It Could Happen Here - How To Protect Yourself in the New World (with Chelsea Manning)

Episode Date: August 30, 2021

Network Security expert Chelsea Manning comes on to talk about surveillance, online security, and steps we can take to protect our privacy. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast what's surveilling my you this is robert evans It Could Happen Here, a podcast about how things are kind of falling apart, and also advice on how to, you know, deal with that shit. Today I'm here with my colleagues, Garrison Davis. Hello. Garrison. Garrison.

Hi, sorry. I did not know we were getting called on. Garrison. And Christopher Wong. Lou. Yes, that's right. And we're going to talk about privacy, about information self-defense, about avoiding surveillance with somebody who knows what the fuck they're talking about, because I sure as hell don't. And for that, I want to welcome Chelsea Manning.

Hey, how's it going? Good, Chelsea. Why wouldn't you want the government to know exactly what you're doing? Well, I mean, it's not just the government. Yep. So, you know, one of the things that I do as a security consultant is I provide sort of an analysis as to what your actual tangible threats are um so depending on who you are what you're doing and what environment you're in um that that is going to change so in the instance of the government it may be that you are a political dissident it may be that you are um engaged in activities that are criminalized in that society or culture. Or it may be that, you know, you are simply trying to get, you know, you're trying to live your life and not have to engage with, you know, tax authorities or, you know.

So it can be, it can be, it can depend on what you're doing and who you're trying to avoid with respect to the government. not being spied on or threatened by whoever your government is, whether it's a local, state, national, or international threat for you. And I don't know. I guess my first question would be like for a person who's, I don't know, perhaps a slightly lower imminent threat of, I mean, any of the stuff that you worry about, or that perhaps people who are much more involved in kind of organizing have to worry about, like, what is, what do you think is kind of the basic security hygiene toolkit that, you know, an average person ought to, ought to at least understand, if not, uh, actively practice. Right. So the basics are, you know, uh, a privacy-based browser, you know, something that doesn't have cookies for your internet browsing, um, and changing, changing, I shouldn't be using Firefox. No, I mean, I, I think, I think, uh, you know,

it's, it's understanding the privacy features of your particular browser. There are browsers like Brave that specifically specialize in this or Tor Browser. But the vast majority of browsers today have privacy features. Although there are risks that come with that as to whether or not they are revealing the true nature of how much information that they're collecting on you, where it's stored, whether it's in a cloud hosting service, or whether it's on your device, on your phone, on your computer, or whether or not it's being sold to a third party advertising company or to advertisers or to data mining companies. So it really depends.

Basically, nothing you do, unfortunately, nothing you do on the internet or on an electronic device that is connected to another computer is truly 100% private. to another computer is truly 100% private. So it's about sort of reducing your, we would say surface area, your attack surface area or your visibility surface area as much as possible, while also maintaining a certain amount of usability because you can go out into a cabin in montana and live live off of live live out in the woods if you so choose but i mean you're not going to be able to

accomplish you know the things that you need to do um that you that you can do with mobile devices with uh computers with servers and with cloud cloud services so it's about it's about balancing. It's about balancing the risk versus what you actually want to accomplish and how usable that is. Yeah, and I don't know. When you think of kind of an ideal browser solution, because Tor is a whole thing as opposed to just grabbing Chrome or Firefox. It's more involved of a process to use.

What do you think, like when you're kind of like recommending like what people should do, kind of what is your probably safe best practice in terms of just browsing? In terms of just browsing, I would say know the sites that you're browsing. Know their privacy. You don't have to read the privacy terms and conditions yourself because it's usually in legalistic gobbledygook. But you can read articles about it. You can find out from somebody who um what those are and how they change

you have to update that so you know they update their terms of service sometimes every six months uh i know that uh some companies uh do this more frequently and they don't notify you they and they'll notify you that it's been changed like three months ago you know like so you know you gotta you gotta keep on top of it. And then, you know, you know, just sort of like, no, I mean, another big thing is, is password hygiene, you know, you got to use, I mean, I always recommend using a password manager, like the most basic people should use a strong password manager that generates, you know, specific passwords for specific accounts. Because, you know, nobody can memorize.

Nobody can memorize, like, I think I have, like, 90 passwords that I use on a regular basis, but I only memorize, like, three or four, you know, one for my device, one for each specific device, and then another for the password manager itself. So you know, you know, just, it just mostly, you know, those are basics. So everyone should be doing those things. They aren't, but you should, you know, even if you're even if you are you you your uh your political views are that you know brit britney spears should be freed uh you know if if it if you're not facing like an existential threat from your from like a a you know fascist dictator you know or dictator or a police state

that is discriminating against a particular class or group of people, then you should be doing these things anyway. Even though they would help you in that situation, you should be doing these things baseline. And, okay, so outside of just kind of like browsing protection right like let's let's say uh that's not your primary worry let's say you're worried about being kind of like physically surveilled um yeah physically followed having your your your space

having someone enter it um and uh you know, potentially even when you're not there, what are kind of the physical security measures that you think are kind of accessible, you know, without getting James Bond about it and buying a bunch of bugs? Like we're talking kind of low tech, low cost things that a person could deploy kind of in the moment if they suddenly start to worry that they're being targeted for that sort of thing. Right. So in terms of physical surveillance and protection, there's, again, you know, a ladder in terms of what you can do and what you should do. Some basic things are put a put a strong alphanumeric password onto your phone um even if you have uh you know your facial recognition or your your touch feature enabled um your biometrics enabled um maintain physical possession

of your phone have a strong password and then if you're in an environment where you feel that you're at risk know how to disable the biometric feature for instance you know with my phone the iphone 12 you have to hold down two buttons for five seconds um it you know it's the it's the top it's the up volume button and the the power button if you hold those two down for five seconds uh it automatically locks the biometric features features which don't have the same protections um as yeah i mean they don't have the same protections as, I mean, they don't have the same legal protections as your password. And, you know, you can't be forced.

And even if you are in a place where they can force you to do so, you know, they can't just hold up your phone or, you know, put your finger right onto your device. Have, encrypt your phones phones like ensure that you have hardware encryption on your apple on your that you know i always recommend like iphones uh in particular for people not because androids are bad or anything it's just that you know the the type of encryption that it uses is built baked into the hardware as opposed to into the software. And I know there's this whole debate over Apple being able to decrypt phones and things like that.

But, I mean, at the end of the day, an Android phone is 100,000 times easier to break into than an Apple phone just by virtue of the fact that it has hardware encryption, and it's baked right into the device. And Android phones use software, which is a type of software that is crackable. And it's the type that's not used on like a Linux computer, you know, crypt setup. So and yeah, so as you're moving up the ladder in terms of like physical surveillance by somebody who's following you, there is this there there are ways in which you can detect that because, you know, you can be paranoid and you can be like, OK, is this person following? Well, but, you know, there's things that you can do. You know, you can be like, okay, is this person following? Well, but, you know, there's things that you can do. You know, you can alter your route.

You can alter the patterns of where and how you are moving. For instance, if you go to the coffee shop at 3 p.m. every day at the same time every weekday that you go to your, you know, wherever you go, change it up, you know. Like don't go to that coffee shop one day or go to a different coffee shop or you know change up the pattern of how you go like you know go down this street you know mix it up a bit um if you are active if you believe that you are actively being surveilled

you can do what's called a surveillance detection route which is where you alter your path to a pre-designated bottleneck where no other person, where there's no way of like, there's not like three paths in the same place. There's a bottleneck, like a bridge or a tunnel or an alleyway that you would have to go through if you are being followed. And then you can detect and confirm that you are, in fact, being followed by an individual. And physical surveillance is typically not done by an individual.

Obviously, in the case of, like, a stalker, it may be. But if it's, like, a law enforcement agency or an intelligence agency or uh even like a paramilitary you know militia group um typically they're going to use uh two typically at least three or more um people to that are in communication with each other and then that's another thing you can look for is do they have radios do they have have earpieces? Are they wearing clothing that would hide the fact that they're wearing a radio, for instance? That also goes for firearms, right? If they're wearing baggy clothing or a suit that is a little ill-fitting, it's a little too much, then they may be trying to hide some bulge or something.

Somebody who's in a tight-fitting leotard is probably not surveilling you. And one of the things that kind of I always have in mind when I'm at like a hotel or, you know, an Airbnb or whatever in a strange place, if I am concerned about like being followed is trying to set up little little catches. Yeah, they're called telltales. Yeah, telltales. Could you talk about that a little bit? So telltales and there's new there's hundreds of methods of uh doing these things they're little so sometimes they can be um sometimes they can be simple things like setting a book or an item on top of something or in front

of something at a particular angle and that angle may be you know you can take a picture of it or you can mark the angle of that particular item um you know something that that you know you would that you would not think you know you would just be like okay here's an item that's in the way and you might move that if you are trying to surreptitiously enter into something um and then they would put it back but they wouldn't put it back quite in the same way right so if they if they don't see the telltale the fact that it's a telltale um they may they they may it may be like completely off right um there's also things that you can do in terms of like having seals um you know i i tend to keep um

you know evidence tape which uh is difficult to, and serialize that evidence tape at that to know that it has a particular amount of intelligence gathering to be able to replicate that seal that's been broken. And there's simple things like, you know, using tape and spaghetti, you know, like dried spaghetti, like pre-cooked spaghetti spaghetti something that would break if you know a door is open or something literally that photo of the cheeto over the uh the door latch yeah i i think that's from uh that that's from death note right i i don't know actually you know i you and i talk pretty regularly at One thing you kind of are constantly going over in your head is kind of different potential risk scenarios you see happening. You spend a lot of time thinking about what might happen and what the best response would be in that situation. Yeah, and there's a lot of precedent for most things. Most things are typically a lot of precedent. For instance, in the US, there may be situations or things that have happened in the past, but not recently, or things that have happened internationally that have not happened recently in the. that you can look to as a corollary or an example. So yeah, what do you, I mean, when it comes to kind of threats you see for,

let's say, people who are activists, community organizers who have, you know, had their face published as part of an anti-fascist gathering or whatever, when you think about like crackdown concerns, what are kind of the, what are kind of, what are the potentialities that kind of run through your head as, as, as kind of likely narrative events that, that could happen? And then kind of what you see is the best reactions to those. Right. So, you know, I mostly focus on either the basics or the worst case scenario. So obviously there's that that stepladder. Right. You know, so I am always thinking about, you know, the the basics of, you know, OK, what happens if I have been doxxed? Right.

You know, the vast majority of people that come to me for assistance tend to be people who are afraid of being doxxed or who have already been doxxed. Doxxing is, I mean, I'll just explain it real fast. You know, doxxing is whenever either your face, your identity,

who, what your name is, your age, your location, who your family is, your associations have been revealed and shared with a threat group or a large group of people who could potentially gather this information and use it as a threat against you, to harass you, to show up at your house,

to find you in a crowd and to attack you or to harass you or to, you know, discourage an employer from working with you and whatnot. And so, you know, they're like, unfortunately, once they're doxxed, it's kind of hard to it. You know, it's a it's a it's an entropy kind of thing. Like it's it's you can break it, you know. Like, you can, once you make an omelet out of eggs, it's very hard to make the eggs back into an omelet, right? So you've got to kind of start over after you've already been doxxed and start from scratch in terms of, like, how to protect yourself.

And you'll never have the same level of protection as you did if you hadn't been doxxed in the first place. And that's the unfortunate reality. The kinds of things that you can try to do, obviously, if you were in a crowd where you may be doxxed, wear some kind of face covering or protection. Obviously, we're in a pandemic so you know uh you know masks make sense these days um another situation or another thing that you can do is you can just avoid being in the the main group of a crowd or in the front line of a crowd like the you know it sometimes

is just as simple as just not being where the cameras are as well like being aware of where cameras are where people who are maybe what you know like documenting things are and avoiding those locations i personally tend to be around the journalist gaggle myself because that way i see where the cameras are pointed because i'm behind them as opposed to in front of them. So that's my own personal little trick to not being, um, captured in on film or on camera. Um,

you know, if I'm at an event, uh, so, you know, uh, something as simple as that as just sort of knowing your angles and knowing,

you know, uh, who's watching and, and, and things like that. And then, um, don't put out your address,

don't give out your address don't give out your address and you know like do surveillance detect you know do surveillance detection routes when you go home or when you're leaving you know for a high risk uh event or activity um and um you know uh just the more that you think about it the the more and the more questions that you ask, the better off you are. You tend to be. And I think that a lot of people get very focused on their phones as well, as opposed to like simple things like their faces and their interactions and how they and how they dress and how they look in a crowd. There's this concept called the gray person concept um prep you know proper the proper computer intends to generate the gray man the gray man yeah yeah

we'll talk about that yeah yeah and you know like okay so i'll wait on that no no no no go ahead and explain it and then i'll talk about because i think there's a there's a difference between the wisdom in the concept and also how idiots tend to uh adopt it so i'll talk about because i think there's a there's a difference between the wisdom in the concept and also how idiots tend to adopt it so i'll chat about that after you introduce it right so the gray person concept in my mind it tends to be a way of you know just sort of blending into a crowd you know or into an environment right know, if you are in a small town in a rural area, you know, dress like, look how other people dress, you know. If you show up, you know, wearing a bright colored, you know, jacket with brand names on it and a beanie cap,

you'll probably be recognizable even by people who are not looking for you. There will be people who will be looking for you though there will be people who will be like that person looks out of place and then they can go come back in their memory and be like you know if somebody asks questions then they'll be like oh yeah i remember the person in the orange nike jacket wearing a red cap you know um the gray person concept is about avoiding that, just being unrememberable, unrecognizable in a crowd, in an environment like that. I have names for what I do.

I have my soccer mom vibe. I have my, for the suburbs, I have my business attire vibe for when I'm in an urban area. I have, you know, my street, I have my street clothing, you know, for if I'm at a protest or at a march of some variety. And then, you know, if I'm out in the rural areas, you know, I've got my, I've got my jeans, I've got my belt buckle, and I've got my, I've got my plaid, my plaid shirt, right? You know, so it, you know, with a little bit of camo, right? You know, so it, you know, with a little bit of camo, right?

You know, like it depends on your environment. But, you know, so basics are no bright, avoid bright colors, avoid branding, unless everybody else is wearing the same branding. So if you're at a sport, if you're in a college town, you know, and you have the mascot of, the mascot of that team is everywhere, then it makes sense to have a jacket that has that sports team color on it, you know, or that or that mascot on it. You know, so it's about it. It's a juggle and it's an adjustment and no situation is the same.

Like this idea that there there's this one gray person outfit is kind of absurd and uh i think a lot a lot of a lot of a lot of a lot of a lot of people who do this stuff they tend to like buy the most tactical stuff like don't wear don't wear yeah don't wear tactical gear and hawaiian shirts you know uh in the middle of uh in the middle of um in the middle of like upstate New York, for instance, right? You're going to stand out. So the gray man, and it's usually referred to in like kind of the tactical prepper community is like gray man. Yes. Has turned into its whole fashioned brand, which is like literally the opposite of the point.

The point is that like nothing about you would stand out in a crowd. the opposite of the point the point is that like nothing about you would stand out in a crowd um but people have this like if you if you're if you're if you if you're like me and you talk about guns at all on social media you get a bunch of targeted ads for like specific backpacks that are meant to carry entire rifles and have like body armor panels in them and like yeah hoodies with gun holsters and we know it and we see it so if we if we're it you know i i can tell a 511 tactical bag from mile away you know i i i own them i care i i own i own good bags i carry good bags but um the idea that the idea that a threat that a potential threat isn't going to immediately recognize those brands uh those brands of bags and those form factors of bags and and jackets and pants is absurd you know

any law enforcement person is going to know you know any law enforcement or intelligence or paramilitary group is going to be able to be like i know that i know those pants yeah you you'd be much more useful to basically jerry jerry rig your own in these scenarios kind of like what booster bags used to be yeah brands that like sell them now which is like no it's not the point of you don't want like a brand new bag that's not the thing if you want if you want if you want strong sturdy wear then go for the tactical stuff but if you're trying to do the gray person concept go to target yeah yeah like the the the way it's been taken by like the prepper tactical community is you have to like dress like jason bourne right and like yeah so everybody who winds up doing gray

man in that community winds up looking like a federal agent right they have like the the cargo pants and they've got like a yeah but as soon as you wear a hoodie you everyone can see you but if you're in northern virgin, that is the gray person. If you're in a contractor town. If you're in a country, dress like a fed, for sure. But if you're in Portland, wear a black hoodie. Yeah, and there's even smaller, simple things. I have a friend who is decently good at this gray person concept.

I don't think he uses that term, but he teaches stealth classes at a parkour gym I used to go at. And one of the main things that gets talked about is even controlling where your eyes are and controlling where your head is. It's super useful for trying to do that. If you're looking around always, if you're always perked up, if you're, like, very focused on things, people are going to pay attention to you. If you keep your head down, if you keep your body kind of slouched, people's eyes graze over you so, so much more.

Yeah, be the loser kid in the hallway in school. Yeah, be the, go to a grocery store and, like, watch the moms, right? Like, watch the kind of clothing they're wearing or like watch you know dads with their kids like watch people who normally you would just kind of like oh these are just other people around in the world um and and and dress like those people like they don't that doesn't attract much in the way of attention like you you are you are being less of a gray man if you're wearing the specific gun concealing tactical pants than if you're wearing i don't know sweat pants and a flannel

you know like just just just like think about how people actually dress in the world and go like part of effectively doing that is actually paying attention it's like chelsea said if you live in a place where like every third person is a government contractor then yeah maybe maybe go with the khakis and the polo and whatever like right like that's that may be your best bet um but if you're in williamsburg or whatever you're going to have there's going to be different clothing that isn't going to like arouse any suspicion right and you know you know you we you often saw this as an example you know for my own military background you know you would see this with um with special forces right the special operators would come in wearing you know would come into a village wearing just decked out in

tactical gear and with their beard with their beards and their um and their schmogs right and you know of course of course they stand out right you know it it it the idea that they were that they were secret or that they were invisible is is you know they may they may fit into the culture and they may look cool but they you know uh a a true operator uh is is not going to do those things i mean at least one who is who is actually trying to do the great person concept. Yeah, and it's, um, it kind of dovetails into one of the other things, I think, is the dumbest thing you see on kind of like the prepper, whatever, right is a like open carry, which is like, you can't get further from this concept than than visibly carrying a weapon. Yeah, which if if your goal,

and it always should be in a violent situation. Yeah, it should be concealed, but accessible. Yeah, if you're carrying a firearm. But in general, there's a concept within kind of like the military and people who like particularly within kind of like special forces of it's called the onion of survivability.

And the basic idea, you know, it's a diagram of an onion that's supposed to kind of explain to you the different things you can do that make you more survivable in a gunfight or another dangerous situation. And stuff like having body armor is the tiniest part of the onion. Because if body armor is useful to you, a number of things have gone wrong because you've been shot like it's not the worst case scenario but it's the second worst case scenario the things that protect you most are not having body armor they're not being seen if you are seen not being

acquired which means not be but not being seen not being noticed not being targeted is by far like the biggest thing um and so if, you know, you are wherever you are becomes a markedly more dangerous place, whether you specifically are targeted, or if there's just a lot of random violence going on, your best bet for safety is always going to be not being targeted. And obviously, there's no perfectly doing that, right? As you know, we've all seen enough stories of mass shootings where the victim is a bunch of kids in a fucking elementary school. I'm not trying to like victim blame people who do get targeted, but there are things

that you can do to make it less likely that you'll be targeted because anyone looking to do violence is going to target. There are also things that you can't do. Like, you know, like you can't change, you can't change the color of his skin. You can't change the language that you speak, know uh and these are these are things that uh the prepper community just don't take into effect it's always it's always a white it's always a white dude right you know yeah uh you know and i me being a femme presenting trans person right my outfits tend to lean towards something that is non-threatening in a in a gray person situation like and that's

why i i have my sort of uh my soccer mom get up right you know which is you know it's the kind of thing where you know you wouldn't notice me in a in in a um in a walmart right you know it it's i'm not wearing you know i'm not wearing boots i'm not wearing you know fancy clothes i'm not wearing you know it's it's it's stuff that you get at target it's it and it's like faded clothes it's it's faded clothing that maybe like one that's been worn a bit but you know uh neutral neutral tones of clothing um you know a bag you, just what fits for that particular environment, right? You know, and who you are will affect that. You know, if you have brown skin, you are not going to be able to dress up the same way as you would in West Texas.

Like you're not going to be able to blend in the same way that a white, you know, guy in a cowboy, you know, in a-sized cowboy hat is able to do. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora.

An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultuda Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech. billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better

offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building Thank you. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh.

And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with.

His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives with him. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Prandti. And I'm Jemay Jackson Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from

LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise.

Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I would like to talk about something that was brought up a lot last year, mostly towards the end of the protests, was stuff like Cellbrite and Pegasus. Oh, boy. Yeah, the MSI catchers or whatever they are. Yeah, phone hacking slash phone cloning. Specifically, those two brands boast for their abilities to break into Apple phones, both from a distance and, you know,

once the phone is actually, like once they have physical possession of the phone. And, you know, this freaked out a lot of people and people, you know, there's a lot of people when they go to demos, they talk about like not bringing your phone, which can be very useful for a lot of ways. Yeah.

But for some people, it is a necessity because they need, for various reasons, they need it to get around, to get in contact with certain people. So what are good security things to kind of get in the habit of if you need to have your phone at places and you are thinking of these types of surveillance technologies? Is stuff like, are Faraday bags useful? Are certain brands better than others? I know there's a lot of grifting in this kind of sphere online as well. stuff like are our faraday bags useful are are certain brands better than others what are like i know there's a lot of like grifting in this kind of sphere online as well people who like make these like you know security type things you know to protect yourself there's a lot of like dubious websites claiming that they can protect you um yeah yeah how how would one go about

well the first thing if you would be able to explain what CELBRIGHT is and what people could do to try to prevent some of the worst effects. So there are a number of tools that law enforcement and forensics offices use. They're not as good as the intelligence agencies. I think people just jumped immediately to the NSA because of the Snowden leaks in 2013. think people just jumped immediately to the NSA because of the Snowden leaks in 2013. You know, your biggest threat groups are actually going to be much lower tier if you're a protester, since those are those those methods tend to be reserved for the most for the most extreme cases, you know, not anything involving like large mass casualty incidents, national security or, you know, or foreign states.

If you're a protester on the street, your biggest threat group is going to be your local law enforcement and your local federal agencies in the U.S. And the methods that they use are going to be these tools called, there are different brands for it. There are different methods. there are different brands, there are different brands for it. Um, there are different, there are different methods, um, you know, for, uh, IMSI catching, which is an older methods, um, for, uh, you know, capturing your location, both your location, uh, and, uh, what, you know, any text messages that you're doing over SMS, um, can be just sort of grabbed out of the air. Um, uh, if you're using a data plan, you know like just tend to you know your your

your stuff is going to be at a higher level of encryption so you want to keep your if you are going to use your communications use encrypted communications i highly recommend signal um there are a number of problems with whatsapp there's a number of problems with telegram there's another number of problems with all these different applications they will they will provide you some level of protection but sing but signal i think is is just the most is just the safest and the most reliable but it also isn't perfect and there are going to be situations where sig where you know using signal fails um i i you know uh i can think of a number of situations where Signal in particular failed on Android devices that were – that physical possession was obtained by a law enforcement agency. And they were able to even see disappeared messages.

And that brings us back a little bit to the turning off – the thing that is often recommended for protesters, turn off biometrics if you're going – if you're bringing your phone to a protest, which is not ideal, turn off biometrics and –'re going if you're bringing your phone to a protest which is not ideal turn off biometrics and uh and turn off like visible notifications so like when you get messages they aren't popping up with people's names and all the contents of the message because then they don't need to break into the phone they can just watch your screen yeah yeah yeah exactly um yeah put it and do not disturb stick it in a Faraday bag. Put the Faraday bag in one of your holes. Turn off your phone, importantly. If you have a Faraday bag, there's no point.

If you put your bag into a Faraday, if you have your cell phone not on airplane mode and it's on the and you know it's pinging and you've got bars and you leave it on and you put it into a faraday bag you may as well you may as well just be in an elevator at that point because that's the best protection you're going to get you can double wrap it but actually physically like turn it off into completely off to where you actually have to turn it on if you're going to put it into a faraday bag because you are reducing the purpose and the level of protection that you have i know a number of people who have made this mistake where they think oh my phone is safe because it's in a faraday bag well you know you have you are muffling yours you're getting one bar but you're you're still if somebody's close enough and they have the if they have if they're physically close enough they can still imzi catch they can still identify you and and your phone is automatically going to try to

transmit harder and and use up more battery power so it's it's even a risk in terms of like you know uh just soaking sucking up all the juice out out of your battery as quickly as possible you know by putting it in there and it's not, it's not off. Um, and yeah, I think that turning off your phone, keep putting it into a Faraday bag, um, is, is the best, is the best compromise for not bringing your phone at all. Um, that's what I tend to do is I turn off my phone, put it into a Faraday bag, dig it into my bag. And then if I need it, I can pull it out. And I keep my phone on airplane mode and use you know like whatever wi-fi services there are with a vpn like these are things that I do if I'm if I'm in a situation like that um one thing that's been on my mind more and more are you know situations where which are more extreme and

which are less of what we've been seeing for the last decade or so. And what do you mean by that? states haven't seen haven't seen very often the full effects of the security establishment just unleashed unchained yeah right that boomerang hasn't come all the way back around yet right oh it has it's just the people forgotten about situations where the government has unleashed its full potential right you know i often yeah oh even even bigger like you know uh the the biggest the biggest example that i can think of is the boston bombing right where essentially west boston and and cambridge and watertown were turned into a we're turned into a military occupation right where they were just warlessly busting down doors, using every single surveillance method, you know,

and just, you know, somebody, you know, pushed the, you know, somebody in Washington pushed the button and said, we're going to, you know, unleash the full potential, you know. And it was over two guys, you know, who murdered a couple of people, you know. And more people have died in some of these protests than, you know, and and who who murdered a couple of people you know uh you know and more people have done more more people have died in some of these protests than you know than they killed and injured in that bombing so you know like the the government has the option and the choice to fully unleash its full potential and those are the kinds of situations that i've been trying to

sort of threat model for it's situations that are more extreme and that are that we haven't really encountered before. What happens whenever warrants don't mean anything? What happens whenever you have a blend, a hybridized blend between whether you can't tell whether it's a paramilitary street gang or if it's a legitimate law enforcement agency? Which is something that happened to people in oregon last year with the checkpoints during fire season where

there were folks who looked almost indistinguishable from cops and in their body armor and guns uh checking people for driving into certain towns um it's a mild version of the thing you're talking about. But like, this isn't, you know, this isn't what you're modeling is like, five minutes ahead. It's not a not a huge leap. that instance you know um you may not have internet access it may be shut down it may be restricted right you know so a lot of those things a lot of those resources that i was suggesting before in terms of protecting yourself are you know uh are for situations where you have a somewhat functioning you know liberal society and government right with, with some norms and protections, right? What if those norms and protections are eroded to a certain point or they are removed, then you need to start looking, thinking about like the kinds of methods that are used by more extreme situation and more extreme situations, such as in conflict zones, like

where you were, you might not use your cell phone at all you may only use a laptop you know uh that is disconnected from the internet and to do all of your things you may have to physically carry you know um usb devices to transfer information you may need you know your your least concern may be showing up at a protest. Your primary motivation may be to avoid all crowds at all, you know, in those kinds of situations. You know, that's what I've been talking about in terms of like threat modeling. You have to understand what your threat is

and that can change, you know. If you're a normie, that can shoot up if you're in a situation where you're not sure who the actual governing authority is. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me as the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonoro. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters, to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures.

I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows. As part of My Cultura podcast network. Available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search,

better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse, and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge, and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry, and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez.

Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba.

Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzales wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban,

I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Parenti. And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck.

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I don't want to, with this, get to the place where we're like, we're like trying to ant people up or freak them out. Part of the point of like thinking about this stuff and understanding kind of the risks and what could happen and how to mitigate it is so that it's less freaky if something like it happens. Right. And so that you're kind of prepared and understand like what the possibilities are um and i i wonder kind of why you think we didn't hit things didn't go as like to the extent you're talking about like what happens if this national security apparatus turns like it on fully and hits people kind of like full in the face. What do you think that didn't happen last year?

So I think it didn't happen last year because, you know, the, it was, it wasn't, it was too big of a protest movement for the government to, to try to suppress fully. And it would lead to backlash.

And also it wasn't it wasn't enough of a threat to the order of things so to speak um for it to be for that level of you know of extreme measures to be uh enacted and and and used right um those are those those methods tend to be used for the most extreme situations in which the the the federal in which the federal government in particular, not just the state and local authorities, but the federal government feels that there is a that there is a distinct threat. I mean, obviously, in the case of the Boston bombing, they viewed that they viewed the you know, they viewed that situation very differently than they do, you know, a couple thousand people protesting, you know, it just it just has very, very different. It has a very, very different intent. What my concern is, is what happens when, you know, local state and local authorities in a particular region or locality cease to function,

they just stop showing up and what the federal government does in that situation, right? Where law enforcement decides, actually, we're going to let people murder each other. We don't care. We're going to let paramilitary groups do policing operations. We don't care you know in that kind of situation uh the federal government may step in uh and assert its authority you know and it has happened before you know reconstruction um you know where shit you know there wasn't really a share there weren't really sheriffs that you could go to

in the south so you know the military military essentially established its own court system, its own government. So there is precedent, but it's never been used in the 21st century, high technology, high surveillance, like, you know, like the Union Army in South Carolina was not using drones, right? I wonder if the closest thing we've gotten to that sort of recently was during the LA riots in the 90s. Yes. I mean, like, you know, they deployed the army there. I think we almost got that last summer.

We did. Yeah. The problem there, the problem is, is that it was happening in too many cities and the federal, the military only had, like people forget the military only has so many logistics that it can move at a time, right? It actually takes time to move a division of troops, right? You can move a brigade combat team in 96 hours only because that brigade combat team has been designated and has been trained for and been tooled up for six months to be able to do that.

And it can only do that. It only has that capability for and been tooled up for six months to be able to do that and it can only do that it only has that capability for a year right so a the idea that you can move multiple divisions of troops to a to multiple major cities uh in a in the span of a week or a month is is a reaching you know you have to pre-stage that stuff it takes time it takes time to move this stuff even even if you cut corners you know the redeployment afghanistan is about the speed that you're going to see uh a a deployment within the united states of say um the military or and and that's essentially like a deployment to a city and is even in some ways kind of less than you would need because of

the limited scope of the mission if you were trying to like lock down new york or los angeles right you could you could send you could send active troops to los angeles in 1992 because it's limited to los angeles you have a specific mission you also have you know there used to be a military base that was nearby um you know, not not nearby, like nearby in military terms, like a three hour drive. You know, you had you had what is it, Fort Ordo in. Yeah. And there's over by Monterey. I don't know if it was called Bazalone yet, but yeah, there's like Marine Corps training bases near San Diego. Yeah. Yeah. So, you you know like it's feasible right the idea that

you can that you can do this in in uh what 50 60 cities is yeah you can't do it it's yeah we couldn't do it iraq with uh with 120 000 troops so you know the best the best we could do was like deploy was deploy a what was deploy a division here and there and play what John McCain called whack-a-mole? Trump did ask the military to come to Portland. They just said no because they thought it would be a bad idea. Instead, we got the DHS.

Where would those troops come from? What kind of affiliation would they have? National Guard troops tend to reflect the sentiment of a slightly more right wing, you know, version of the population. Maybe maybe the Overton window is a little bit more to the right, but not that much. You know, yeah, they're not not certainly not as much as like cops it's a much more mainstream chunk of the populace um yeah which is why when we did have national guard in portland uh they were a lot less violent than the federal agents had been or than the cops yeah they're also green you know they're they don't have the they don't they they haven't been inculcated

or indoctrinated for years with this idea that we are we are here to occupy and to suppress right um in this very that it takes a while for that mindset to sort of set in it did happen in iraq and afghanistan so it doesn't mean that troops can't won't won't gain that mindset if there's if there was a domestic occupation of some variety from a federalization of troops, but it would start to kick in. It wouldn't take as long as you think. Maybe a few violent incidents before that mentality starts to kick in.

The one other interesting thing to look at in terms of how fast security apparatus can be deployed is in the days after January 6th, there was a lot of people who were getting door were like the fbi showed up at my house and they said that they knew i was around january 6th and they like they showed me on a map the actual spot where i was standing on the sidewalk and like the fbi very quickly got tons of phone records uh yeah that was like immediate so like they don't always have them all the time but they can get them very quickly whenever they watch too yeah yeah yeah they were reaching out to so many people that like fbi agents whose job is not at all doing anything like that like everybody who was like not out sick for work was doing doorknob

knocks like people who were in completely different branches because they were they were they had gotten so many people's records and they were just kind of flooding the zone um yeah which i think is less less about fact finding because i don't think i don't know how much i think it was less about fact finding and more about kind of a show of force yeah the kind of force that the fbi does exert which is information force primarily yeah i mean that in presence you know the fact that they can knock on door they can knock on your doors even though they there may not be no actual purpose you might not have information but they don't care because the whole point is we knocked on your door like we yeah you know um that it it one6 was the second, I mean, was I think the largest investigation,

which is quite something if you look at the fact that 9-11 was previously the largest investigation. Like 9-11 is now the second largest federal law enforcement investigation in U.S. history with 1-6 being higher. We did it, everybody. We beat Bin Laden. Yeah. So, you know, it-

Ladies and gentlemen, we got it. The capability exists. It's a matter of actually enabling those resources, you know? So, and in that instance, it was for 18 people. In this instance, it was for several hundred, which is one of the reasons why it scaled out. Yeah, we're closing in on the concept the consequences the consequences from law from like the federal agency's perspective of the the of this investigation are different like i don't

think anybody's gonna i don't think you're looking at a death penalty guantanamo case i i guess one other thing that i i wouldn't see see if you think is something you can take from it, which is that, you know, if you look at the response between like the people fighting outside the White House last summer and then January 6th, is that there's kind of. You get safety in numbers to some extent, like it doesn't always protect you. You know, a lot of people like I mean, there's there bunch of feds, there were a bunch of fed raids in Atlanta at the end of last year for people who were involved in protest stuff, but yeah, I guess the more unrest

is happening, the more sort of... the harder it is for the crackdown to come. Yes, which is why they tend to hold back. Security forces have a tendency... This is why they tend to hold back. You know, security forces have to. I mean, this is why I think it's very important. If there is another uprising situation like last year, you know, and I don't think I don't think I don't think that they've I don't think that that is that is over from their perspective.

They are going to continue to do investigations into what happened in summer 2020. You know, there are investigations still ongoing from the stuff that happened in 2016, you know, with Standing Rock. So, you know, obviously, you know, like the investigation in my own personal case in 2010 seems to never end, right? You know, so... Oh, you had something happen in 2010?

Yeah, I had... Yeah, I got... I won't get into that. But, you know but the the point is is that is that the the one of the advantages that a federal that the federal government or state law enforcement has is time you know they they don't have to always be there in a show of force um so you want to reduce you know if if you and that time can mean political changes right you know where a situation like under a republican president will be different than a uh democratic president will be different than a situation where they're where it's unclear who the president is

well this has been a fun one um fun stuff to think about um chelsea where can the good people or the bad people find you uh the good people or the bad people can find me at xy chelsea uh on twitter i am at xy chelsea 87 on twitch i do some game streams periodically. I have slowed that down a bit, though. I have a Patreon at patreon.com forward slash xychelsea for content that I am currently in the late stages of producing

for tech-related things, including things like cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, surveillance, those kinds of concepts. And I am also on Instagram at xychelsea87. Oh, and I have a TikTok now. So I'm working on several TikToks that are related to these kinds of things.

Privacy, surveillance, and protecting yourself. As I showed, my everyday carry bag was one of the first things that i showed awesome well all right uh find chelsea there and find us tomorrow with another episode of it could happen here talking about i don't know something something something let's go oh actually garr, we know what it'll be. Why don't you put in a plug for the thing you did? Oh, yeah. Tomorrow I will be releasing the first of a two-part episode on my trip to northern Minnesota. I traveled to an Earth First gathering and subsequent Stop Line 3 protest camp.

Was there for a little over a week. Was present in documenting multiple kind of direct actions. And yeah, we'll be talking about both like Earth First and like the history of environmental organizing, and then the more modern kind of Stop Line 3 protests going on

and what Enbridge is doing. So that is going to be the next two episodes, we will be covering that topic. All right. And actually, another fun little side note. I just finished a video game called Telling Lies, which is about the federal surveillance operation into an environmental protest group.

And I think this game was done very well. I would love to talk about it more on the podcast eventually after I do some more reading on its development. But if you want to get a look at potential ways feds do surveillance, this game is actually a great example of how they infiltrate environmental activist groups and different methods they use to surveil people

and how they can pull videos and phone records, that kind of stuff. So just fun tangent on all these topics. Yeah, this has been a fun day for everybody. Well, that's going to do it for us that it could happen here. Oh, this wasn't even the heaviest stuff that I could get into. Well, we'll do that maybe in another week. Thanks, Chelsea.

All right. Well, until next week or tomorrow, whatever. Bye. It happened. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.