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   jwz (jwz@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 07-Nov-2024 11:58:06 JST jwz

   in reply to

   • Matt Blaze

   @mattblaze Having just consulted his filmography, I think I would prefer to not be played by Gene Hackman at all.

   • Embed this notice
     Matt Blaze (mattblaze@federate.social)'s status on Thursday, 07-Nov-2024 11:58:08 JST Matt Blaze

     in reply to

     I apologize if you think I'm being a jerk for throwing cold water on your plan to be played by Gene Hackman in the movie version of whatever you've got planned, but staying truly underground is *hard*, and involves a lot of self-discipline and understanding of sophisticated threats.

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     Matt Blaze (mattblaze@federate.social)'s status on Thursday, 07-Nov-2024 11:58:10 JST Matt Blaze

     in reply to

     Also, if you've got this romantic idea that you're going to be some kind of superspy underground resistance operative staying one step ahead of The Man with your clever technology countermeasures, consider that ACTUAL TRAINED CIA SPIES have trouble doing this properly in practice, even for just a few weeks. See this talk from Blackhat 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWtbwMp7Zh8

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     Matt Blaze (mattblaze@federate.social)'s status on Thursday, 07-Nov-2024 11:58:11 JST Matt Blaze

     in reply to

     Also, while I'm as much as gadget freak as anyone, "get yourself a Faraday cage" would probably be very low on my checklist of things to do to prepare for an authoritarian dictatorship.

   • Embed this notice
     Matt Blaze (mattblaze@federate.social)'s status on Thursday, 07-Nov-2024 11:58:12 JST Matt Blaze

     Three people recently asked me about Faraday cages (to prevent their phones from being tracked), probably because of this blog post from a few years ago: https://www.mattblaze.org/blog/faraday/

     Tl;dr:

     - You probably don't need a Faraday cage. If you need to use your phone or have it on to receive calls/texts, a Faraday cage won't help you!

     - The main use of a Faraday cage is to provide *assurance* that your phone is really off and not broadcasting your location.

     - If you *do* need one, get a good one.