Most of the tips are absurd, but one is absolutely dangerous, and I will focus on that one here. NYT writes:
USE ONLY A DESIGNATED DEVICE Security experts suggest using a separate, designated device for sensitive communications. Of course, few things say philanderer, or meth dealer, for that matter, like a second cellphone.But the problem is greater than just having a second cellphone that you don't keep out of sight. Through casual reading it has become clear to me, though never divulged directly in an MSM article, that the government must have a method to determine who is using a second cellphone. I suspect they have the capability to track what I call parallel cell phone tower movements. If two cell phones are simultaneously hitting the same cellphone towers all the time, it is either two people travelling together, working together, etc. or one person with two cellphones. Monitoring the situation for 24 hours would in most cases identify, which is which.
Thus, carrying two cellphones will not defeat tracking done by anyone who has access to "parallel cellphone movement" data. This can only be defeated by keeping one cellphone off most of the time, the private cellphone. When a call from this phone is to be made, the regular cellphone should be left at home (or at the office) and the second cellphone should only be turned on and a call made when the private phone is far enough away so that a different cell tower picks up the signal and not the same one as the home (office) cellphone.
But, this will only help you against low level tracking methods, perhaps an infidelity investigation by a private detective. If you really are a spy, keeping the cellphone shut off won't help, I recall reading that a government in the Middle East (I forget which) tracked down some spy because they tracked cell phones that were only turned on for brief spurts, which is what he did.
Steganography. Embed the message in an imagine that has a password to view. It's nice to know those torrenting are well ahead of the thugs.
ReplyDeleteIf you don't want your internet searches tracked use DuckDuckGo.com.
ReplyDeleteNo one thing will allow you any sort of anonymity. In fact- any collection of activities, used frequently enough, will allow you to be "found" as well. The goal is to keep introducing randomness into your activities so that you don't establish a pattern. One time pads/keys work well but have their drawbacks. Using a different email account (rotating randomly between google, hotmail/outlook, yahoo, etc. will work because you remove the volume if information passed through one set of tools. Posting seemingly innocuous messages to various message boards on different subjects, etc. should also be part of the communications toolkit.
ReplyDeleteThe more you send through one channel increases the probability that you will be discovered, decrypted,found, etc.
The challenge is that your correspondent has to know where and when you are trying to communicate with them (and vice versa). It has very similar drawbacks to one time pads/keys.
It's all a question of how much risk of discovery that you are willing to accept.
There is a plus side to this. In a generation or two, law enforcement personnel will become so dependent on wireless taps and tracking of online activity, that they will not know what do to if someone does not have a Facebook account.
ReplyDeleteNo, *all* people will be issued serialed Facebook accounts along with their Social Security numbers.
DeleteIt will be a crime to be unregistered on the internet, citizen.
For safety.
This is completely false. We are entering a world where people who do not have facebook accounts or cell phones are slim minorities and can be tracked based on that.
DeleteOnly criminals want to evade tracking. You're a traitor if you don't think the government is always good. /sarc
ReplyDeleteYou could also keep your second phone in a faraday bag...
ReplyDelete