This webcast was originally published on March 24th, 2023.
In this video, John and Ean discuss techniques and methods used by criminals that can be employed to enhance personal privacy and security. They delve into how these tactics can help individuals protect themselves in a digital age where surveillance and data monitoring are pervasive. The conversation also covers broader societal implications and the need for awareness and proactive measures in maintaining one’s privacy and security.
- The webinar discusses strategies for personal privacy protection in response to fears of surveillance and monitoring.
- Techniques criminals use for evasion are being adapted to help individuals protect their privacy and anonymity.
- The presenters emphasize the importance of understanding and employing security measures in today’s heavily monitored digital landscape.
Highlights
Full Video
Transcript
Ean Meyer
John and I, career troublemakers, malcontents, rogues and whatnot, always, find ourselves, thinking about not only in our work, how we detect criminals, but what are some of the techniques that they use that we can employ to allow people to be more private, to protect themselves, etcetera.
So, that’s kind of what we’re going to talk about today. John, you want to add anything to that?
John Strand
No, I think you’ve got a slide a little bit later that talks about why this is so important. But if you look at the geopolitical landscape of the entire world and the country and all this stuff, I think that there is a palpable fear about being monitored, being watched and what that actually means for you later on down the line.
And this presentation is to address those types of concerns. And by the way, spoiler, you’re screwed. That’s what it’s going to come down to, so let’s get on with it.
Ean Meyer
True statement. cool. So this is me, in case you don’t know me. Everybody knows John, but in case you don’t know me, I’m Ian Meyer. I’ve just started at black Hills as the possibility inventor is the title we came up for me, and it’s just kind of helping people maximize what they do and do everything with, content community working.
Jason and Deb. But if you’re like, why is this person who’s buying crab suits and puppets and whatnot, why do they know anything about security? Well, I’ve been doing security for anywhere 1520 years, depending on how you count it.
In large organizations. I got degrees. You can read all this on your own, and I only include this. So you’re like, why does the bald idiot get to talk to me about security? Well, that’s why. But I’ve also got puppets and all that good stuff.
John Strand
That’s why I hired him. The puppets?
Ean Meyer
Yeah. So, let’s talk about John. John, why don’t you introduce yourself?
John Strand
So, my name is Jon Strand. I think a lot of me by this point. I know that that’s presumptuous and I apologize. But, another big reason why this, this particular thing and we’re kicking off is I’m a huge diseutopian geek.
I love books. I love movies that try to look into the future and kind of look at what the way a society is going to present itself and say, this could really suck.
And a lot of my favorite books, some of them I know that you have heard of, maybe some of them you havent. Yigne Zamyatin, whos the gentleman on the slide? He wrote a book called we that George Orwell promptly ripped off and wrote 1984.
Theyre very, very, very similar books, but we is fantastic. Brave, New World is really where I think we’re honestly heading towards is more brave new world than anything else.
1984 anthem clockwork. orange Animal Farm, V for vendetta. These are just some of the books and some of the things that I think that we talk about. And as a kid, I was constantly trying to think in terms of what, if everything goes to hell, what does that mean for the universe, for me as an individual?
How do we work within those spaces? And, it just kind of built up over time. So that’s, that’s me as it relates to this particular. Oh, yeah. I’ve also got a political science degree and wrote a lot of papers about this over the years.
So there you go.
Ean Meyer
Cool. So we teased how to be a criminal, right? But here’s the thing. We’re going to tell you about techniques to protect yourself, to protect your loved ones, and understand a little bit, like John said, about the geopolitical landscape, why people do this monitoring.
And by the way, it’s not just geopolitics. It’s, it’s our favorite word here at BHS, capitalism. And we’ll talk about that a little bit. But just in case you’re reading this going, but John and Ian told me I could do this to the police or under oath or whatnot.
They did not. We’re, not lawyers. We’re not your lawyers. Consult a lawyer if you think, that you need to. But we’re going to talk in general about some of these tactics and reasons that you will use them, legally, and reasons why you might need to do that.
Now, I also have a slide in here as a trigger warning. And here’s why. if you’re the type of person who’s offended by trigger warnings, and this is the meanest I will be, I don’t care the reason.
John Strand
Trigger warning. Trigger warning.
Ean Meyer
There is a trigger warning. Trigger warning. This is a trigger warning. Trigger warning.
John Strand
Got it.
Ean Meyer
so I guess I do care. So I want you to not be triggered by the trigger warning. So the reason I include this is we are going to talk about some issues of domestic abuse, of tracking, stalking, things like that.
And if that is something, that, upsets you or you’ve got direct experience in that you don’t want to hear about, just know that that’s what’s coming, and we will have some mention of that.
So this is also not a complete description of everything you need to do. These are just some of the techniques that we feel are very important for you to understand. This is where you would go for the completeness.
Michael Basil teaches incredible seminars at, Blackhat. They’ve got their privacy security notice and podcast, and they’ve got this book hiding from the Internet. I would 100% recommend, if you get to the end of this, you’re like, oh, I would really like to figure out how I can get less data on the Internet.
Here’s where you go. You check these books out last. We’re not going to go into detailed concepts of how to secure your devices. We might touch on some of it, but if some of it is interesting to you, say, oh, how do I secure my iPhone?
How do I turn off some of this metadata sharing? We’re not going to talk about that either, because the EFF, the electronic frontier foundation, does it much better than we ever could and keeps it updated through their surveillance self defense project.
And you can go to that ssd dot eff.org dot, and by the way, support them. They do amazing work, Eva, and everybody out there does incredible work. Please support them because this is some of the stuff that they’re putting out to help protect you, me, and everybody on the Internet.
So, let’s pause for a second. Who needs privacy, right? Who needs privacy? Now we’re talking about criminals, right? Criminals definitely want privacy. They don’t want to be found. They don’t. They want to hide in the shadows.
But it’s not just criminals. Activists. There’s no shortage of folks in authoritarian regimes, or in regimes that are considered democratic, that are targeted because they’re trying to speak truth to power.
You might need that privacy. Journalists, same kind of concept. You are speaking truth to power, to people that have power, that don’t like it. And you might want a level of privacy and anonymity to protect yourself and your loved ones.
Like I mentioned, abuse survivors. We will likely get into a story that I shared in the pre, pre show banter about techniques that you can use to help people escape abusive relationships where they’re literally being controlled digitally, by their abuser.
And then, of course, you. You need it, and you need to think about it now, because there’s lots of threats out there, right? There’s the government, theres private groups, theres individuals.
The reason I have these three groups in here, the reason we have these three groups in here is because a lot of you might go, well, if its a government, if its a nation state, what am I going to possibly do? And guess what? Youre right.
Youre absolutely right. A, government, nation state has got access to tools, technology, tracking, and resources that you will never have. Right. So the idea is, know who your threat is.
Are you trying to hide yourself from a nation state because you’re an activist, or are you trying to hide yourself from a private group like corporations and just say, I just don’t want all my data in these corporate systems.
I don’t want them to be able to use that to track me. And then, of course, the individuals, someone who might actually target you as a stalker, who might target you as a person of interest, whatever it may be.
How do I make their life that much harder? Still don’t believe me? Still don’t think, oh, well, I’ve got nothing to worry about. I’ve got nothing to hide. I don’t need to live like a criminal.
I don’t need to hide all my data. I encourage you to pick up this book. It is called three felonies a day, in which a lawyer goes through and details you are likely every single day you wake up and you go about your life.
You are committing three felonies. I don’t know why when I arrested, because we don’t have the resources for it. Just because, you’ve probably been driving and you’re speeding, and you go, well, that’s just speeding.
Well, in some states, when you go over a certain mile per hour, that’s a felony, right? Does that mean everyone who does that gets arrested in charge of the felony? Absolutely not, but go ahead, John.
John Strand
I was going to say, and that’s the thing that I think a lot of people miss. Right. Whenever you’re looking at a nation state and they want to charge you with something, then they’ve got a wide range of things that they can actually charge you with.
Even if you get arrested and even if you’re verbally confrontational with a police officer, they can charge you with resisting arrest, or they can charge you with assault. These things can happen very, very, very quickly.
I don’t want to get into it in this webcast, but my family, I have an example of that where law enforcement had overreached substantially. And basically, whenever we got to the attorney, he was able to get it to a lower charge, and he said, take this deal.
You’re not going to get a better deal. Take this deal. Because they can stack a whole bunch of additional charges all the way up to felonies if the system decides to do so.
So the point is, you dont want to give any more ammunition to a nation state than what they already have. And trust me, they can find things as well.
Ean Meyer
Preston. Absolutely. I want to go to one of the questions here, Walter Hauser, because I think, being an academic myself, I love this. And I also love Jeff Mann. I hope hes watching. would, you kindly define the terms privacy, security, and anonymity?
I love that because, yeah, theyre often used interchangeably, the way I like to think of these two. And, John, why don’t you give some feedback here, too? But the way I like to think about privacy is, first, privacy is just not having the data out there.
I am not going to allow you to see this. It is private. Think of a privacy fence. If the fence is there, I cannot see into there. I’m just not putting that data out there where security data that you might need to have, services you might need to have, but then controlling it, putting security controls around it, making sure that you understand how that data is being used and what people want to use it for.
And then, of course, anonymity, meaning that none of it matters because it’s not tied to you. There’s no data there. John, do you have any different thoughts on that?
John Strand
Yep. I would say the biggest thing between privacy and security, security denotes control. If you’re a private person, you would use security to defend that privacy or the things that you determined to be private to you.
Ean Meyer
Right. All right, excellent. Killer Mike, the mic. So I I love run the jewels. when I finished my masters, the day I finished my masters, this shirt showed up in the mail, and it was kind of, of great because im like, yes, I did, in fact, kill my masters.
Obviously, this has a different connotation, but this was a quote during the protest that happened a couple of years ago. And Killer Mike came up and he said, its time to plot, plan, strategize, organize, and mobilize.
And why do I include this message? Well, one, its good advice. No matter what, now is always the right time to plan. But if youre in a situation where you find that youve got to escape a domestic abuse situation, if you, like John mentioned, have been incorrectly targeted by law enforcement, and now it’s just incredibly easy for them to find information on you before you get a chance to speak to a lawyer, before you get a chance to do all the things that you’re legally entitled to do if you need privacy.
At that point, it’s already too late. If you’re in the sound of my voice, now is the time to implement some of these strategies and do not feel bad that you cannot do them all. I don’t.
I’m just giving you the tools. So if you can, awesome, go do it right. But now is the time to plot.
John Strand
Preston, I also want to kind of go on that shirt, kill your masters. One of the things that we’re going to, that I’m going to be talking about is, who are your masters? I think that there’s a, we’re getting in some political things. There’s this false, like, false argument that’s made that your masters are the Republicans or the Democrats or this party or that party or those people.
And trust me, your masters aren’t those people. And we’re going to talk about that and who our masters truly are as we go through this, as well.
Ean Meyer
Also, speaking of artists as well. So, like I said, nothing is perfect. Nothing is a silver bullet. Anyone who tries to sell you that is lying to you. Right. Just to be clear, I have a quote here up top, and this is a personal quote.
This is one that a, good friend of mine, who is a lawyer, she said to me when we were doing some depositions, or we were going to engage with some auditors, and she said, never speak when you can nod.
Never nod when you can wink. Never wink when you can stay silent. So keep this in mind. Every time you think about what you’re doing, movements, you’re making the footprint, you’re leaving the information that you’re giving.
Give as little as possible to meet other legal regulations or to meet your comfort level, your risk level. Right. And if that’s a little too ostentatious or a little too philosophical for you, well go check out our friends dual corps and listen to the ten hat commandments.
And just remember to shut up. whos heard of Moscow rules before? Moscow rules are a concept that came up, we believe, during, World War one, World War two, those areas in which we were fighting the cold.
Well, not world War one, but world war two, in which were fighting the cold war. And the idea was, when you are in a situation where youre performing clandestine work, these are the things that you need to pay attention to.
And why do we start here instead of technology? Because this applies to everything. This is how you think. Like a criminal in the case of a spy or a clandestine agent. Yeah.
In the territory theyre in, theyre probably breaking some laws on our side. theyre doing what we feel is necessary for safety. So lets talk about some of these rules real quick. Assume nothing.
Dont assume that youre safe. Dont assume that the place that you are safe, dont assume that the people youre working with Arent, the adversary because you should never go against your gut. If you get a bad feeling, get out of there.
If youre giving data to somebody, if youre on a date with somebody, if somebody tells you to go somewhere, dont if youve got that feeling, this isnt right. That is your subconscious trying to tell you what to do.
Another book I recommend that I didnt have in here is called the gift of fear. And its from a high level bodyguard who talks about those gut instincts and protecting high level targets.
Right. Gives you a lot of good tips on how to think about how youre being observed and what to take when you observe a situation Preston.
John Strand
And kind of boiling these rules down in the intelligence community, working with human and different things, theres two things. One, we have a saying. It says, dont ever put anything on the Internet that you wouldnt be okay with it showing up in court.
I think that that is a really good way of trying to look at your life and the kind of to these rules, don’t ever do anything. We’re talking spies and people that are actually operators or downrange, or whatever.
It’s like, don’t do anything that’s going to set off a signal flare that you are on a specific objective. Don’t, don’t call attention to yourself. It’s funny, you see movies like, let’s say James Bond movies, right, shows up in a tuxedo everywhere.
Like that’s really, really obvious that something weird is going on, right. So, and we’re not talking be a spy, but like this type of thing, as far as trusting your gut and keeping a low cover and a low profile if you can is absolutely essential.
Ean Meyer
Yeah, we’re going to talk about that in another slide called gray man theory, which is exactly what John is talking about. Now, one of the things I do have to mention, and maybe it’ll be a little bit controversial, but that’s, that’s okay.
We were talking a little bit about Andrew Tate during the pre show banter. And one of the things that Andrew Tate completely broke and, the reason I’m bringing up his time traveling nerd herder here, rule eight looks awesome.
Do not harass the opposition. Andrew Tate is currently in jail. Yeah. And he was very certain that by going to Romania, he’d be able to bribe his way out, because that’s the thing.
Well, if you go online and talk about how you can bribe the officials, what they’re not going to do? Take bribes.
John Strand
Yeah. They didn’t, they didn’t appreciate the fact that he’s like, everything in this country is completely corrupt and I can do whatever they want. Spoiler he couldn’t, right?
Ean Meyer
Narrator. He could not, right. So most of these kind of boiling us down to kind of move through it because you can read this on your own. It’s all over the place. There’s Wikipedia, and then I’ve got a link here to the international Spy museum.
But essentially what it says is blend in, don’t cause trouble. And always assume that everything and everyone is an adversary and try and make plans for how to do that.
Don’t give them additional information that they can use against you. Hey, whoa, you. Hey, come back. Yeah, you just got done watching the video.
But if you’re watching this in the background, this is just part one. There’s part two and three. So check it out. if you are a criminal or not a criminal, just want to learn how to live like a criminal because you gotta want to be private.
You gotta check out those other two videos. So this is part one. Check out parts two and three at the link below. And, well, frankly, if you’re checking out the other parts, you must like us. So go ahead and subscribe and like, and do all those things that help feed the algorithm so that you can get more of our content when we publish it.
So check out those links below and see what else we got to say.