Slashdot Mirror
Can We Avoid Government Surveillance By Leaving The Grid? (counterpunch.org)
Slashdot reader Nicola Hahn writes: While reporters clamor about the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, NSA whistleblower James Bamford offers an important reminder: American intelligence has been actively breaching email servers in foreign countries like Mexico and Germany for years. According to Bamford documents leaked by former NSA specialist Ed Snowden show that the agency is intent on "tracking virtually everyone connected to the Internet." This includes American citizens. So it might not be surprising that another NSA whistleblower, William Binney, has suggested that certain elements within the American intelligence community may actually be responsible for the DNC hack.
This raises an interesting question: facing down an intelligence service that is in a class by itself, what can the average person do? One researcher responds to this question using an approach that borrows a [strategy] from the movie THX 1138: "The T-H-X account is six percent over budget. The case is to be terminated."
To avoid surveillance, the article suggests "get off the grid entirely... Find alternate channels of communication, places where the coveted home-field advantage doesn't exist... this is about making surveillance expensive." The article also suggests "old school" technologies, for example a quick wireless ad-hoc network in a crowded food court. Any thoughts?
This raises an interesting question: facing down an intelligence service that is in a class by itself, what can the average person do? One researcher responds to this question using an approach that borrows a [strategy] from the movie THX 1138: "The T-H-X account is six percent over budget. The case is to be terminated."
To avoid surveillance, the article suggests "get off the grid entirely... Find alternate channels of communication, places where the coveted home-field advantage doesn't exist... this is about making surveillance expensive." The article also suggests "old school" technologies, for example a quick wireless ad-hoc network in a crowded food court. Any thoughts?
Article talks about getting off the grid and mentions ad-hoc network in a mall's food court... I think most people have a very different idea of what it means to live off the grid.
The type of people who believe they are "living off the grid" in a Food Court would be laughed *back* to the grid, if not shot outright, by the type of people who really live off the grid.
Cover your body with tinfoil so they can't find you!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
No, but having the axe will. Not as much as having an AK-74, a SSG 82 and a few hundred 5.45Ã--39mm rounds.
But you know what? Actually living in a close knit community with nearby farming land and no large cities nearby is even better... And yet, somehow, I have no desire to leave Southern California which is a death trap if civilization goes to shit, for South Carolina, where I own property in an area which is perfect for survival (and where my firearms and bows are stored, since my wife does not want them around our infant daughter. When she is ten or so, we will have that conversation again, though)
I'm afraid that I will be like most other people here - my head firmly in the sand until it is too late to do anything about anything.
No good deed goes unpunished...
The real answer is to be politically active. If you are willing to put your life at such a disadvantage to live off the grid, you might as well put your effort in being politically active with the goal of creating safeguards in the system to insure our privacies are met and convince the general public that their privacy is more important than losing it for getting a marginal benefit of safety from the government enemies.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.