.
Speaker 2: Makes total sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, all right, and then okay, there was another
Speaker 1: thing that I was thinking about. Right at the very end,
Speaker 1: they're like, I'm and he puts on. I think it's
Speaker 1: a I don't remember which character it is. Someone has
Speaker 1: their Cassio watch, and specifically I think they're flagging that
Speaker 1: it is a like full function non smart watch. I
Speaker 1: thought that was kind of clever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I prefer calculator risk launch if I
Speaker 2: have to pick.
Speaker 1: But wait, do you really have a calculator wristwatch?
Speaker 2: I don't. I'm posing right now, but I think it
Speaker 2: is useful just to think of, like, okay, how can
Speaker 2: I tell time without my cell phone? And I think,
Speaker 2: like the cell phone does occupy a very large space.
Speaker 2: And I think as we're thinking about and well, we
Speaker 2: can go into sort of the phone and like being
Speaker 2: attached to your phone. But you know, it's like do
Speaker 2: you have a map in your car? Like I've thought
Speaker 2: about getting sort of a a road out list, for example,
Speaker 2: just in case, like I don't have GPS service because
Speaker 2: and also I've been in situations where GPS has thrown
Speaker 2: me on the road that is completely covered in snow,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, uh oh, maybe I need to know
Speaker 2: how to get out of here.
Speaker 1: You know, I keep a road out list in my vehicle.
Speaker 1: I actually use it as my example whenever I watch
Speaker 1: because again I have normal person hobbies. Whenever I watch
Speaker 1: like right wing people's vehicle bug out vehicle prep stuff
Speaker 1: on YouTube, which to be clear, I don't look for
Speaker 1: the right wingers, is just to an overwhelming majority of
Speaker 1: the people who are like, check out my truck, it's
Speaker 1: full of stuff, are a right of center and they
Speaker 1: all like have these like back of seat mounted AR
Speaker 1: fifteen mounts to put their AR fifteen on the back
Speaker 1: of their seat, And I'm like, that's the pocket that
Speaker 1: the at list goes in. Think in your life about
Speaker 1: the number of times you've needed an atlass versus the
Speaker 1: number of times that you've needed not only an AR fifteen,
Speaker 1: but a truck AR fifteen ready for rapid deployment. Like
Speaker 1: that's a that's a non thing as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell. Like, if you are going to be rapidly
Speaker 1: using your rifle in a vehicle, you're in a war
Speaker 1: and you're not the driver. So yeah. Whenever I see those,
Speaker 1: I always am like the map pocket. You covered the
Speaker 1: map pocket. Oh yeah, get a road.
Speaker 2: Outlyss This podcast is brought to you by road Outlasses.
Speaker 1: And Rand McNally or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, but yeah, I think we can go into
Speaker 2: the section. So they freeting the character's name, but they
Speaker 2: see the houses being grated, and they automatically realize that, like,
Speaker 2: oh wait, I'm carrying a tracking device on me, And
Speaker 2: then there's this tension within the piece around what should
Speaker 2: I do with this? So they first talk about the
Speaker 2: phone being encrypted but using a short password, which the
Speaker 2: good advice is use an alphanumeric password that is sufficiently long.
Speaker 2: Now for our phones, you mostly open it one handedly.
Speaker 2: You probably are doing something else, and like most of us,
Speaker 2: probably either use face unlock. There's fingerprint idea unlock, which
Speaker 2: those are pretty secure except for if somebody is physically
Speaker 2: takes your face or your finger inputs it on there.
Speaker 1: Also, I believe that the police are allowed to force
Speaker 1: you into biometric unlocking a phone, whereas they're not allowed
Speaker 1: to well, they're like theoretically not supposed to force you
Speaker 1: into passwords.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I mean I think the reality here is
Speaker 2: that most people probably have like a four digit pass
Speaker 2: code for their phone, and then the piece also mentions
Speaker 2: an SD card I'm unaware of. I think there's like
Speaker 2: four phones that are currently on the market that have
Speaker 2: SD cards. Most of the mainline phones don't, and so
Speaker 2: the data is on the phone. It is not removable.
Speaker 2: You can't remove the battery of a phone. Even when
Speaker 2: a phone is it off, it can be tracked. These
Speaker 2: are just facts. So one thing and kind of going
Speaker 2: back to the go bags and like I think having
Speaker 2: a Faraday bag is something that would be useful as
Speaker 2: well for people. Is like, if you want your phone
Speaker 2: to be more off or at least not traceable, being
Speaker 2: able to just throw it into a bag could help
Speaker 2: it at least not contact other radios. But there's also
Speaker 2: operating systems, so these are all Android based. You know,
Speaker 2: iOS is what it is. And you know, there is
Speaker 2: questions of whether or not the standard encryption algorithms have
Speaker 2: backdoors the police can access. But there is a an
Speaker 2: OS called graphinos that is commonly recommended, but it does
Speaker 2: like it does de Google you, So if that is
Speaker 2: what you're trying to do, you're trying to get away
Speaker 2: from Gmail and all that you will get there, and
Speaker 2: Graphios only runs on the latest Google hardware, like the
Speaker 2: Pixel line of phones, just because they want to keep
Speaker 2: it very up to date and not have to support
Speaker 2: a ton of phones. So it's like the three latest
Speaker 2: phones or something like that. So if you are sufficiently
Speaker 2: paranoid and you want to play around with that this
Speaker 2: kind of stuff, I recommend that. But there's also other ones,
Speaker 2: like there's linear jos, which is another alternative OS for
Speaker 2: Android phones that you can you can choose not to
Speaker 2: download Google apps or not, and then calyx Os, which
Speaker 2: is another project that's doing similar goals.
Speaker 1: So I think it's interesting with phone security because like,
Speaker 1: none of the things that you're talking about, to my understanding,
Speaker 1: none of those stop the basic your phone is a
Speaker 1: tracking device thing, right, Like theoretically, all they're capable of
Speaker 1: doing is like limiting bad actors from accessing the data
Speaker 1: on your phone. Is that a fair way to put it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I would say that, you know, data encryption
Speaker 2: in general is really good for maybe not always, like oh,
Speaker 2: I'm trying to avoid law enforcement, but if my phone
Speaker 2: is stolen, I don't want my credit card or my
Speaker 2: files in the hands of somebody who could use it, right,
Speaker 2: And I think like there was a piece I was
Speaker 2: reading that was related to phone security that suggested treat
Speaker 2: your phone like encrypted landline and only connect to it
Speaker 2: over Wi Fi not cell phone networks. Then that particular
Speaker 2: device would never get that triangulation data from the cell networks,
Speaker 2: which is interesting, and then it would have you have
Speaker 2: signal on that phone, and then it just never leaves
Speaker 2: your house and then it's never on your person. But again,
Speaker 2: I think that that that is a perfect scenario when
Speaker 2: most of us are gonna we like the convenience of
Speaker 2: how itself phone. You would like to be able to
Speaker 2: look up things and talk to our friends.
Speaker 1: So I also think it's a different threat model. Like
Speaker 1: I think that's the threat model of like which many
Speaker 1: maybe you dear listener, in the current context, are a
Speaker 1: person who does valiant crime, let's say, right, and in
Speaker 1: which case absolutely, but like, and I recognize the point
Speaker 1: of like, the more people have secure practices, the more
Speaker 1: that they can't pick people out. Is like, ah, this
Speaker 1: person probably does crime because they do this thing. But
Speaker 1: I would say that like for most people, I think
Speaker 1: in the current threat model, like the odds of me
Speaker 1: needing to take a call from my sick family member
Speaker 1: while I'm out for twelve hours is like, that's more
Speaker 1: important to me than like that my cell phone hasn't
Speaker 1: pinged off of any towers recently in the average scenario.
Speaker 1: And so, and I think that that's what's interesting about
Speaker 1: this particular thought experiment piece is that it's presenting a like, well,
Speaker 1: all of that shit's out the window. And if all
Speaker 1: of that stuff's out the window, then you're just like
Speaker 1: in a totally new terrain. And so I think that
Speaker 1: there's I don't know's it's complicated, but I really do
Speaker 1: like that. I like that they point out that they're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to throw my phone down the sewer now
Speaker 1: and all of that.
Speaker 2: Which I don't think is a bad idea if that
Speaker 2: is what you're paranoid about. I didn't have sort of
Speaker 2: an issue with that exactly. Yeah, But I do think
Speaker 2: sort of understanding the limits of the technology you're carrying
Speaker 2: on you, I think is important and totally be aware
Speaker 2: when you are bringing a listening device to somewhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's just a place that just keeps
Speaker 1: track of everything you do. Although all cars from like
Speaker 1: what twenty fourteen onwards also do that, but we could
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that be a different point. Yeah anyway,
Speaker 1: all right, Well, is that I forget section one? You
Speaker 1: want to start on section two?
Speaker 2: Yeaht sweet.
Speaker 1: Section two resources. Jake has been tagging and dumpster diving
Speaker 1: for years, so he knows his neighborhood pretty well. Just
Speaker 1: as he's noticed what gets cleaned and what does not,
Speaker 1: he's noticed what gets moved and what does not, what
Speaker 1: gets paid attention to and what does not. There's a
Speaker 1: moss covered rock in a local park that never gets moved,
Speaker 1: no one even goes near it. There's a roof of
Speaker 1: an abandoned building littered with garbage. Long ago, Jake took
Speaker 1: two plastic bottles and sealed each inside a ziploc bag
Speaker 1: with a small amount of cash and two USBs each.
Speaker 1: Then he buried one bottle in the dirt underneath the rock,
Speaker 1: and taped another bottle underneath a non functioning vent on
Speaker 1: the roof of an abandoned building. In each bottle, one
Speaker 1: USB contains an encrypted key pass x database with a
Speaker 1: distinct log in information of every online accounty has, as
Speaker 1: well as a vera crypt encrypted folder with various files.
Speaker 1: He wants to make sure he never lost, scans of
Speaker 1: his IDs, photos of friends, including a GPG key pair.
Speaker 1: He has encrypted both with a passphrase of five randomly
Speaker 1: chosen dictionary words committed to memory, veritable sasquatch, humdinger, locality peeps.
Speaker 1: He has practiced this every night for weeks, building all
Speaker 1: kinds of associations and mnemonics. Unencrypted on the drives are
Speaker 1: executable files to install keypassx vera crypt and GPG on
Speaker 1: any new computer. On the other USB is a full
Speaker 1: install of the TAILS operating system. Jake knows he looks
Speaker 1: a mess in his boxers and muddy socks, but he
Speaker 1: gets to the park and digs up the bottle without
Speaker 1: a squad car seeing him or some vigilante neighbor raising
Speaker 1: a fuss. The twenty and two tens inside will have
Speaker 1: to be enough. Luckily, there's a small houseless encampment near by,
Speaker 1: and an old lady is willing to part with a
Speaker 1: sweater for ten. A free box happens to have a
Speaker 1: two large pair of sneakers. He desperately tries to make
Speaker 1: his boxers look like shorts and walks to a thrift store,
Speaker 1: quickly emerging with a backpack, a T shirt, a baseball cap,
Speaker 1: and a pair of pants. A visit to a corner
Speaker 1: store bathroom with a razor and hair dye, and his
Speaker 1: appearance is at least a little different. He buys a
Speaker 1: cheap first aid kit for the splinter in his hand.
Speaker 1: With his cash broken into change, he can catch a
Speaker 1: bus across town. When Jake gets near the first house
Speaker 1: of comrades, not only are the cops there, but his
Speaker 1: friends are still in their underwear and hog tied. On
Speaker 1: the lawn. A cop is violently molesting a friend of
Speaker 1: his under the pretense of a search, while others laugh.
Speaker 1: Jake keeps moving. At the second house, there are no
Speaker 1: squad cars, but the front door is visibly missing. Jake
Speaker 1: notices someone sitting in an unmarked car across the street.
Speaker 1: He keeps walking. The third house he tries belongs to
Speaker 1: a largely a political friend. It's a struggle to try
Speaker 1: and get him not to proclaim surprise loudly on the
Speaker 1: front porch and not to talk near devices. I just
Speaker 1: need to borrow a couple hundred men. Then I'll be
Speaker 1: out of your hair. I never saw you, you never
Speaker 1: saw me. Please, Jake leaves with a hundred a filled
Speaker 1: water bottle, a better hoodie, a better pair of shoes
Speaker 1: with dry socks, and a dusty old laptop. It's not
Speaker 1: enough bus fare to get to the border. He needs
Speaker 1: a sleeping bag, but Ori Ei has been implementing stronger
Speaker 1: anti theft policies, and the longer he focks around town,
Speaker 1: the more likely he is to get stopped. He's terrified
Speaker 1: of facial recognition and tracking software on the buses, and
Speaker 1: his thrift store baseball cap isn't going to protect him forever.
Speaker 1: He scopes out the city bust terminal from some distance,
Speaker 1: but it looks like this one checks id and there's
Speaker 1: a cop wandering around. Instead, he catches a city bus
Speaker 1: out to a distant suburb on the edge of rural
Speaker 1: two lane roads, trying to hitch Hopefully the cops out
Speaker 1: here aren't actively looking for him and won't harass a hitchhiker.
Speaker 1: A state patrol car passes him without incident. He has
Speaker 1: no success for hours, and it starts to grow dark,
Speaker 1: so it's back to the city. Worried about cash. In
Speaker 1: the middle of the night, he climbs the roof of
Speaker 1: his second stash, but it's missing, probably the tape eroded
Speaker 1: months ago and it fell off. Hope the person who
Speaker 1: found it could use the cash if they opened one
Speaker 1: of the USB's it would just prove cryptic. No way
Speaker 1: to ever learn what was encrypted. It's a cold night,
Speaker 1: sleeping rough without a sleeping bag, and in the morning,
Speaker 1: Jake takes refuge in the back of a cafe where
Speaker 1: he still has enough cash for a warm drink. He
Speaker 1: takes out the dusty old laptop from his friend, the
Speaker 1: Tails USB, booting it and accessing the Internet over tour.
Speaker 1: The connection to the Tour network has trouble, so he
Speaker 1: chooses in figure connection and selects different bridges until he
Speaker 1: finds one that works. A few anarchist counter info sites
Speaker 1: are reporting the raids, but a surprising number of sites
Speaker 1: are down entirely. Local news says almost nothing besides statust blather.
Speaker 1: Social media is trash with speculation from those least informed.
Speaker 1: Foreign no blogs and indie media sites have the most
Speaker 1: relevant reporting. Signal is down something about centralized architecture. Comments
Speaker 1: speculate about international law, but it doesn't matter right now.
Speaker 1: Rise Up allegedly melted their servers with thermite during a raid,
Speaker 1: and we're all arrested. Proton Mail has apparently been collaborating
Speaker 1: injecting spyware onto user's devices, and some people are surprised
Speaker 1: by this wire is temporary unavailable. A few people leave
Speaker 1: links urging people to use various apps or tools Jake's
Speaker 1: never heard of. But do you know what they should use?
Speaker 1: Greg for all of their secure communication? They should use
Speaker 1: whatever's advertised next, and we're back. Other people debate the
Speaker 1: technical merits, but he has a hard time understanding. One
Speaker 1: new app is blowing up pretty quickly. Lots of people
Speaker 1: attest to it being good, but this seems mostly based
Speaker 1: on them finding it easy to use. One person says
Speaker 1: they are still trying to use a smartphone, but then
Speaker 1: goes quiet. One account that was quiet for a while
Speaker 1: starts speaking differently. In the comments section on a formally
Speaker 1: obscure site, someone says this is big C. I'm free.
Speaker 1: A group of US are forming up at a location.
Speaker 1: Contact me through a secure channel. Jake knows that this
Speaker 1: is Cookie, a local organizer. After a little struggle, Jake
Speaker 1: manages to get the most popular new encrypted communication apps
Speaker 1: temporarily installed on his tails instance. He joins one of
Speaker 1: the public channels that some comments encouraged using It's basically
Speaker 1: like telegram or discord, a flood of posting and arguing.
Speaker 1: Folks who survive the raids using these new accounts try
Speaker 1: to imply who they are without saying it openly. It's
Speaker 1: an amateur hour shit show of oblique flailing. Remember that
Speaker 1: one time we did that one thing, I was the
Speaker 1: one that woked green. Turns out one of the worst
Speaker 1: assholes in the scene was still free, and he is
Speaker 1: using the opportunity to crow even when the crewed only
Speaker 1: you would know x games imply an account as a
Speaker 1: given Comrade Jake knows that such details could simply be
Speaker 1: copy pasted from a compromised device via some man in
Speaker 1: the middle. Attack where the cops sit between two parties,
Speaker 1: relaying their messages back and forth as if they're the
Speaker 1: other person. There is not enough to trust in an
Speaker 1: Internet post. To meet up, Vera walks immediately to the
Speaker 1: house of her old friend Cat. She scopes the front
Speaker 1: from down the street, notices Kat Subaru is missing, and
Speaker 1: makes her way in through the backyard. Vera has held
Speaker 1: on to a spare key for years, but their friendship
Speaker 1: is almost entirely offline. They don't even bring devices when
Speaker 1: they hang out. As far as the outside world knows,
Speaker 1: Cat is just another park ranger doing ecological restoration. Ten
Speaker 1: years ago, they burn down a condo together. Vera cries
Speaker 1: and trembles the second she closes the back door behind her,
Speaker 1: falling into a fetal position. Cat's house is pristine, beautiful, safe.
Speaker 1: Vera rocks back and forth, trying to remember breathing exercises.
Speaker 1: Has her heart always been as loud? Is she dying?
Speaker 1: After an eternity? She gets up and starts doing stretches
Speaker 1: and exercises. She pictures herself punching through the faces of
Speaker 1: the cops. Back at her house, she knows she needs
Speaker 1: to work out the adrenaline. Cat's house is like a
Speaker 1: warm security blanket. Everything is just right. Vera lies on
Speaker 1: the floor of the living room for hours, not moving,
Speaker 1: listening way too attentively to the sounds of cars going by.
Speaker 1: Is Cat even in town? Should she make something from
Speaker 1: her food in the pantry. The slow crunching sound of
Speaker 1: Kat's subreu coming to rest in the driveway is an
Speaker 1: immense relief. Kat is surprised about the raids, but she
Speaker 1: grasps the severity, hugs Vera and tries to throw lentils
Speaker 1: and veggies in an instapot while listening and asking questions.
Speaker 1: While dinner cooks, Cat brings out an old laptop she
Speaker 1: rarely uses, and they check the major news sights together,
Speaker 1: careful not to enter search terms or anything that might flag.
Speaker 1: In some sense, it's a relief to learn the raids
Speaker 1: were beyond just Vera's house. They're not targeted at Vera specifically,
Speaker 1: but no one seems to have been released yet, so
Speaker 1: it's clearly not safe to leave. Kat makes up a
Speaker 1: futon for Vera in the basement. Of course, you can
Speaker 1: stay the night. You can stay as long as you need.
Speaker 1: Vera takes off her earrings and places them carefully beside
Speaker 1: her work bag. In each earring is a tiny sliver
Speaker 1: of a USB stick. Each of them is just like
Speaker 1: Jake's encrypted KEYPASSX database, encrypted filesystem, GPG keys, installation executables
Speaker 1: for Vera, crypt and KEYPASSX. In the morning, Vera will
Speaker 1: investigate what can be done with Kat's laptop. Julie and
Speaker 1: Maggie make three stops before heading out of town, first
Speaker 1: at Julie's bank, where she successfully empties most of her
Speaker 1: account into five thousand in cash, But at Maggie's bank,
Speaker 1: the teller disappears for a long while and doesn't come back.
Speaker 1: You know what, never mind, I'll go to a different bank,
Speaker 1: Maggie says to another teller, using her best imitation Karen voice.
Speaker 1: They drive off heads on a swivel for cop cars. Finally,
Speaker 1: they slip a note into a friend's mailbox explaining where
Speaker 1: to find their house key and some instructions for their lease.
Speaker 1: They collect every credit or debit card they have and
Speaker 1: tape them together under a seat, never to be used again.
Speaker 1: They take off quickly back roads to avoid license plate
Speaker 1: readers than long country roads. It's hard to navigate without
Speaker 1: their phones. Each of them picks a personality type and
Speaker 1: fashion style that signals no political or subcultural allegiance. They
Speaker 1: make up a backstory about how their friends and try
Speaker 1: to bicker in convenience stores to avoid looking queer. They
Speaker 1: pick up a bumper sticker they'd otherwise be livid at
Speaker 1: and slap it on. At a camp site two hundred
Speaker 1: miles away, they go through all their remaining belongings. They
Speaker 1: have a tarp, a tent, two sleeping bags, a gallon
Speaker 1: jug of water, a sawyer microfiltration water purifier, a five
Speaker 1: gallon bucket of rice and beans, a camp stove, a
Speaker 1: couple pads, trashy books for boredom. They end up buying
Speaker 1: basic comforts like folding chairs with their cash reserves. It's
Speaker 1: just a camping trip until it isn't. They go on
Speaker 1: a hike with their dog and talk about communities they
Speaker 1: can flee to a land defense occupation that became permanent,
Speaker 1: a log cabin squat built deep off of any path
Speaker 1: on federal land. A friend's organic farm with some partially
Speaker 1: abandoned yurts. They discuss the pros and cons of various
Speaker 1: cults they know. In the end, they drive to the
Speaker 1: furthest option, the organic farm. The drive is long on
Speaker 1: a thin, winding back road. They stack up behind a
Speaker 1: long line of cars. Local vigilantes are performing an inspection
Speaker 1: to check for antifa. A middle aged white lady with
Speaker 1: an ar waves them through cheerily. Stay safe out there.
Speaker 1: The next town has a small rally for democracy along
Speaker 1: the central drag. Besides in Arby's, a couple dozen liberals
Speaker 1: and folding chairs hold cardboard placards making puns about the
Speaker 1: suspension of a cable news channel. At a gas station,
Speaker 1: Julie overhears two men confidently talking about the investment opportunities
Speaker 1: in real estate being opened up as all the cockroaches
Speaker 1: are removed. One night, they sleep in their car in
Speaker 1: a Walmart parking lot on the advice of a friendly
Speaker 1: night auditor. At a cheap motel, new regulations, I can't
Speaker 1: take a cash deposit, and there's this thing I got
Speaker 1: to enter your IDs into that wires them nationally. When
Speaker 1: they finally arrive at the farm and are allowed the gate,
Speaker 1: there are already fifteen other people there, extended family of
Speaker 1: the owning couple, plus a couple of woofer hippies, and
Speaker 1: two coteries of obvious radicals who are cagey and cold
Speaker 1: to anyone they don't know. Everyone is antsy, different groups
Speaker 1: cook different food, panicked envy flickers in some eyes. Two
Speaker 1: weeks in and Julie keeps to herself. Maggie spends her
Speaker 1: time trying to suck up to the owners and befriends
Speaker 1: an artistic nerd with one of the other radical groups,
Speaker 1: an old, balding white dude, and a black hoodie keeps
Speaker 1: snapping at their dog. A trip into town for balk
Speaker 1: food goes badly after the nerd insists on wearing a
Speaker 1: mask and a confrontation breaks out with a local. A
Speaker 1: backed up toilet in the farmhouse makes the owner's dour
Speaker 1: for a couple of days. One night, the situation boils
Speaker 1: over and folks start openly talking about the raids. There's
Speaker 1: fury over who has a device and who can be
Speaker 1: trusted to have a device, who is putting everyone else
Speaker 1: in danger, who has a right to be here, who
Speaker 1: has a right to anything? After someone brings up land back,
Speaker 1: someone else screams, who do you think you're fooling? Who
Speaker 1: are your people exactly? You're not indigenous, You're as white
Speaker 1: as me, and an awkward physical fight breaks out. The
Speaker 1: next morning, there are immigration police visible in the distance
Speaker 1: at the neighboring farm. One of the hippies finds three
Speaker 1: young girls hiding down by the river and rushes them
Speaker 1: into one of the plastic yurts everyone else is hiding in.
Speaker 1: Dogs bark in the distance. Julie joins the couple that
Speaker 1: owns the farm and meeting the immigration agents. Her dog
Speaker 1: barks at theirs and they put them away. The immigration
Speaker 1: agents are some of the newly deputized conspiracy heads that
Speaker 1: barely have any training, and Julie is able to find
Speaker 1: common cultural ground with them, ranting about how genetically modified
Speaker 1: organisms or poisoning the land, leaning hard into the persona
Speaker 1: she's studiously built on the road. The wannabe Jeni side
Speaker 1: airs laugh at her jokes and leave, waving back to her.
Speaker 1: The girl's white uncle was allowed to remain a nasty
Speaker 1: gash across his forehead. The rest of the family is
Speaker 1: being taken to one of the deportation camps, where people
Speaker 1: die of dehydration. He's profoundly grateful for the rescue of
Speaker 1: his nieces. Over the next month, the adjacent farms begin
Speaker 1: to merge. A dugout hiding spot becomes a tunnel network.
Speaker 1: Maybe it'll suffice to hide folks if CoP's return. Some
Speaker 1: new folks arrive fleeing other things. Tensions break down, relationships
Speaker 1: begin to form across the groups. One of the quieter
Speaker 1: members starts opening up giving lectures on centropic agriculture, and
Speaker 1: an array of projects rapidly consume all the spare land
Speaker 1: across the farms. As people get busy developing personal domains
Speaker 1: and projects to be invested in the overall vibe improves dramatically.
Speaker 1: Food gets people become more open about what devices they
Speaker 1: held onto, but it doesn't matter as much because all
Speaker 1: of the old Internet is gone. A few specific corporate
Speaker 1: sites remain accessible whitelisted by telecoms for the sake of commerce,
Speaker 1: but almost everything else is gone. You can get Amazon
Speaker 1: deliveries and send Gmail, but it's impossible to reach Wikipedia,
Speaker 1: much less Athens, indie media, or any no blogs. The
Speaker 1: farm establishes a consensus on how devices are to be used.
Speaker 1: The owners maintain all of their devices in the farmhouse,
Speaker 1: air gapped from everyone else. News stories and everything else
Speaker 1: are downloaded to a USB by one person for an
Speaker 1: hour every day, then passed around the three laptops everyone
Speaker 1: else shares. There's one burner cell phone for the whole farm,
Speaker 1: bought with cash at one of the last walmarts where
Speaker 1: that is possible. It's kept turned off and wrapped in
Speaker 1: plastic bags under a rock five miles away along the
Speaker 1: side of the road. It's for emergence and strictly overseen usage.
Speaker 1: No one will put it simcart in or turn it
Speaker 1: on near the farm or its stash location. Having swapped
Speaker 1: out plates and tags, Julie and Maggie occasionally drive into
Speaker 1: the local town. They sit behind a cafe in their
Speaker 1: truck while it's closed at night, and tap into the
Speaker 1: still active Wi Fi with their laptop running. Tails signal
Speaker 1: is long gone. Tour is totally inaccessible, even using the
Speaker 1: latest smuggled bridges on the plane Internet. They've managed to
Speaker 1: register two Gmail accounts using the farm's collective burner phone.
Speaker 1: How can they find other comrades? How can they talk
Speaker 1: with them?
Speaker 2: Well, if you want to.
Speaker 1: Know, you're going to have to wait till next Sunday.
Speaker 1: But what you don't have to wait for is me
Speaker 1: and Greg talking about this chunk. Okay, and so section
Speaker 1: two that we just listened to, so much more happened,
Speaker 1: and Okay. The first thing I want to say, just
Speaker 1: sort of flag. There's a piece where they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: the autistic nerd and I'm like, okay, we've all met that,
Speaker 1: or maybe we are that or whatever, and then it
Speaker 1: was like ah, then they wore their mask to the
Speaker 1: store and refused to not And I just want to
Speaker 1: like the flag that I'm like and could have been
Speaker 1: phrased a little differently, making the autistic character be the
Speaker 1: one who does that. I don't know whatever, Maybe that's
Speaker 1: me being to twitter brained about it, and I don't
Speaker 1: know the I have no idea about the neurodivergence or
Speaker 1: non neurodiversions of the author of this piece.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but.
Speaker 1: Okay, I have a bunch of questions about this part.
Speaker 1: And this is the kind of the part where I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's part of why I brought you on.
Speaker 2: I think I'm going to be a US sped drive
Speaker 2: kingpin now and that's what I'm investing in. So it's
Speaker 2: going to be after the raids, We'll all need lots
Speaker 2: of USB drives.
Speaker 1: I know. And it's interesting because're gonna need lots of
Speaker 1: mostly small USB drives, small USB drive I think we're
Speaker 1: gonna need a couple big ones to have lots of
Speaker 1: legally purchased media on. Yeah, and okay, So there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of different programs they talk about. They talk about
Speaker 1: key pass X, they talk about via crypt, they talk
Speaker 1: about GPG, and they talk about tour where.
Speaker 2: Do you want to start well? And they also talk
Speaker 2: about tails, which is just we can go through. Why
Speaker 2: don't we talk about what each of these things are
Speaker 2: just for the uninitiated, So key pass X, which is
Speaker 2: to be clear, is defunct now thanks for putting that out.
Speaker 2: Key pass X has turned into a new project, key
Speaker 2: pass XC, so if you're looking around for it, it's
Speaker 2: now called that. And so that is generally a password manager,
Speaker 2: and so I strongly recommend that anybody listening to this
Speaker 2: start using a password manager. Use a different password for
Speaker 2: every single one of your accounts. And this is not
Speaker 2: advice as a radical, This is a device as a
Speaker 2: person who uses computers, if one of your accounts gets
Speaker 2: popped and you use the same passwords for everything, all
Speaker 2: your accounts are popped, and also use Tube factor authentics. Okay,
Speaker 2: speel over, but keep AXC is an encrypted database of
Speaker 2: all of your passwords. So you use one big password
Speaker 2: that you hopefully memorize, and then you never have to
Speaker 2: remember your other passwords. Now there's some advantage to this.
Speaker 2: From another perspective is like you don't really know your passwords,
Speaker 2: so if like somebody were to ask you, hey, what's
Speaker 2: your email password, You're like, I don't know, and you
Speaker 2: can legitimately say that you don't know. But I think
Speaker 2: it's a good practice to use a password manager. So
Speaker 2: that's what keyp pass x or keep assexc is. Vericrypt
Speaker 2: is an application that is used to encrypt files or drives,
Speaker 2: and so if you wanted to encrypt like a large
Speaker 2: piece of something, you would use varicrypt and be able
Speaker 2: to decrypt it like that. GPG is another way to
Speaker 2: encrypt messages or files that the emphasis is on asymmetric encryption,
Speaker 2: which I will go with a little nerd moment. In
Speaker 2: asymmetric encryption, you have a public key and a private key.
Speaker 2: You keep private key to yourself and you're able to
Speaker 2: share your public key out to anybody and then they
Speaker 2: somebody else will use your public key to encrypt something
Speaker 2: intended for you. Now, one of the most common ways
Speaker 2: that this is used is through email. There's been applications
Speaker 2: in the past, like a nigmail to make this more
Speaker 2: easy for people. But just know that GPG is used
Speaker 2: for encrypting files or messages and that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: But it's quite manual. It's a process where you have
Speaker 2: to set up your keys, you have to set up
Speaker 2: and maintain a public and a private key pair.
Speaker 1: It's also kind of like a pain in the ass,
Speaker 1: like just frankly, yes, and the reason it's fallen out
Speaker 1: of favor. If you ever hear anyone talking about PGP
Speaker 1: pretty good privacy, that's kind of the closed source version
Speaker 1: of this. And what people actually use is GPG, which
Speaker 1: stands for what you told me what it stands for.
Speaker 2: GPG is a new privacy guard. Which the difference is
Speaker 2: is PGP is closed so GPG is open source. So
Speaker 2: the code for my understanding is that they're functionally the
Speaker 2: same under the hood, and one is open source and
Speaker 2: one is not.
Speaker 1: The reason people have moved to things like signal or
Speaker 1: end to end encrypted email, things like proton mail is
Speaker 1: which is only end to end encrypted if the originating
Speaker 1: sources also an encrypted mail provider. But the reason people
Speaker 1: have moved to that is not just so that they
Speaker 1: can invite journalists into their chats. But that's going to
Speaker 1: be a dated reference soon. It might already feel dated
Speaker 1: to you. It might be sick of people talking about it. Anyway,
Speaker 1: is that signal is just so much easier to use,
Speaker 1: and I actually think that there is a for most
Speaker 1: people in most situations. The ease of use isn't just
Speaker 1: a convenience, it's actually literally more secure because it's harder
Speaker 1: to fuck up. It's really easy to fuck up GPG. However,
Speaker 1: as the rest of this piece is going to later
Speaker 1: get into, there might be situations where it's kind of
Speaker 1: the only thing going yeah, because you kind of can't
Speaker 1: you can't kill this one.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then also the piece mentioned TOUR, which stands
Speaker 2: for the Onion Router. It's bundled as a browser, but
Speaker 2: it is a way to route your traffic through many
Speaker 2: different other computers that are on the Tour network, so
Speaker 2: your where your traffic is coming from and where it
Speaker 2: exits is not easy to track. And then tails OS
Speaker 2: is a operating system that runs as a live USB
Speaker 2: drive that enables you to utilize Tour without having to
Speaker 2: install it onto a computer. You plug in the USB drive,
Speaker 2: you boot it up, and it launches the operating system,
Speaker 2: and when you turn the computer off, everything is wiped,
Speaker 2: so it doesn't leave data behind unless you tell it to.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, so.
Speaker 1: A lot of tools are brought up. Okay, my other
Speaker 1: big question about this section is they talk about the big, easy,
Speaker 1: convenient tools going down. For example, they mentioned proton mail
Speaker 1: has been injecting spyware onto people's computers, and to be clear,
Speaker 1: proton mail doesn't really have a they're not really our comrades,
Speaker 1: you know, but they're also not American, and so from
Speaker 1: my point of view, and maybe I'm being naive, I'm
Speaker 1: a little bit like stuff that's not American is going
Speaker 1: to have like way less of an interest in cooperating
Speaker 1: with a fascist American government. But maybe I'm being naive
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I don't know about that. I do know
Speaker 2: that proton Mail was involved in some court cases where
Speaker 2: they gave up IPI information, but they didn't give up
Speaker 2: message datic because again they didn't have it, because proton
Speaker 2: Mail is an email provider that does into encrypted emails
Speaker 2: by default, you don't even have to think about it
Speaker 2: if you're emailing another proton Mail account, which is nice.
Speaker 2: It's you know, the theme of security in this day
Speaker 2: and age is that it's a lot of like you
Speaker 2: don't see it, but it's happening behind the scenes. Signal
Speaker 2: does this, proton Mail does it, but again it's a
Speaker 2: centralized service and we don't know what pressure they may
Speaker 2: get in the future.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's a good point, okay. And then specifically
Speaker 1: the talking about Signal going down like that, that is
Speaker 1: kind of one of the key pieces to this particular
Speaker 1: thought experiment is that signal as a centralized thing has
Speaker 1: gone down, and I want to ask you about how
Speaker 1: how realistic is that.
Speaker 2: So my understanding is that in the twenty nineteen and
Speaker 2: that signal was taken down in Iran, and I think
Speaker 2: it had been taken down other times before, along with
Speaker 2: the entire Internet at times in Iran. Iran has the advantage,
Speaker 2: at least from the government's standpoint, of having a Internet
Speaker 2: that's very easy to turn on and off. My understanding
Speaker 2: is that in the United States that'd be a lot harder,
Speaker 2: and so a general Internet going down scenario would look
Speaker 2: a lot more like the ISPs themselves, either blocking or
Speaker 2: throttling traffic. The cell phone providers are actual easier to
Speaker 2: shut down, and there's an example in twenty eleven during
Speaker 2: the Oscar Grant protests in the San Francisco Bay area,
Speaker 2: the Barrier Rapid Transit System BART shut down their cell
Speaker 2: phone service on the underground tunnels because they thought that
Speaker 2: activists were using that to coordinate their protests. They were
Speaker 2: able to do this because they own the entire cell
Speaker 2: phone network that was underground. You don't get cell phone
Speaker 2: networks from above ground, and so people had no service
Speaker 2: at that time Signal itself going down, though again I
Speaker 2: don't know the details of how Signal is hosted, but
Speaker 2: if it's not distributed enough, you could just shut down
Speaker 2: a few of the servers depending on it. But I
Speaker 2: do imagine, given the fact that Signal is open source,
Speaker 2: that if something like that were to happen, you might
Speaker 2: see people be spinning up their own versions of Signal.
Speaker 2: And I think that the piece also talks about like, oh,
Speaker 2: there's these other apps that come up, and who knows
Speaker 2: if they're good or not, and you would definitely see that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's reasons to assume that, like in crisis, people are
Speaker 2: going to try to figure out other ways to get
Speaker 2: around things, and you'll have to use your best judgment.
Speaker 2: But I don't think it's unwarranted that Signal could go away.
Speaker 2: But I think it would given the fact that we've
Speaker 2: seen also government officials utilizing signal. Maybe that's an advantage
Speaker 2: in the in the realm of like maybe it is
Speaker 2: critical infrastructure in this way where we wouldn't see it
Speaker 2: attacked in that way. And like tour for example, is
Speaker 2: used by the CIA, they have a vested interest in
Speaker 2: not shutting down the tour network.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm.
Speaker 1: Under the impression that Signal is both an app that
Speaker 1: you can use and also a protocol like a system
Speaker 1: by which to do similar things, and that the Signal
Speaker 1: protocol is used another end and encryption.
Speaker 2: Well like WhatsApp for example.
Speaker 1: But you know, yeah, fair enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So WhatsApp uses the Signal protocol, which is the
Speaker 2: encryption protocol that Signal uses. And it's actually the largest
Speaker 2: deployment of the Signal protocol because in the USUS is
Speaker 2: used a little bit less, but across the world it's
Speaker 2: much more prevalent.
Speaker 1: So okay, and then actually it's probably worth distinguishing. Then
Speaker 1: why is Signal more secure than WhatsApp?
Speaker 2: I think it's an issue of trust for me, I
Speaker 2: don't have the details right now, but like WhatsApp is
Speaker 2: owned by Facebook, yeah, and so there there's reasonable, you know,
Speaker 2: suspicions of like are they keeping things the right way?
Speaker 2: That's personal paranoiase. And I think one of my caveats
Speaker 2: to this whole piece is that you all should be
Speaker 2: doing your own research. If you're listening to this and
Speaker 2: trying to take advice like this is we express some opinions.
Speaker 2: We express some details, but like, at the end of
Speaker 2: the day, you're gonna make your own choices, and maybe
Speaker 2: WhatsApp is actually the better option for you because you
Speaker 2: have family internationally and having access to that encryption is
Speaker 2: super important.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, I think that kind of covers these two sections.
Speaker 1: Is there anything I'm missing, anything we're missing?
Speaker 2: No, I think that that's good. It's always fun to
Speaker 2: talk about this stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, we'll come back next week and we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about the second half of this story.
Speaker 1: And also, if you're listening and you're like, wait a second,
Speaker 1: this isn't the barrel, we'll send what it may. That's
Speaker 1: because I interrupted my own book to talk about this
Speaker 1: because it felt more timely. But within a couple weeks,
Speaker 1: I'll get back to telling you the adventures of Daniel
Speaker 1: Okain on book club. But in the meantime, take care
Speaker 1: of each other because we got it.
Speaker 2: Talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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