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

[John Thielking]

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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