[GPSCC-chat] Fw: Can Flash Mobs And Olive Drab Clubs Defeat The NSA?

[John Thielking]

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: John Thielking <pagesincolor at yahoo.com>
To: Greens Discussion List <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org>; Donna Wallach <palestineis at dslextreme.com> 
Sent: Monday, April 7, 2014 9:04 PM
Subject: Can Flash Mobs And Olive Drab Clubs Defeat The NSA?
 


Can Flash Mobs And Olive Drab Clubs
Defeat The NSA?

By John Thielking
4-7-2014

For the past few days this author has
been brainstorming about how to regain some small pieces of his
privacy in the face of continuing (and progressing) NSA and other
alphabet soup organizations' blanket surveillance. The goal is to
find a way to preserve or at least momentarily regain privacy without
using  methods that require that they be secure from eavesdropping
(such as by not using encryption or much of any electronic hardware
which has been proven to have numerous back doors in both hardware
and software).

Up to this point, this author has been
content to merely take the simple countermeasure of leaving his cell
phone at home and seldom if ever taking it with him when going to any
place in public such as a shopping trip or a political protest. Going
on vacation out of town is the exception to this and the author has
found it necessary to submit to surveillance while on vacation. Most
recently, this prohibition on carrying his cell phone in public has
been extended to include leaving his electronic wristwatch at home
and covering up his VTA bus pass/Clipper Card which has an RFID chip
in it with tin foil and keeping it in his wallet in case the fare
inspector wants to see it while he is riding the light rail. Various
sources have indicated that blanket radio surveillance of a city can
reveal what is being typed on various people's computer monitors and
cell phone signals can carry for up to 20 miles.  So based on that
information, it is likely that radio surveillance can reveal the
locations of various people's electronic wristwatches. All modern
wristwatches have batteries in them powering the watch (even the
quartz ones that look like the old kind that you used to have to keep
wound up to keep them running) so all modern wristwatches can likely
be tracked this way.  It is possible to carry a cell phone in public
and not be tracked, at least not in real time. To do this do the
following: If your cell phone is a smart phone, put it in airplane
mode and then turn it off. If it is a feature phone with no airplane
mode available, turn it off and then take the battery out. Then place
the phone inside of a paper envelope. This prevents the conductive
parts of the phone such as various external metal extrusions that
penetrate the case and the conductive touch screen from contacting
the aluminum foil and defeating the Faraday Cage effect that will be
formed by the aluminum foil in the last step.  Then take a sheet of
tin foil and cover the outside of the envelope that contains the cell
phone. With the cell phone in airplane mode, it will not try too hard
to signal the nearest cell tower nor will it use a lot of energy
trying to connect using WiFi so the rapid battery drain that happens
when covering up a turned off feature phone that still has the
battery installed will not occur, at least not significantly, so the
battery life will be up to a week or more when covered with tin foil.
Note that since most smart phones have at least 1GB of available
memory, it is quite possible/likely that the microphone of the cell
phone is recording sounds (and the times that the sounds were
recorded) for broadcast to the NSA later when you exit airplane mode
to make a call or surf the web or answer e-mail.  To prevent this
from doing anything significant to compromise your privacy, if you
are a girl person, you can place an activated white noise generator
(about the size of a small radio, available from your local anti-spy
equipment web site --- I bought mine about 15 years ago, so sorry but
I forgot exactly where I got it ) put this in your purse next to your
envelope and tin foil encased cell phone.  This way, it will be much
more difficult for the NSA to piece together where you were based on
recorded background noises.

Now for the part that has something to
do with the title of this article.  This author, in talking to one of his relatives who had visited China recently, was inspired by the
relative's story of how the Chinese have been dealing with their own
surveillance state.  It seems that a widespread phenomenon in China
is that everyone tends to dress the same so that they will blend in
to the crowd of people in their surroundings. This author did a bit
of research online to try to find a way to defeat facial recognition
software used by drones and various city-wide security cameras that
are either connected to the Internet directly or that at least have
TV monitors which can have their signals monitored by blanket radio
surveillance. During this research, this author came across various
references to the fact that some people in China and Australia are
now using full face covering black visors in place of sunscreen. It
seems that these full face visors are being marketed as being
superior to sunscreen, since sunscreen only blocks the burning UVB
rays and not the skin wrinkling  UVA rays, while the visors block up
to 99% of both UVA and UVB rays. It could be argued that these visors
are “medically necessary” and thus they might even be exempt from
laws in various places that seek to ban the wearing of masks at
political protests.  The desireable feature of these visors is that
they may defeat facial recognition software. At least in the case of
a human viewing the catalog pictures showing the models wearing these
visors, the facial features of the models appear to be completely
obscured. It is not clear if software used to enhance images could
penetrate the low contrast “image” of the models' faces that may
be allowed to show through by the dark plastic of these visors.  This
author was unable to find a mirrored version of one of these visors
for sale that certainly would not be able to be penetrated by image
enhancing software, but he was able to find a picture of a Chinese
person wearing a mirrored version.

Now for the “plan” of how to defeat
the NSA surveillance using an Olive Drab Club and/or a Flash Mob.

	1. On some Sunday afternoon or other that is convenient, have people come together in a specific open space inside of a shopping mall such as the food court at a specific time. Ask them to all dress the same such as by wearing black pants and blank white shirts. Ask them to wear the UVA/UVB blocking full face visors over their full faces for the duration of the event. Ask them to not carry any electronic devices with them on the final leg of their trip to the location inside the mall. They can leave their cell phones and watches in their cars. Any ID cards or other things with RFID chips in them should be covered with an envelope and a sheet of tin foil if they are to be carried with the person. The use of license plate readers and other tracking methods by the police and NSA while protestors are traveling to the mall or on their way home after the event will not affect the success of this protest.

	1. When the people are all assembled, this will form the first “Flash Mob”. The goal is to get as big a mob of people all milling around as close together as possible to confuse any tracking software that may be attempting to follow individuals through the images broadcast over the mall security cameras. If the Flash Mob is done inside the mall building during the day, any really high tech drones circling overhead outside will not be able to use their infrared cameras to penetrate the walls of the building as they will be blinded by reflected sunlight. Thus the enhanced software that may be able to track individuals buried inside the Flash Mob should be much harder if not impossible for the NSA to use to tease apart who exactly went where inside the Flash Mob.
	2. While people are buried inside the Flash Mob, they are all handed regular wristwatches that can be used to help keep track of the exact time to be ready to reassemble in the second Flash Mob at the end of the event. It is not important that the individual watches may have their locations tracked during the event. So long as the face shields are kept covering people's faces, the individual watches will not reveal people's individual identities. 
	3. Then for the next 2-3 hours the people go on various shopping trips. They are all careful to always pay with cash and they are encouraged to wear a particular type of backpack to carry the stuff they buy, so again, everyone tends to look the same. They can go anywhere in town to go shopping, not just shop at that one mall. If they are traveling large distances that can not be covered on foot, they should pay cash to use public transportation and not use their own vehicles.   They are encouraged to remove any deactivated RIFD/antishoplifting  tags that may be on the merchandise that they purchased prior to reassembling for the second Flash Mob. It is also recommended that people talk as little as possible or not at all during this part of the event in case security cameras or their loaned watches are recording/transmitting and/or analyzing their voices.
	4. After 2-3 hours of shopping, everyone checks the time on their borrowed watches and reassembles at the appointed time inside the shopping mall. The Flash Mob is repeated with everyone trying to get as close as possible together while dropping off their loaned wristwatches. 
	5. Then people disperse and go back to their homes. They can get to their homes any way that they wish with as little or as much of their faces and identities exposed to surveillance as they desire.  License plate readers, etc won't be able to figure out what stores they went into or what they purchased during the event unless they start talking about their experiences that happened at the event. 

The End.

PS Individuals can attempt to duplicate
the anonymizing effect of the Flash Mob on their own by modifying a
bit what they do while inside of a building out of sight of any drone
IR cameras outside the building during the day or security cameras
inside the building, such as by using a bathroom stall to change
clothes. Start by traveling to the building in question on foot or on
public transportation or if the building allows all day parking for
non-customers you can drive your car there. Be undisguised in regards
to your external appearance. Let any facial recognition software or
license plate readers figure out that it is you going there. You
won't be able to keep the tracking software from following you to and
from your residence anyway, at least during the times after 2015 when
surveillance drones are going to be everywhere over every city. Keep
your face covering visor and a change of shirt concealed inside of a
backpack. Leave all electronic devices at home or in your car. Inside
the building and inside the bathroom stall, change your shirt to a
different color and take out a different colored but similar sized
backpack that was concealed inside the first backpack. Put the first
backpack inside of the second backpack along with the original shirt
you were wearing. Put the visor on over your entire face. Exit the
bathroom stall and exit the building and go shopping on foot or using
public transportation, paying with cash always. While shopping you
can optionally lift the visor enough while indoors to reveal your
face to the cashier and other people who it would be polite to reveal
your face to while communicating with them, but don't lift the visor
high enough for security cameras, usually mounted in the ceilings, to
see your face. To go home, go back into the same building and a
bathroom stall and reverse the process so that you exit the building
wearing the first t-shirt and displaying the first backpack and
concealing the second t-shirt and face covering visor and second
backpack inside the first backpack.  Hopefully you have enough room
in the backpacks for the backpacks and the items that you purchased
at the stores you visited.  Be sure to pay cash and not talk much if
at all while shopping. If you need to travel at night, to remain
anonymous using the above procedure, be sure to go into a crowd
inside of a building such as a disco dance floor that will remain
crowded late into the evening. Do some dancing on the dance floor
while entering and exiting the building and make it look like the
“real you”, identifiable by the drones circling outside the
building, which can see some limited detail using IR cameras and have
limited ability to track individuals inside the building from a
viewpoint outside the building, make it look like you spent the whole
time dancing during your shopping trip.  Good luck and have some fun
and retain your sense of humor while attempting to defeat the NSA
surveillance, at least for a few hours. :>).  If more people adopt
these methods as the surveillance state expands and more people begin
to feel inconvenienced by it, it should get easier and more reliable
to use these methods to temporarily defeat the NSA surveillance.  For
instance, if enough people all dress the same, then it will only be
necessary to hide your visor inside one backpack when going to the
disco building and it won't be necessary to change your shirt or
backpack, just whip out your visor while inside the disco building
out of view of any cameras.  This last stage is when, like the
Chinese, we will all become members of the Olive Drab Club.
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