Moving from US to a country that will kill reearchers/reporters like me for looking into any area they do not approve of. So I am thinking of what I can bring from the US to prepare. US Intel works with this country as they are one of the black sites for renditions to be tortured (literally people were kidnapped by US sent there for their expertise in torture).
So: plan is to follow general OPSEC I know of which is buy a new or used laptop with cash in person where no cameras are, and to do the same with a wireless dongle and SIM card. SIM card is what we used over there, and I know not to use it except away from where I live and only on public wifi spots.
I am going with Whonix+Qubes for general use, and TAILS for the sensitive material. Veracrypt, PGP are obvious. A VPN, I want to see if I can find something more secure than relying on a middleman to not log my data.
Faraday cage inside a bag for the burner phones, sim cards, and the laptop; likely will get two just in case so the laptop never has to connect outside of public wifi or through burner sim cards.
Is there a good way to destroy a laptop instantneously? I know the electromagnetic shit from movies does not work esp with SSDs. Physical destruction is best but can be recovered if not done right. RAM can be recovered for up to an hour, though it does take low temps but still possible after an hour since unplugged. I know wiping it with 0s is an option but that takes a long time. I know TAILS is likely best, and I doubt they have the expertise nor the knowledge to recover information from RAM within an hour. I'll do what that Silk Road guy didn't and attach the USB flash drive to my risk to yank out. Going to review that Wikileaks shit, but I doubt much is applicable except smart TVs are of course compromised.
Been tortured before, so not my concern, but making sure no one else is arrested is. TAILS I guess is my best bet.
What are some general things to look at beyond this?
Oh and is there a way to get a secure email service? Protonmail is all I know of after all the others were shit down. I don't much about Tor but naturally thatll be my browser for Protonmail if necessary and for whatever else.
I am wondering if placing sources of extreme voltage spikes inside the cage would be enough to destroy inductance from the flux within the laptop and sim cards components. I would do literal explosives, but that's not feasible and no guarantee that'll work with such a small explosive that would have to be used so I don't die as well.
Landon Brown
Protonmail is botnet but not authoritarian botnet so you should be fine.
Brayden Baker
From stories I've heard here and there, in case you just end up falling under non-targetted search, the most likely thing you'll encounter is really basic or low-tech measures. Supposedly officers in certain parts of china ask people to unlock their phones to look for forbidden apps, and look through messages.
Next at the airport you might be asked to provide a password for your laptop, or they might temporarily confiscate your laptop, plug in usb/remove HD, take an image of the contents, return it right away.
I don't think heavy encryption of contents will really cover your ass. The kind of people that authentically believe they're 'protecting their borders' will just see your attempts to block them/encrypt your shit/destroy your own stuff as a form of suspicious behavior and just jail you for that instead.
Regardless of whether passwords are a form of protected speech or not, whether you're legally allowed to encrypt your own shit and not tell them jack, law enforcement typically doesn't care. They still have their most important tool, not even torture, simply instead wasting your time. They're allowed to just keep you for hours while they discuss strategies in the back if you make like a wall and plead the fifth.
So instead I'd reccomend either to set up 'dummy' unencrypted content for people to find, or do all your computing over a large capacity USB drive (I dunno, rufus or something?) or hotswap hard drives. At the end of your laptop session, disable usb ports so plugging in usb for imaging doesn't work.
Jackson Scott
The militia checkpoints would do that. Check your phone and check your ID card then depending on who controlled that checkpoint that day, shoot you, so that I know how to get around and will have measures in place for that.
The airport shit I heard about but I didn't know they were doing that.
Thanks didn't know that was an option, I'll be researching that.
My fear is intelligence services giving it over to America or Israel because they are allies of both, and the labor movement I am researching is getting people killed left and right.
Ideally, no electronics is always the best. I know how to mostly shield signals but not anything when it comes to computer. The physical part, no problem. The cryptography and protocols, no idea. The math I can understand, all the protocols and such no idea.
So I think your idea is best. A removable drive for storage, but then I need to think of where to physically hide it and ensure that is secure and able to be quickly destroyed.
I guess I need to research how to wipe solid state memory. I do not think they will have the capability of cooling the RAM down within an hour while beating me until unconscious before waking in a cell to be electroshocked or worse depending on conditions. Or if I piss off a local warlord/militia then I just get shot if I'm lucky.
Nicholas Gutierrez
What about a microwave?
Ian Sullivan
this thread got me hard gl for your research user
Chase Williams
Seems dependent on the type and whether it's shielded.
I already have a German research paper that tells how to unlock every flash drive or SSD or whatever that comes with disk encryption. So I know not to use those.
If I recall, solid state is NAND logic gates. I will see what's possible with that, but I need to get to my little library and read back up on the material structure of the gates themselves since I do not trust any type of software wiping, I will want to see if there is a setup I can make to destroy the logic gates themselves one way or the other.
I think reverse directing a diode will degrade the doping junction enough, but to get inside, I might as well take a hammer and blowtorch.
Really seems like physical destruction is the only possible way. Either to get to get inside the shell to destroy the inners quite easily (which a microwave would do to fuck the silicon) or to simply melt and shred it.
I think just using tried and true cryptography not based on software to further hide names and such based on a book cypher or some nonsense would be something to further do. I guesss obscurification is the best chance and hope they don't look further,
so the placing normal stuff on a laptop and maybe leaving a bit of a trail of false leads that go nowhere because if I am arrested, they obviously know and giving them something will satisfy them and lead to a speedier release hopefully since they only care about their reputation and they cannot go back empty handed.
What the fuck are you doing on the internet that is so SUPER SEKRIT? Can't you just not do that? Also why are you moving to this new country if it's so bad?
Nicholas Russell
It sounds like you're moving work-related, so I'd suggest contacting your employer. Some agencies / broadcasters offer professional advice to their reporters. Some also offer special ways of communication / secure connections. Overall you're on a good track, but every country / job is different. For example if you'd often need to pass metal detector checkpoints I wouldn't recommend building shielding into your backpack.
In addition to what you suggested I would like to suggest the usage of TOR. It can be handy to circumvent censorship but can also be really useful for a remote file storage on a server in a non-shithole nation. You could access it through TOR upload / download files you need to persist somewhere safe (encrypted, mind you).
Jason Hill
>TOR TOR, for things that matter, needs to be used intelligently. For the average user, TOR is sufficient because it brings plausible deniability, but for someone who needs to escape the eyes of a global passive adversary (impossible by the way), they need to make it look as if they are not using TOR at all. If it comes down to it, maybe not even a VPN.
True, but we hardly know about OPs situation. For many reporting situations it is still adequate, and will conceal the real location of a server on the onionnet. As long as OP isn't directly targeted it will most likely just look like another citizen trying to look at something they shouldn't. Which will raise some flags but probably won't really escalate.
For some really shitty countries we deployed sat-communications, but that is probably out of OPs scope.
Liam Evans
Some brainstorming here is fine, but just pay for professional advice if you really going to risk your life. Make sure that all your gear looks ordinary and boring e.g. windows laptop with boring content. Do not hide anything that would be obvious you have hidden it on purpose (e.g. encrypted usb with real stuff) - that might put a target on your back if regime is paranoid.
Elijah Howard
Ehh that's not too scary considering the computer in question needs to have malware installed on it in order for the software to read emanations.
Gabriel Hill
Get a VPS and set up shadowsocks-goquiet server. Buy new 3/4G modem on the street. Use any device/os with decent encryption. If you are really paranoid use live cd and store all your data on remote terminal server.
For your laptop I'd definitely look into using some sort of deniable encryption. I know veracrypt can do this but I think only on winblows. Make sure your laptop doesn't become susceptible to an evil maid attack so that means don't let it out of your site or install a distro with an encrypted usb boot drive, and consider using luks encryption with a detached header. I've heard of someone saying they used a distro with an external USB encrypted boot drive with an encrypted keyfile and detached luks header and would mail that to his destination and would take his laptop with him through checkpoints. They tried to get him to open his laptop to show him the contents but without the boot drive and luks header it was literally impossible to decrypt it. This may work with some countries but I imagine some others would probably indefinitely lock him up until it was opened. So as always it depends on your threat model. Personally I'm not sure I'd trust tails over Qubes + Whonix. Qubes + Whonix is about as good as you'll get to remain anonymous imo.
Jason Garcia
Doesn't using a bridge mitigate this problem ?
Daniel Taylor
Is feasible that you could try to run some distro of Linux in RAM and get everything on a trusted server via VPN?
James Walker
3rd world shitholes tend to have pretty slow internet.
Adam Sanchez
He will work with videos or only text? If its the first thing, then yes. He's pretty much fucked.
Joshua Price
Lol keep dreaming
Jayden Foster
you're saying "killing reporters" as if it was a bad thing
Nolan Ortiz
Hello My Name Is: Not FBI
Tyler Barnes
What country?
Kevin Fisher
Hello OP.
The best OPSEC is where you hide in plain sight. This willl give you the advantage.
My personal advice: Dont use encryption or TOR. This is easily detected and will make you be suspicious.
Even using VPN might be suspicious if you are targetted. And using common ones will usually be monitored in a dystopian regime. Your best option is using sshtunnel to a VPS you setup( your own setup vpn) where you keep your critical files in encrypted form.
Get a new harddrive and install windows 7. Its the most normie OS. Never put anything suspicious on it. Once you are inside remove HDD(or keep it but sont boot from it) and use Qubes/tails on a USB pen. You can easily yank and destroy/swallow/hide a usb pen.In anycase it will only contain a distro nothing else.
Use 2 sims one for internet and keep it offline till you are in crowded areas. The other for your local nonsuspicious calls. Never mix the 2.
Austin Bell
Option 1. Why are you LARPing? Option 2. Why are you putting your life on the line like this? Do you really think fighting this political fight out in the world is worth your life?
