CZM Book Club: Escape, part one

Margaret reads an anonymously authored speculative fiction story about what people could do if large scale roundups began, and discusses it with an anarchist technology enthusiast.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media book Club, the club Club Club Club
Club Club Club that'll never get old. Everyone loves it.
Everyone loves thinking back to the era of when every
conversation had to be on zoom and you realized you
couldn't sink anything. This is Cool Zone Media book Club.

(00:26):
I'm your host, Marta Kiljoy, and this is the book
club that you don't have to do the reading for
because I do it for you. And this time I
mean that more than usual, because I'm going to do
some reading and then I'm going to talk with my
friend about that reading. I'm going to talk to my
friend Greg. Hi, Greg, how are you.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
I'm doing well? How about you?

Speaker 1 (00:48):
I'm doing good. I'm up late, so I have like energy,
which of course is logical and will serve me. Well, no,
it isn't. I'm going to crash really hard after we're
done recording, but other than that, I'm okay. So the
story that I want to read to you, Greg is
a story that you've already read. And I know that

(01:09):
because when I read this story, I reached out to
you because my friend Greg, for anyone who's listening, is
let's call you an anarchist technology enthusiast that's a normal
thing to say. Is that a fair way to describe you?

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yes, If it has a circuit, I probably opened it
up or played with it or learned how it works.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
Awesome. This is a science fiction story, rather a speculative
fiction story that appeared on the website crimethink dot com
earlier this week. It appeared on March twenty.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
First.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
If you want to go and read it yourself, it's
at crimething dot com, slash whatever stuff. I don't know.
Just search it, but don't google it. As we'll talk about,
you should probably duck duck go it. This is a
story called Survival, a story about anarchists enduring mass raids,
and it's a thought experiment. It's speculative fiction and kind

(02:09):
of one of the oldest definitions of that, one of
the oldest concepts of that, which is just literally, hey,
what would happen if and what kind of like science
and technology can we use to address a set of problems?
And before we start, I'll say what I overall think
is that I find this a really interesting thought experiment,

(02:31):
but one that I have, like I had some maybe
critiques of and so that's why I decided to talk
to my friend Greg, and so we're going to kind
of read this story and then talk it through to you.
And this is going to be a two week thing
because this is a slightly longer than normal story. I
don't know, Greg, what are your first thoughts going into
this thing that people don't know what we're talking about yet.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah, I would say that my first thoughts are about
the same. I think that it's always good to write
out things, to imagine scenarios that you might be in,
so you can preemptively think through how you would deal
with them. And I think that this story does a
good job of that. And I think that, like part
of the reason why I wanted to talk about this
with other people is that I think we could go

(03:14):
a little bit deeper and then maybe come out on
the other end where people can think about it a
little bit more an actionable way in their everyday lives,
as opposed to reading this and then you know, going
on to the next terrible thing of the day.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
Yeah, that's a good point. We had to start this
late because I had just reinstalled everything on my computer
and part of my process of de googling, and I
encourage people to not necessarily do exactly that. But this
is a really good moment in your life. Whoever you are,
you probably interact with technology, you actually do because you're

(03:48):
listening to this, and it's a good moment to readdress
the ways that you do it. So this story, we'll
just start reading it to you. So there's a little preamble.
In November nineteen nineteen, United States President Woodrow Wilson launched
mass raids against the entire anarchist movement. The United States

(04:12):
police simultaneously arrested thousands of anarchists in many different parts
of the country, shutting down their newspapers, organizations, and meeting halls.
That part's not fiction, just to interject, that's just the
thing that happened. If similar raids were to take place today,
they would occur in a technological landscape involving mass surveillance

(04:33):
and targeted electronic attacks. Those who survive would also have
to adopt different tools. Section one Escape. When the police
battering ram hits his door at four eleven am, Jake
is in his boxers on the floor playing an emulated
side scroller. The adrenaline hits and within seconds he has

(04:56):
jammed his bedroom window open, sliding down into the backyard
and often a run, his socks instantly soaked in the grass.
He hears shouting, but doesn't look back to check if
there are pigs looking out his window or chasing him
from the side of the house. He jumps the back
fence more awkwardly than he imagined, getting a splinter deep
in his left hand, but he ignores it and dashes

(05:19):
over the roof of the neighbor's shed, trying to remember
every detail of the surrounding blocks. In what feels like
an instant, he's two blocks away, hiding behind some bushes
as a squad car drives by. His breath sounds to
him like the loudest thing in the world, and his
mind spins as he imagines a neighbor coming out behind him.

(05:40):
He's in nothing but boxers and muddy socks, and his
hand is dripping blood. Nothing happens. The squad car crawls
down another block. Time to move. Vera is almost home
from work, listening to music in her headphones when she
comes around a bend and sees the corner of a
swat outside her punk house. She pivots immediately down another street,

(06:05):
casually continuing her walk while pulling out her phone. She
knows she should immediately turn it off, but first she
texts a group chat house being raided and then turns
it off. Maybe that warning will help someone. Many phone
batteries remain active even when the device is off. She
knows right now, some lazy junior officer could be noticing

(06:27):
the GPS or her network connection triangulating her as she
moves away. Should she throw it? Should she abruptly stomp
on her phone out here in the street. There's a
drainage vent coming up. She could toss it in and
keep walking via hesitates. Her phone is encrypted, but against
everyone's advice, she uses a short password. If they dig

(06:50):
it out of the drain, she doesn't know how to
pry out the SD card. Stomping on the whole device
might draw attention and not even destroy the main memory.
Time is of the essence, so she makes a hard
choice quickly and tosses the whole thing in the drain.
She's just a normal person on a walk, and she

(07:10):
keeps walking away vera hears a car rolling up behind
her slowly. It takes every ounce of willpower to keep
walking normally, not to look back and terror. Maybe she should,
Maybe she should just run for it. The car parks
behind her, and there's the sounds of a mom unloading
young kids. She's not being followed where to now. Julie

(07:35):
and Maggie sit at their dining room table. Just want
to point out that I'm not only reading this story
because it has a character named Maggie in it, but
that was a consideration and a bonus. I really appreciate
everyone writing in Maggie's, Margaret's and Magpies. Julie and Maggie
are sitting at their dining room table, struggling not to

(07:56):
reflect panic at each other. Only one news outlet is
even reporting the nationwide raids, and there's almost nothing there.
Messages saying leave and then delete. This group chat keep
popping up for both of them, little spatters of reports
on raids and then silenced. A friend who is always
too frantic is spamming everyone asking for updates. Then suddenly

(08:19):
she's silent. There's an hour of nothing. They trade terse
updates with a friend who lives far away. Someone local
suddenly appears online, but only to post a meme and
a dead channel and then disappear. The same music plays
on the same radio stations. The wind blows through the trees,

(08:41):
A cousin asks for advice with a preschool situation, totally oblivious.
The local news does a puff piece about local business,
the neighbors get a pizza delivery, and your favorite podcast
is interrupted by advertisements. That's a thing that happens. It's
totally in the story. I totally didn't just I added that.

(09:02):
I added it right now, here's the ads.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
And we're back.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
What ads, Greg, do you think that we should add here?

Speaker 2 (09:16):
It's probably for Signal, Yeah, and ad for Signal and
potatoes and sweet potatoes and wearing a mask. Those would
all be good ads I would support.

Speaker 1 (09:27):
All right, Well, this is brought to you by all
of those things. I know we'll talk about a little
bit more later. But Signal is having a moment right
now in the news because of some major OPSEP fails
on the part of the government. But it doesn't mean
that Signal itself is broken. Everyone. Signal is the current
most effective and encrypted thing. Honestly. The fact that our

(09:49):
enemies use it is part of the evidence of that.
All right, But the story, they're probably not going to
come for us. We haven't done anything. Their confused dog
is whining with shared nerves. Maggie keeps eyeing the go
bag by the door they packed together months ago. That afternoon,

(10:10):
Julie had made a show of being a good sport,
humoring her need to prep. Now all Maggie can think
about is everything they're missing. Julie's passport has just expired.
Can they get across the border If only they had
done a dry run. They take the dog out on
a walk, leaving all devices home, whispering potential plans to

(10:31):
one another, trying not to draw attension as a jogger
passes them by. When they get home, there's a private
message on Instagram from a friend saying they're putting together
a legal defense committee. First meeting will be public at
a public park. They're inviting some local liberal journalists as shields.
Somebody at the local ALLT Weekly says she's writing a story.

(10:52):
There's a lawyer coming from a big name liberal thing.
The Internet keeps being really slow, doesn't deliver messages, and
then suddenly delivers three all at once. Loading a lot
of websites just returns errors. They're so sleep deprived of
stress that when they finally crash together on the couch,
they sleep right through the Defense Committee meeting. A friend

(11:15):
knocks loudly on their door and they nearly die of
heart attacks. Assuming it's the cops. His report back is terse.
Almost no journalists showed. Most of the folks who went
have been grabbed. One was driven down off her bike
on her way home. An old liberal lawyer went to
the county jail with a court order and the cops
just laughed and arrested her. He's going underground, and he

(11:40):
suggests they do too. But Julie and Maggie have a life.
They have jobs at least for now, as they've both
called out sick, and they have a house. They're normal now,
even law abiding. Burn a few posters, donate a few
books to the neighborhood little libraries, to lead a few accounts.
Maybe they can pass upstanding citizens. If we leave our

(12:03):
shit here and stop paining, we'll lose everything we've built
since poverty, plus have to pay some ridiculous fine. If
they do get raided, maybe it'll just be a few
days in lock up, in and out, just a performance
of a crackdown. The lips will get mad about the lawyers. Surely,
neither of them has been able to cook since the

(12:23):
raids first started, so they drive out together to grab pickup.
Waiting for a light, Maggie stares at something on the
side of the street and then leaps out of the
truck's passenger side door without a word. Julie is frightened
at first, then furious, but when she pulls the truck
over and heads back to Maggie, she sees her partner

(12:44):
kneeling next to a homeless man lying at an odd angle.
We don't have our phones. We can't call a paramedic,
she reminds Maggie, but then recognition dawns on her. It's
one of their friends. Under the mess of blisters and
swollen bruises, his eyes are open, staring at nothing. He

(13:04):
lived in one of the first punk houses that was rated.
He never went to anything besides some hardcore shows. He
was just a baker. They don't pick up their meal.
They head home, dog go bag some last minute additional ideas,
camping gear, encrypted backup drives, medicine, dry food, clothes, blankets, phones,

(13:29):
and leftover devices, smashed house key hidden somewhere in the
yard for a friend. Maggie looks at her cheap Cassio watch.
That's time, we need to go. That's the end of
section one, and we're gonna read section two today too,
but first we're gonna talk about section one and what

(13:49):
should we talk about with it.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
So one thing that came up for me initially is
that I'm not really familiar with the nineteen nineteen raids,
and so I was wondering if you could talk a
little bit about that.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
Yeah, okay, So there is one of the things that
about this particular piece that I think kind of stood
out to me is like, not necessarily, it's a thought experiment, right,
and it's projecting the idea of like what if they
came for the anarchists? And I think actually, as we
go further into the piece, we'll learn that it's talking

(14:22):
about like what if they came for the radicals in general, right,
in a big mass roundup that includes anarchists. But there
is a historical precedent for specifically coming after the anarchists.
The first Red Scare was nineteen nineteen nineteen. I want
to say maybe eighteen as well, I'm not certain, And

(14:43):
they often get called the Palmer Raids. And I don't
have all my notes in front of me, which is
terribly embarrassing because I had all the time in the
world have my notes in front of me, but I
did not. But basically, these were raids that came after
primarily an immigrant anarchist group across the country, but especially
in York City and specifically Russian anarchists and Russian labor

(15:04):
organizing around New York City. And there's all these like
great photos you can look up of like, well, there's one,
there's this great photo of these like super dapper anarchists
hanging out and they're like nice wool coats and nice
hats and stuff, waiting for deportation. Fashion is probably not
the most important thing when you look at that particular photo,
but they do have nice fashion.

Speaker 2 (15:26):
That's really cool. Not the raids, but the fashion. Yeah,
that's good context because yeah, I think that this piece
tries to open with that and contextualize I believe also,
you know, international policing was invented to hunt down anarchists
around the world, so yep, But nowadays do we really
feel that this is sort of like, like our anarchists

(15:47):
a threat in this same way that they were in
nineteen nineteen.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
So it's kind of less about whether or not we
are a threat and whether or not we're perceived as
a threat. And a few years ago, like last Trump ter,
he absolutely was mentioning anarchists by name, although kind of
in that catch all way of like these anarchists and antifa,
you know, without any like the whole thing that the
government is always trying to do and everyone's always trying

(16:13):
to do is sort of pretend like we're not actually
a specific ideological branch of socialism. It's just a catch
all word like terrorist or whatever.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
And why was I going on about that?

Speaker 1 (16:25):
Mostly because it bugs me, But like, I think it's
completely possible that they would come for like Antifa, I
think personally, a much more realistic threat model is what
we're seeing now, which is coming after organizers, coming after
people who are specifically related to specific protest movements, which
of course very much includes an awful lot of people

(16:47):
that we know and care about who may be anarchists.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
Yeah that's fair, But.

Speaker 1 (16:54):
Okay, what else? Okay, so we've got the context. Okay,
So in the first scene.

Speaker 2 (16:58):
The person jumps out the window with no shoes and
no pants and no shirt, and it got me thinking
sort of around how when we do preparedness, we're usually
prepared for a disaster, and I think of it, like,
you know, one of the things that I keep in
my bedroom is a fire extinguisher because I figure for
most scenarios, a fire extinguisher is going to be useful.

(17:19):
But like in this case, maybe I need a pair
of slippers by my bed, which in the if I'm
woken up in the middle of the night, do I
know where my shoes are? Or like do I have
the right pants on? Definitely something to consider. I think
if you're preparing with this particular threat model, and then like,
you know, how how do we think about go bags
a little bit differently? And you know, I think most

(17:41):
of the time when we do go bags, it's like, Okay,
you're going to be in a vehicle, You're going to
be going to a shelter. But how does this change
with this particular threat model.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
Yeah, I mean, like, one of the things that's nice
about go bags is that they theoretically are useful for
all kinds of situations. And like, most of the time,
for most people and in general, I think, including right now,
the primary purpose of a go bag is for disaster stuff.
Right A wildfire is still a more realistic threat model
for most people, including most people probably listening to this,

(18:14):
or like earthquakes or I don't know, you just like
really are antsy and want to get out of town
or whatever, or like your friend calls you frantic and
needs your help and they are two states away and
they're like, or you need to get here now, please come,
and you're like, well, fortunately, everything I need to sleep

(18:34):
in my car is in the bag right here, plus
my car, you know, so you can throw it into
your car and get going. But I do think it's
kind of interesting to think about this particular threat model
with go bags and preparedness, of the idea of kind
of a more urban camping model, which is actually I
mean it's literally my own background as a former travel

(18:58):
kid or whatever, you know. I slept on a lot
of rooftops and things like that. The idea of traveling
with a tent was completely nonsensical to me, because I
was like, tent, you put up a tent, they know
where you are, you know, because I was just always
sleeping illegally in different places, and so like, the sleeping
bag was the only object that really.

Speaker 2 (19:14):
Mattered to me out of all of that.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
Maybe a tarp if it's going to be really wet,
but I wouldn't even string up the tarp. I would
just tacco in it. I'm not recommending this. I was
like twenty years old, but like, reading this particular piece
has made me think more about threat models where you're like, Okay,
well I gotta go and I might need to sleep
rough for a couple nights in different places. You know,

(19:36):
what do I need for that. The shoe thing is
really interesting to me. I wear boots, and so like
I'm not throwing on my boots to run away or whatever,
and I'm like, oh, maybe my crocs, you know, maybe
that's the move or maybe like kind of slip on
running shoes or whatever. But something that you brought up
when we were talking about this beforehand was the kind

(19:57):
of like, well, it's not like crazy realistic to get
out a window and out in the backyard during a
house right.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
Yeah. I mean I feel like in house rates, they
surround the house and they try to, you know, shock
you into compliance. So yeah, this person seems like they're
very good at parkore, which is, you know, something I
wish I was more limber for.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
I get the impression that this particular character is a
graph kid and it's okay, yeah, a little bit used
to I'm going to move very quickly and stealthily and like.
And I actually wonder because when I watch videos of
house raids, because I have a normal person's brain and
do normal hobbies, I don't think they always surround the house.

(20:38):
I think that if they're doing like the full swat
or whatever, they might, right, But I don't know, And
so I think that there is a little bit of
a like, I mean, a lot of this is just
pure luck, right this character is playing emulated side scrolling
games at four fourteen am or whatever it is. But yeah,
I don't know. I do like thinking this like sort

(21:00):
of different threat model as relates to our go bags.
But I would actually say with this piece in general, right,
this is less about we need to change our threat
model to include this as what we're doing now, and
more like thinking about, well, this might come up, you know,
we'll talk about it more when we get into the
other sections about the different methods of communication and stuff.

(21:24):
But it's like, it's not stuff that we should start
doing now. Like I don't think that I'm gonna have
to start sleeping with clothes on. I'd hate to start
sleeping with clothes on. That's really just the main problem
for me.

Speaker 2 (21:37):
Makes total sense.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
Yeah, yeah, all right, and then okay, there was another
thing that I was thinking about. Right at the very end,
they're like, I'm and he puts on. I think it's
a I don't remember which character it is. Someone has
their Cassio watch, and specifically I think they're flagging that
it is a like full function non smart watch. I
thought that was kind of clever.

Speaker 2 (21:57):
Yeah, I mean, I prefer calculator risk launch if I
have to pick.

Speaker 1 (22:01):
But wait, do you really have a calculator wristwatch?

Speaker 2 (22:03):
I don't. I'm posing right now, but I think it
is useful just to think of, like, okay, how can
I tell time without my cell phone? And I think,
like the cell phone does occupy a very large space.
And I think as we're thinking about and well, we
can go into sort of the phone and like being
attached to your phone. But you know, it's like do

(22:24):
you have a map in your car? Like I've thought
about getting sort of a a road out list, for example,
just in case, like I don't have GPS service because
and also I've been in situations where GPS has thrown
me on the road that is completely covered in snow,
and I'm like, uh oh, maybe I need to know
how to get out of here.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
You know, I keep a road out list in my vehicle.
I actually use it as my example whenever I watch
because again I have normal person hobbies. Whenever I watch
like right wing people's vehicle bug out vehicle prep stuff
on YouTube, which to be clear, I don't look for
the right wingers, is just to an overwhelming majority of
the people who are like, check out my truck, it's
full of stuff, are a right of center and they

(23:07):
all like have these like back of seat mounted AR
fifteen mounts to put their AR fifteen on the back
of their seat, And I'm like, that's the pocket that
the at list goes in. Think in your life about
the number of times you've needed an atlass versus the
number of times that you've needed not only an AR fifteen,

(23:30):
but a truck AR fifteen ready for rapid deployment. Like
that's a that's a non thing as far as I
can tell. Like, if you are going to be rapidly
using your rifle in a vehicle, you're in a war
and you're not the driver. So yeah. Whenever I see those,

(23:55):
I always am like the map pocket. You covered the
map pocket. Oh yeah, get a road.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
Outlyss This podcast is brought to you by road Outlasses.

Speaker 1 (24:04):
And Rand McNally or whatever.

Speaker 2 (24:07):
Yes, exactly, but yeah, I think we can go into
the section. So they freeting the character's name, but they
see the houses being grated, and they automatically realize that, like,
oh wait, I'm carrying a tracking device on me, And
then there's this tension within the piece around what should
I do with this? So they first talk about the
phone being encrypted but using a short password, which the

(24:29):
good advice is use an alphanumeric password that is sufficiently long.
Now for our phones, you mostly open it one handedly.
You probably are doing something else, and like most of us,
probably either use face unlock. There's fingerprint idea unlock, which
those are pretty secure except for if somebody is physically
takes your face or your finger inputs it on there.

Speaker 1 (24:50):
Also, I believe that the police are allowed to force
you into biometric unlocking a phone, whereas they're not allowed
to well, they're like theoretically not supposed to force you
into passwords.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
Yeah, so I mean I think the reality here is
that most people probably have like a four digit pass
code for their phone, and then the piece also mentions
an SD card I'm unaware of. I think there's like
four phones that are currently on the market that have
SD cards. Most of the mainline phones don't, and so
the data is on the phone. It is not removable.
You can't remove the battery of a phone. Even when

(25:25):
a phone is it off, it can be tracked. These
are just facts. So one thing and kind of going
back to the go bags and like I think having
a Faraday bag is something that would be useful as
well for people. Is like, if you want your phone
to be more off or at least not traceable, being
able to just throw it into a bag could help

(25:45):
it at least not contact other radios. But there's also
operating systems, so these are all Android based. You know,
iOS is what it is. And you know, there is
questions of whether or not the standard encryption algorithms have
backdoors the police can access. But there is a an
OS called graphinos that is commonly recommended, but it does

(26:08):
like it does de Google you, So if that is
what you're trying to do, you're trying to get away
from Gmail and all that you will get there, and
Graphios only runs on the latest Google hardware, like the
Pixel line of phones, just because they want to keep
it very up to date and not have to support
a ton of phones. So it's like the three latest
phones or something like that. So if you are sufficiently

(26:30):
paranoid and you want to play around with that this
kind of stuff, I recommend that. But there's also other ones,
like there's linear jos, which is another alternative OS for
Android phones that you can you can choose not to
download Google apps or not, and then calyx Os, which
is another project that's doing similar goals.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
So I think it's interesting with phone security because like,
none of the things that you're talking about, to my understanding,
none of those stop the basic your phone is a
tracking device thing, right, Like theoretically, all they're capable of
doing is like limiting bad actors from accessing the data
on your phone. Is that a fair way to put it?

Speaker 2 (27:08):
Yeah, And I would say that, you know, data encryption
in general is really good for maybe not always, like oh,
I'm trying to avoid law enforcement, but if my phone
is stolen, I don't want my credit card or my
files in the hands of somebody who could use it, right,
And I think like there was a piece I was
reading that was related to phone security that suggested treat

(27:31):
your phone like encrypted landline and only connect to it
over Wi Fi not cell phone networks. Then that particular
device would never get that triangulation data from the cell networks,
which is interesting, and then it would have you have
signal on that phone, and then it just never leaves
your house and then it's never on your person. But again,

(27:52):
I think that that that is a perfect scenario when
most of us are gonna we like the convenience of
how itself phone. You would like to be able to
look up things and talk to our friends.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
So I also think it's a different threat model. Like
I think that's the threat model of like which many
maybe you dear listener, in the current context, are a
person who does valiant crime, let's say, right, and in
which case absolutely, but like, and I recognize the point
of like, the more people have secure practices, the more

(28:26):
that they can't pick people out. Is like, ah, this
person probably does crime because they do this thing. But
I would say that like for most people, I think
in the current threat model, like the odds of me
needing to take a call from my sick family member
while I'm out for twelve hours is like, that's more

(28:51):
important to me than like that my cell phone hasn't
pinged off of any towers recently in the average scenario.
And so, and I think that that's what's interesting about
this particular thought experiment piece is that it's presenting a like, well,
all of that shit's out the window. And if all
of that stuff's out the window, then you're just like
in a totally new terrain. And so I think that

(29:13):
there's I don't know's it's complicated, but I really do
like that. I like that they point out that they're like, Okay,
I'm going to throw my phone down the sewer now
and all of that.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
Which I don't think is a bad idea if that
is what you're paranoid about. I didn't have sort of
an issue with that exactly. Yeah, But I do think
sort of understanding the limits of the technology you're carrying
on you, I think is important and totally be aware
when you are bringing a listening device to somewhere.

Speaker 1 (29:44):
Yeah, I think that's just a place that just keeps
track of everything you do. Although all cars from like
what twenty fourteen onwards also do that, but we could
we'll talk about that be a different point. Yeah anyway,
all right, Well, is that I forget section one? You
want to start on section two?

Speaker 2 (30:02):
Yeaht sweet.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
Section two resources. Jake has been tagging and dumpster diving
for years, so he knows his neighborhood pretty well. Just
as he's noticed what gets cleaned and what does not,
he's noticed what gets moved and what does not, what
gets paid attention to and what does not. There's a
moss covered rock in a local park that never gets moved,

(30:28):
no one even goes near it. There's a roof of
an abandoned building littered with garbage. Long ago, Jake took
two plastic bottles and sealed each inside a ziploc bag
with a small amount of cash and two USBs each.
Then he buried one bottle in the dirt underneath the rock,
and taped another bottle underneath a non functioning vent on

(30:48):
the roof of an abandoned building. In each bottle, one
USB contains an encrypted key pass x database with a
distinct log in information of every online accounty has, as
well as a vera crypt encrypted folder with various files.
He wants to make sure he never lost, scans of
his IDs, photos of friends, including a GPG key pair.

(31:14):
He has encrypted both with a passphrase of five randomly
chosen dictionary words committed to memory, veritable sasquatch, humdinger, locality peeps.
He has practiced this every night for weeks, building all
kinds of associations and mnemonics. Unencrypted on the drives are
executable files to install keypassx vera crypt and GPG on

(31:37):
any new computer. On the other USB is a full
install of the TAILS operating system. Jake knows he looks
a mess in his boxers and muddy socks, but he
gets to the park and digs up the bottle without
a squad car seeing him or some vigilante neighbor raising
a fuss. The twenty and two tens inside will have

(31:58):
to be enough. Luckily, there's a small houseless encampment near by,
and an old lady is willing to part with a
sweater for ten. A free box happens to have a
two large pair of sneakers. He desperately tries to make
his boxers look like shorts and walks to a thrift store,
quickly emerging with a backpack, a T shirt, a baseball cap,

(32:20):
and a pair of pants. A visit to a corner
store bathroom with a razor and hair dye, and his
appearance is at least a little different. He buys a
cheap first aid kit for the splinter in his hand.
With his cash broken into change, he can catch a
bus across town. When Jake gets near the first house

(32:40):
of comrades, not only are the cops there, but his
friends are still in their underwear and hog tied. On
the lawn. A cop is violently molesting a friend of
his under the pretense of a search, while others laugh.
Jake keeps moving. At the second house, there are no
squad cars, but the front door is visibly missing. Jake
notices someone sitting in an unmarked car across the street.

(33:04):
He keeps walking. The third house he tries belongs to
a largely a political friend. It's a struggle to try
and get him not to proclaim surprise loudly on the
front porch and not to talk near devices. I just
need to borrow a couple hundred men. Then I'll be
out of your hair. I never saw you, you never
saw me. Please, Jake leaves with a hundred a filled

(33:28):
water bottle, a better hoodie, a better pair of shoes
with dry socks, and a dusty old laptop. It's not
enough bus fare to get to the border. He needs
a sleeping bag, but Ori Ei has been implementing stronger
anti theft policies, and the longer he focks around town,
the more likely he is to get stopped. He's terrified

(33:49):
of facial recognition and tracking software on the buses, and
his thrift store baseball cap isn't going to protect him forever.
He scopes out the city bust terminal from some distance,
but it looks like this one checks id and there's
a cop wandering around. Instead, he catches a city bus
out to a distant suburb on the edge of rural

(34:10):
two lane roads, trying to hitch Hopefully the cops out
here aren't actively looking for him and won't harass a hitchhiker.
A state patrol car passes him without incident. He has
no success for hours, and it starts to grow dark,
so it's back to the city. Worried about cash. In
the middle of the night, he climbs the roof of

(34:30):
his second stash, but it's missing, probably the tape eroded
months ago and it fell off. Hope the person who
found it could use the cash if they opened one
of the USB's it would just prove cryptic. No way
to ever learn what was encrypted. It's a cold night,
sleeping rough without a sleeping bag, and in the morning,

(34:51):
Jake takes refuge in the back of a cafe where
he still has enough cash for a warm drink. He
takes out the dusty old laptop from his friend, the
Tails USB, booting it and accessing the Internet over tour.
The connection to the Tour network has trouble, so he
chooses in figure connection and selects different bridges until he

(35:12):
finds one that works. A few anarchist counter info sites
are reporting the raids, but a surprising number of sites
are down entirely. Local news says almost nothing besides statust blather.
Social media is trash with speculation from those least informed.
Foreign no blogs and indie media sites have the most

(35:33):
relevant reporting. Signal is down something about centralized architecture. Comments
speculate about international law, but it doesn't matter right now.
Rise Up allegedly melted their servers with thermite during a raid,
and we're all arrested. Proton Mail has apparently been collaborating
injecting spyware onto user's devices, and some people are surprised

(35:57):
by this wire is temporary unavailable. A few people leave
links urging people to use various apps or tools Jake's
never heard of. But do you know what they should use?
Greg for all of their secure communication? They should use
whatever's advertised next, and we're back. Other people debate the

(36:30):
technical merits, but he has a hard time understanding. One
new app is blowing up pretty quickly. Lots of people
attest to it being good, but this seems mostly based
on them finding it easy to use. One person says
they are still trying to use a smartphone, but then
goes quiet. One account that was quiet for a while
starts speaking differently. In the comments section on a formally

(36:53):
obscure site, someone says this is big C. I'm free.
A group of US are forming up at a location.
Contact me through a secure channel. Jake knows that this
is Cookie, a local organizer. After a little struggle, Jake
manages to get the most popular new encrypted communication apps
temporarily installed on his tails instance. He joins one of

(37:17):
the public channels that some comments encouraged using It's basically
like telegram or discord, a flood of posting and arguing.
Folks who survive the raids using these new accounts try
to imply who they are without saying it openly. It's
an amateur hour shit show of oblique flailing. Remember that
one time we did that one thing, I was the

(37:38):
one that woked green. Turns out one of the worst
assholes in the scene was still free, and he is
using the opportunity to crow even when the crewed only
you would know x games imply an account as a
given Comrade Jake knows that such details could simply be
copy pasted from a compromised device via some man in

(37:59):
the middle. Attack where the cops sit between two parties,
relaying their messages back and forth as if they're the
other person. There is not enough to trust in an
Internet post. To meet up, Vera walks immediately to the
house of her old friend Cat. She scopes the front
from down the street, notices Kat Subaru is missing, and
makes her way in through the backyard. Vera has held

(38:21):
on to a spare key for years, but their friendship
is almost entirely offline. They don't even bring devices when
they hang out. As far as the outside world knows,
Cat is just another park ranger doing ecological restoration. Ten
years ago, they burn down a condo together. Vera cries

(38:42):
and trembles the second she closes the back door behind her,
falling into a fetal position. Cat's house is pristine, beautiful, safe.
Vera rocks back and forth, trying to remember breathing exercises.
Has her heart always been as loud? Is she dying?
After an eternity? She gets up and starts doing stretches

(39:04):
and exercises. She pictures herself punching through the faces of
the cops. Back at her house, she knows she needs
to work out the adrenaline. Cat's house is like a
warm security blanket. Everything is just right. Vera lies on
the floor of the living room for hours, not moving,
listening way too attentively to the sounds of cars going by.

(39:26):
Is Cat even in town? Should she make something from
her food in the pantry. The slow crunching sound of
Kat's subreu coming to rest in the driveway is an
immense relief. Kat is surprised about the raids, but she
grasps the severity, hugs Vera and tries to throw lentils
and veggies in an instapot while listening and asking questions.

(39:48):
While dinner cooks, Cat brings out an old laptop she
rarely uses, and they check the major news sights together,
careful not to enter search terms or anything that might flag.
In some sense, it's a relief to learn the raids
were beyond just Vera's house. They're not targeted at Vera specifically,
but no one seems to have been released yet, so

(40:10):
it's clearly not safe to leave. Kat makes up a
futon for Vera in the basement. Of course, you can
stay the night. You can stay as long as you need.
Vera takes off her earrings and places them carefully beside
her work bag. In each earring is a tiny sliver
of a USB stick. Each of them is just like

(40:31):
Jake's encrypted KEYPASSX database, encrypted filesystem, GPG keys, installation executables
for Vera, crypt and KEYPASSX. In the morning, Vera will
investigate what can be done with Kat's laptop. Julie and
Maggie make three stops before heading out of town, first

(40:53):
at Julie's bank, where she successfully empties most of her
account into five thousand in cash, But at Maggie's bank,
the teller disappears for a long while and doesn't come back.
You know what, never mind, I'll go to a different bank,
Maggie says to another teller, using her best imitation Karen voice.

(41:13):
They drive off heads on a swivel for cop cars. Finally,
they slip a note into a friend's mailbox explaining where
to find their house key and some instructions for their lease.
They collect every credit or debit card they have and
tape them together under a seat, never to be used again.

(41:33):
They take off quickly back roads to avoid license plate
readers than long country roads. It's hard to navigate without
their phones. Each of them picks a personality type and
fashion style that signals no political or subcultural allegiance. They
make up a backstory about how their friends and try
to bicker in convenience stores to avoid looking queer. They

(41:56):
pick up a bumper sticker they'd otherwise be livid at
and slap it on. At a camp site two hundred
miles away, they go through all their remaining belongings. They
have a tarp, a tent, two sleeping bags, a gallon
jug of water, a sawyer microfiltration water purifier, a five
gallon bucket of rice and beans, a camp stove, a

(42:18):
couple pads, trashy books for boredom. They end up buying
basic comforts like folding chairs with their cash reserves. It's
just a camping trip until it isn't. They go on
a hike with their dog and talk about communities they
can flee to a land defense occupation that became permanent,

(42:38):
a log cabin squat built deep off of any path
on federal land. A friend's organic farm with some partially
abandoned yurts. They discuss the pros and cons of various
cults they know. In the end, they drive to the
furthest option, the organic farm. The drive is long on

(43:00):
a thin, winding back road. They stack up behind a
long line of cars. Local vigilantes are performing an inspection
to check for antifa. A middle aged white lady with
an ar waves them through cheerily. Stay safe out there.
The next town has a small rally for democracy along
the central drag. Besides in Arby's, a couple dozen liberals

(43:24):
and folding chairs hold cardboard placards making puns about the
suspension of a cable news channel. At a gas station,
Julie overhears two men confidently talking about the investment opportunities
in real estate being opened up as all the cockroaches
are removed. One night, they sleep in their car in
a Walmart parking lot on the advice of a friendly

(43:46):
night auditor. At a cheap motel, new regulations, I can't
take a cash deposit, and there's this thing I got
to enter your IDs into that wires them nationally. When
they finally arrive at the farm and are allowed the gate,
there are already fifteen other people there, extended family of
the owning couple, plus a couple of woofer hippies, and

(44:08):
two coteries of obvious radicals who are cagey and cold
to anyone they don't know. Everyone is antsy, different groups
cook different food, panicked envy flickers in some eyes. Two
weeks in and Julie keeps to herself. Maggie spends her
time trying to suck up to the owners and befriends
an artistic nerd with one of the other radical groups,

(44:32):
an old, balding white dude, and a black hoodie keeps
snapping at their dog. A trip into town for balk
food goes badly after the nerd insists on wearing a
mask and a confrontation breaks out with a local. A
backed up toilet in the farmhouse makes the owner's dour
for a couple of days. One night, the situation boils
over and folks start openly talking about the raids. There's

(44:55):
fury over who has a device and who can be
trusted to have a device, who is putting everyone else
in danger, who has a right to be here, who
has a right to anything? After someone brings up land back,
someone else screams, who do you think you're fooling? Who
are your people exactly? You're not indigenous, You're as white
as me, and an awkward physical fight breaks out. The

(45:18):
next morning, there are immigration police visible in the distance
at the neighboring farm. One of the hippies finds three
young girls hiding down by the river and rushes them
into one of the plastic yurts everyone else is hiding in.
Dogs bark in the distance. Julie joins the couple that
owns the farm and meeting the immigration agents. Her dog

(45:39):
barks at theirs and they put them away. The immigration
agents are some of the newly deputized conspiracy heads that
barely have any training, and Julie is able to find
common cultural ground with them, ranting about how genetically modified
organisms or poisoning the land, leaning hard into the persona
she's studiously built on the road. The wannabe Jeni side

(46:00):
airs laugh at her jokes and leave, waving back to her.
The girl's white uncle was allowed to remain a nasty
gash across his forehead. The rest of the family is
being taken to one of the deportation camps, where people
die of dehydration. He's profoundly grateful for the rescue of
his nieces. Over the next month, the adjacent farms begin

(46:24):
to merge. A dugout hiding spot becomes a tunnel network.
Maybe it'll suffice to hide folks if CoP's return. Some
new folks arrive fleeing other things. Tensions break down, relationships
begin to form across the groups. One of the quieter
members starts opening up giving lectures on centropic agriculture, and

(46:46):
an array of projects rapidly consume all the spare land
across the farms. As people get busy developing personal domains
and projects to be invested in the overall vibe improves dramatically.
Food gets people become more open about what devices they
held onto, but it doesn't matter as much because all
of the old Internet is gone. A few specific corporate

(47:09):
sites remain accessible whitelisted by telecoms for the sake of commerce,
but almost everything else is gone. You can get Amazon
deliveries and send Gmail, but it's impossible to reach Wikipedia,
much less Athens, indie media, or any no blogs. The
farm establishes a consensus on how devices are to be used.

(47:31):
The owners maintain all of their devices in the farmhouse,
air gapped from everyone else. News stories and everything else
are downloaded to a USB by one person for an
hour every day, then passed around the three laptops everyone
else shares. There's one burner cell phone for the whole farm,
bought with cash at one of the last walmarts where
that is possible. It's kept turned off and wrapped in

(47:54):
plastic bags under a rock five miles away along the
side of the road. It's for emergence and strictly overseen usage.
No one will put it simcart in or turn it
on near the farm or its stash location. Having swapped
out plates and tags, Julie and Maggie occasionally drive into

(48:15):
the local town. They sit behind a cafe in their
truck while it's closed at night, and tap into the
still active Wi Fi with their laptop running. Tails signal
is long gone. Tour is totally inaccessible, even using the
latest smuggled bridges on the plane Internet. They've managed to
register two Gmail accounts using the farm's collective burner phone.

(48:37):
How can they find other comrades? How can they talk
with them?

Speaker 2 (48:41):
Well, if you want to.

Speaker 1 (48:42):
Know, you're going to have to wait till next Sunday.
But what you don't have to wait for is me
and Greg talking about this chunk. Okay, and so section
two that we just listened to, so much more happened,
and Okay. The first thing I want to say, just
sort of flag. There's a piece where they're like, oh,

(49:04):
the autistic nerd and I'm like, okay, we've all met that,
or maybe we are that or whatever, and then it
was like ah, then they wore their mask to the
store and refused to not And I just want to
like the flag that I'm like and could have been
phrased a little differently, making the autistic character be the
one who does that. I don't know whatever, Maybe that's

(49:25):
me being to twitter brained about it, and I don't
know the I have no idea about the neurodivergence or
non neurodiversions of the author of this piece.

Speaker 2 (49:36):
Yeah, but.

Speaker 1 (49:38):
Okay, I have a bunch of questions about this part.
And this is the kind of the part where I'm like,
that's part of why I brought you on.

Speaker 2 (49:43):
I think I'm going to be a US sped drive
kingpin now and that's what I'm investing in. So it's
going to be after the raids, We'll all need lots
of USB drives.

Speaker 1 (49:54):
I know. And it's interesting because're gonna need lots of
mostly small USB drives, small USB drive I think we're
gonna need a couple big ones to have lots of
legally purchased media on. Yeah, and okay, So there's a
bunch of different programs they talk about. They talk about
key pass X, they talk about via crypt, they talk

(50:15):
about GPG, and they talk about tour where.

Speaker 2 (50:18):
Do you want to start well? And they also talk
about tails, which is just we can go through. Why
don't we talk about what each of these things are
just for the uninitiated, So key pass X, which is
to be clear, is defunct now thanks for putting that out.
Key pass X has turned into a new project, key
pass XC, so if you're looking around for it, it's
now called that. And so that is generally a password manager,

(50:41):
and so I strongly recommend that anybody listening to this
start using a password manager. Use a different password for
every single one of your accounts. And this is not
advice as a radical, This is a device as a
person who uses computers, if one of your accounts gets
popped and you use the same passwords for everything, all
your accounts are popped, and also use Tube factor authentics. Okay,
speel over, but keep AXC is an encrypted database of

(51:05):
all of your passwords. So you use one big password
that you hopefully memorize, and then you never have to
remember your other passwords. Now there's some advantage to this.
From another perspective is like you don't really know your passwords,
so if like somebody were to ask you, hey, what's
your email password, You're like, I don't know, and you
can legitimately say that you don't know. But I think

(51:29):
it's a good practice to use a password manager. So
that's what keyp pass x or keep assexc is. Vericrypt
is an application that is used to encrypt files or drives,
and so if you wanted to encrypt like a large
piece of something, you would use varicrypt and be able
to decrypt it like that. GPG is another way to
encrypt messages or files that the emphasis is on asymmetric encryption,

(51:53):
which I will go with a little nerd moment. In
asymmetric encryption, you have a public key and a private key.
You keep private key to yourself and you're able to
share your public key out to anybody and then they
somebody else will use your public key to encrypt something
intended for you. Now, one of the most common ways
that this is used is through email. There's been applications

(52:15):
in the past, like a nigmail to make this more
easy for people. But just know that GPG is used
for encrypting files or messages and that sort of thing.
But it's quite manual. It's a process where you have
to set up your keys, you have to set up
and maintain a public and a private key pair.

Speaker 1 (52:34):
It's also kind of like a pain in the ass,
like just frankly, yes, and the reason it's fallen out
of favor. If you ever hear anyone talking about PGP
pretty good privacy, that's kind of the closed source version
of this. And what people actually use is GPG, which
stands for what you told me what it stands for.

Speaker 2 (52:55):
GPG is a new privacy guard. Which the difference is
is PGP is closed so GPG is open source. So
the code for my understanding is that they're functionally the
same under the hood, and one is open source and
one is not.

Speaker 1 (53:09):
The reason people have moved to things like signal or
end to end encrypted email, things like proton mail is
which is only end to end encrypted if the originating
sources also an encrypted mail provider. But the reason people
have moved to that is not just so that they
can invite journalists into their chats. But that's going to

(53:32):
be a dated reference soon. It might already feel dated
to you. It might be sick of people talking about it. Anyway,
is that signal is just so much easier to use,
and I actually think that there is a for most
people in most situations. The ease of use isn't just
a convenience, it's actually literally more secure because it's harder

(53:54):
to fuck up. It's really easy to fuck up GPG. However,
as the rest of this piece is going to later
get into, there might be situations where it's kind of
the only thing going yeah, because you kind of can't
you can't kill this one.

Speaker 2 (54:12):
Yeah. And then also the piece mentioned TOUR, which stands
for the Onion Router. It's bundled as a browser, but
it is a way to route your traffic through many
different other computers that are on the Tour network, so
your where your traffic is coming from and where it
exits is not easy to track. And then tails OS

(54:33):
is a operating system that runs as a live USB
drive that enables you to utilize Tour without having to
install it onto a computer. You plug in the USB drive,
you boot it up, and it launches the operating system,
and when you turn the computer off, everything is wiped,
so it doesn't leave data behind unless you tell it to.

(54:54):
But yeah, yeah, so.

Speaker 1 (54:57):
A lot of tools are brought up. Okay, my other
big question about this section is they talk about the big, easy,
convenient tools going down. For example, they mentioned proton mail
has been injecting spyware onto people's computers, and to be clear,
proton mail doesn't really have a they're not really our comrades,

(55:21):
you know, but they're also not American, and so from
my point of view, and maybe I'm being naive, I'm
a little bit like stuff that's not American is going
to have like way less of an interest in cooperating
with a fascist American government. But maybe I'm being naive
about that.

Speaker 2 (55:41):
Yeah, yeah, I don't know about that. I do know
that proton Mail was involved in some court cases where
they gave up IPI information, but they didn't give up
message datic because again they didn't have it, because proton
Mail is an email provider that does into encrypted emails
by default, you don't even have to think about it

(56:01):
if you're emailing another proton Mail account, which is nice.
It's you know, the theme of security in this day
and age is that it's a lot of like you
don't see it, but it's happening behind the scenes. Signal
does this, proton Mail does it, but again it's a
centralized service and we don't know what pressure they may
get in the future.

Speaker 1 (56:18):
Yeah, no, that's a good point, okay. And then specifically
the talking about Signal going down like that, that is
kind of one of the key pieces to this particular
thought experiment is that signal as a centralized thing has
gone down, and I want to ask you about how
how realistic is that.

Speaker 2 (56:40):
So my understanding is that in the twenty nineteen and
that signal was taken down in Iran, and I think
it had been taken down other times before, along with
the entire Internet at times in Iran. Iran has the advantage,
at least from the government's standpoint, of having a Internet
that's very easy to turn on and off. My understanding

(57:01):
is that in the United States that'd be a lot harder,
and so a general Internet going down scenario would look
a lot more like the ISPs themselves, either blocking or
throttling traffic. The cell phone providers are actual easier to
shut down, and there's an example in twenty eleven during
the Oscar Grant protests in the San Francisco Bay area,

(57:23):
the Barrier Rapid Transit System BART shut down their cell
phone service on the underground tunnels because they thought that
activists were using that to coordinate their protests. They were
able to do this because they own the entire cell
phone network that was underground. You don't get cell phone
networks from above ground, and so people had no service
at that time Signal itself going down, though again I

(57:46):
don't know the details of how Signal is hosted, but
if it's not distributed enough, you could just shut down
a few of the servers depending on it. But I
do imagine, given the fact that Signal is open source,
that if something like that were to happen, you might
see people be spinning up their own versions of Signal.
And I think that the piece also talks about like, oh,

(58:06):
there's these other apps that come up, and who knows
if they're good or not, and you would definitely see that. Yeah,
there's reasons to assume that, like in crisis, people are
going to try to figure out other ways to get
around things, and you'll have to use your best judgment.
But I don't think it's unwarranted that Signal could go away.
But I think it would given the fact that we've
seen also government officials utilizing signal. Maybe that's an advantage

(58:31):
in the in the realm of like maybe it is
critical infrastructure in this way where we wouldn't see it
attacked in that way. And like tour for example, is
used by the CIA, they have a vested interest in
not shutting down the tour network.

Speaker 1 (58:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:48):
So yeah, I'm.

Speaker 1 (58:49):
Under the impression that Signal is both an app that
you can use and also a protocol like a system
by which to do similar things, and that the Signal
protocol is used another end and encryption.

Speaker 2 (59:01):
Well like WhatsApp for example.

Speaker 1 (59:02):
But you know, yeah, fair enough.

Speaker 2 (59:04):
Yeah, So WhatsApp uses the Signal protocol, which is the
encryption protocol that Signal uses. And it's actually the largest
deployment of the Signal protocol because in the USUS is
used a little bit less, but across the world it's
much more prevalent.

Speaker 1 (59:19):
So okay, and then actually it's probably worth distinguishing. Then
why is Signal more secure than WhatsApp?

Speaker 2 (59:24):
I think it's an issue of trust for me, I
don't have the details right now, but like WhatsApp is
owned by Facebook, yeah, and so there there's reasonable, you know,
suspicions of like are they keeping things the right way?
That's personal paranoiase. And I think one of my caveats
to this whole piece is that you all should be

(59:44):
doing your own research. If you're listening to this and
trying to take advice like this is we express some opinions.
We express some details, but like, at the end of
the day, you're gonna make your own choices, and maybe
WhatsApp is actually the better option for you because you
have family internationally and having access to that encryption is
super important.

Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
Okay, well, I think that kind of covers these two sections.
Is there anything I'm missing, anything we're missing?

Speaker 2 (01:00:10):
No, I think that that's good. It's always fun to
talk about this stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:00:14):
Yeah, all right, we'll come back next week and we're
going to talk about the second half of this story.
And also, if you're listening and you're like, wait a second,
this isn't the barrel, we'll send what it may. That's
because I interrupted my own book to talk about this
because it felt more timely. But within a couple weeks,
I'll get back to telling you the adventures of Daniel

(01:00:35):
Okain on book club. But in the meantime, take care
of each other because we got it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:41):
Talk to you soon.

Speaker 1 (01:00:43):
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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