Category: Privacy & Encryption

Invisibility: Increasing OPSEC – Part 2, by St. Funogas

(Continued from Part 1.) Using LLCs An anonymous LLC is the most important tool available to ensure no one can connect your name to your physical address and provides other benefits as well. Using an online agent LLC’s are quick and easy to obtain with some starting as low as $99. Don’t be intimidated by “LLC,” it’s something lots of us non-business little guys have and they’re useful in many ways once you understand how they work. Why an LLC? There are many reasons as discussed below but the biggest reason is that all county courthouses in the US maintain …


Invisibility: Increasing OPSEC – Part 1, by St. Funogas

I recently read an article on advances which have been made using ear recognition as one more way to track us and violate our privacy. Since facial recognition systems are sometimes inadequate due to factors such as faces hidden by hair or covid masks, additional recognition technology using our ears is being developed. I don’t need to mention all the other ways modern technology is being used to violate our privacy or that our rights are being eroded by the day. The article brought to mind a book I read while looking for a place to set up my homestead: …


Mitigating the Drone/RDF Threat – Part 3, by Tunnel Rabbit

(Continued from Part 2. This concludes the article.) A Low Cost, and Simple-to-Operate Simplex Repeater We can use a simplex repeater such as the Argent Data Systems ADS-1 Simplex Repeater. This is essentially a sophisticated digital voice recorder that is superior in quality to the Surecom, and other cheap Chinese renditions. We must have a reliable system especially when it is relatively difficult to access and a linchpin in importance. Using a simplex repeater in conjunction with a cross-band repeater can confuse the RDF analysis further. This ‘repeater’, is actually a digital voice recorder that provides many useful functions. For …


Mitigating the Drone/RDF Threat – Part 2, by Tunnel Rabbit

(Continued from Part 1.) Down and Dirty, Remotely Controlled Transceivers Armed with the axiom that if something is ‘stupid, but works, then it is not stupid’, we can become creative. In the most austere environments where field expedient and unconventional means are the only means, I should mention that a Citizen’s Band (CB) radio with a Public Address (P.A.) function, or a hard wire intercom can also be used with the VOX feature of a transceiver to cause it to transmit. Using these means, we can transmit remotely, yet we can only receive via a transceiver located at the base …


Mitigating the Drone/RDF Threat – Part 1, by Tunnel Rabbit

Introduction This is an extension to my recent SurvivaBlog article titled Advanced Field Telephone Techniques, yet it examines and details the topic in the context of a specific threat. It often pays to reiterate and reinforce. While partly an intellectual pursuit, this discussion is grounded in decades of real world experience, sans actual battlefield experience, or military training. With this disclaimer stated, we can rest assured because the method of remotely operating transceivers via field phones was once SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for U.S. military forces. It is well-proven on the battlefield as method of avoiding RDF, and subsequent direct …


CBDCs: From Blockchains to Tyrant’s Chains

Today, in place of my regular Economics & Investing column, I’m posting my predictions for the nascent sovereign cryptocurrencies — now commonly called Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs.)  The CBDCs will use a variant of the blockchain technology that was first created for Bitcoin. But unlike private cryptos that use a fully distributed semi-anonymous network, control of the CBDC will be centralized and monitored. My predictions reflect my views on history, trends in governance, recognition of mankind’s sinful nature, certain chaotic variables, and some historical parallels. I may fall short in predicting some of the particulars, but I feel quite …


Review: Pi-Hole Network-Level Ad and Tracker Blocker, by TavernSandwich

Most privacy minded people do a decent job locking down their computers, phones, and other devices. I hope you’re reading this article on a secure browser (like Firefox with UBlockOrigin) over an encrypted VPN connection. If you are, congrats on being a reasonably savvy internet user! But what about the other people on your network? Are your family members and guests as privacy-minded? It’s rare to find a household where every single person shares the same level of dedication to staying safe online. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could extend some level of protection to the people sharing your …


Semi-Secure Digital Communications for Civilians, by R.T.D.

In times of emergency, many American citizens have found both amateur radio and FRS/GMRS radios very useful to keeping in touch with friends and family as well as keeping local, state, and federal disaster response agencies up-to-date with the latest information on road conditions and disaster area damages. All of those radio communications are made entirely in the clear as there is no need for encryption, obfuscation, or brevity codes for such work. It’s done as a public service to assist others in times of natural or man-made disasters and just part of being a good neighbor. But just how …


Using Effective Encryption, by ShepherdFarmerGeek

So much has been written by greater minds than mine about secure communication in a crisis. There are many publicly available resources and information on SurvivalBlog and elsewhere. Shifting letters in a message a certain number of characters is nothing new (Caesar Cipher, used in the last century B.C.). Using the SAME count to shift letters is a guaranteed way to have your encryption broken. Using different numbers to shift each letter in a message (a One Time Pad) – when your recipient has the same list of numbers to decrypt the message – is theoretically unbreakable, if you do …


Fade to Gray: Files and Documents – Part 3, by J.M.

(Continued from Part 2. This concludes the article.) Document Tools Being able to store sensitive files and minimizing the chances of someone finding them is useful, but you still need to be able to view and edit the files in a secure and private manner without leaving details on what files you’ve worked on and what they contain all over your system (or the Internet). Many of the commercially available document and file editing tools such as Microsoft Office store a lot of information on what files you’ve worked on and potentially what’s stored inside them (for your own good, …


Fade to Gray: Files and Documents – Part 2, by J.M.

(Continued from Part 1.) Hidden Rooms and Secret Passages VeraCrypt has an extremely useful feature called a ‘hidden volume’, which is what we’ll be using to hide and protect sensitive files. As I mentioned earlier, a volume is basically a chunk of storage (file) that Windows mounts and assigns a drive letter to. What VeraCrypt does is allows you to create a big encrypted file and mount that as a virtual storage volume – ‘virtual’ in this case just means that the volume doesn’t correspond to a unique physical storage device, since the file can be moved anywhere and still …


Fade to Gray: Files and Documents – Part 1, by J.M.

If you’re reading SurvivalBlog it’s a safe assumption you use a computer of some type, and you probably also use your computer for more than just surfing the Internet. One of the nice things about computers is that they make creating, editing, storing and moving large amounts of information a lot easier than trying to do everything with pen and paper, and a decent laptop with some solar panels for charging can operate for years even after the grid goes down. This allows you to easily create, edit and view things like inventories, maps of cache locations, communications SOPs, defense …


Internet Privacy Basics, by Petr

Editor’s Introductory Notes: This article was authored by the teenage son of a long-time SurvivalBlog reader. It is humbling to see that a second-generation of SurvivalBlog readers is now reaching adulthood.  (SurvivalBlog was launched in August of 2005.) Properly, the term internet (with a lower case “I”) generally refers to all interconnected computer networks, whereas Internet (with a upper case “I”) refers to the global network associated with the world wide web (WWW). The dark web refers to dead or abandoned web sites. (That is, sites that have “gone dark.”) The deep web refers to sites that are invisible to …


Your Best Personal Defense In The Ongoing CyberWar, by AJS

One of claimed “time traveler” John Titor’s most alarming predictions was for a war beginning in 2015 between Russia and the United States. The prediction was made on the old Art Bell Coast-to-Coast AM radio show in the 1999-2000 era. The war would eventually go nuclear and be quite destructive resulting in great loss of life. The good news according to Titor was that the country weathered the physical destruction and came out stronger than ever. With some large cities destroyed it eliminated many governmental sectors and urbanite populations dependent upon government handouts. Now, in retrospect we know the war …


JWR’s Recommendations of the Week:

Here are JWR’s Recommendations of the Week for various media and tools of interest to SurvivalBlog readers. The focus is usually on emergency communications gear, bug out bag gear, books and movies–often with a tie-in to disaster preparedness, and links to “how to” self-sufficiency videos. There are also links to sources for both storage food and storage containers. You will also note an emphasis on history books and historical movies. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. This week I have a special recommendations column devoted to countersurveillance references and products. Books: Claire Wolfe: The Freedom Outlaw’s Handbook: …