{"id":180592,"date":"2017-03-07T19:55:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-08T00:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/03\/07\/good-advice-on-privacy\/"},"modified":"2017-03-07T19:55:00","modified_gmt":"2017-03-08T00:55:00","slug":"good-advice-on-privacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/03\/07\/good-advice-on-privacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Good Advice on Privacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at The Intercept<\/i>, they have an article on how to run an anonymous twitter account with as much security as possible<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is important if you are, for example, a disloyal bureaucrat serving under your Trumpian overlords<\/p>\n

The basic steps are as follows:  (with my comments indented with lower case letters)<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Buy a burner prepaid phone with CASH<\/b><\/u>.<\/li>\n
      \n
    1. Get a cheap feature (non-smart) phone.  Some of them actually have keyboards. <\/a><\/li>\n
    2. Remember, your face will probably be recorded at the 7-Eleven, or whatever, so wait 2-3 weeks until they overwrite the old records, or at least wear a hoodie and sunglasses.  (Parking a few blocks away would be a good idea as well)<\/li>\n
    3. Don’t turn on the phone at home at work.  Better yet pull the battery.<\/li>\n
    4. If you want to use the phone, choose a place, a very public place (like the Lexington Market Metro stop, and ONLY<\/b> use it there.  I used to take the Lexington stop to work every day, which is why I know the location)<\/li>\n
    5. Don’t buy a smart phone as a burner, they are privacy sink holes.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    6. Get a TOR compatible browser.<\/li>\n
        \n
      1. Use a browser designed for this from the start, and not to rely on addins.<\/li>\n
      2. You could also use I2P instead of TOR, I do not know the relative merits. <\/li>\n
      3. Note that there is significant evidence that much of TOR’s funding might have come via the US state security apparatus<\/a>, so be careful.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
      4. Get a TOR based email service.<\/li>\n
          \n
        1.  Again, you could use I2P.<\/li>\n
        2. Listed in the article are SIGAINT<\/a>, Riseup<\/a>, and ProtonMail<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
        3.  Activate the phone using the TOR browser.<\/li>\n
        4. Determine your phone number.<\/li>\n
        5. Create your Twitter account using your the TOR browser, and enter in the phone’s number.<\/li>\n
        6. Go to your special place (1. d.) and get the confirmation text, and then enter it into the confirmation.<\/li>\n
            \n
          1. In the Lexington Market case, there is a Starbucks down the street, so TOR the wifi, and probably do the hoodie and sunglasses thing.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
          2. Be circumspect about who you talk to.<\/li>\n
          3. Be circumspect about who you might communicate with via TOR.<\/li>\n
          4. Consider rebooting your machine into a secure operating system before accessing Twitter, such as “Tails<\/a>, or  Qubes<\/a> with Whonix<\/a>,” which can boot from a memory stick.<\/li>\n
          5. (on edit<\/i>) I shouldn’t need to say this, but never use the phone for anything else but your tweeting, or in the case elucidated below for that. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

            Read the rest of the article, and then leak away.<\/p>\n

            BTW, all of part 1 should also apply to giving a burner phone to a reporter to leak.  Only use it at a specific place, and have it off, or better yet, the battery out, when not in use.<\/p>\n

            You don’t want someone using traffic analysis to figure out who your are.<\/p>\n

            This has been a public service announcement of Matthew’s Saroff’s Beer (and Laptop) Fund and Tip Jar<\/a>.<\/p>\n

            Please give generously.  <\/p>\n

              \n
                <\/ol>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                Over at The Intercept, they have an article on how to run an anonymous twitter account with as much security as possible. This is important if you are, for example, a disloyal bureaucrat serving under your Trumpian overlords The basic steps are as follows:  (with my comments indented with lower case letters) Buy a burner …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[367,523,366,382],"class_list":["post-180592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-internet","tag-journalism","tag-privacy","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180592"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180592\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}