Notices by Håkan Geijer (hakan_geijer@kolektiva.social)

@naceugene

"Security Essentials"
- You should recommend FOSS options like KeyPass. And why Proton Pass at all given their current kerfuffle with supporting Trump?
- Brave with it's cryptoscam's and Brendan Eich's homophobia is hardly better than Mozilla
- Again, why Brave search and not DDG?
- Again, why Proton VPN for the same reasons?

"Prepare for a Protest"
- This sentence is misleading: "Disable GPS location tracking until home. (Airplane mode is not enough!)" Location tracking is not your biggest worry. Cell tower communications is. Airplane mode still leaks location data. Off is better. Off and in a faraday bay is better yet.
- In the section "Set your passcode to 10 or more random digits", your data makes no sense. 10-digit code is listed as 6 years. 2 diceware words is listed as 100+ years. The former is log2(10**10) = 33 bits of entropy. The latter is log2(7776**2) = 25. Something is off in how you calculated these. A source should be provided.
- Airplane mode section is equally misleading about tracking
- the "Signal Checklist" page 404s
- "Don’t share photos/videos with identifiable faces" is misleading as clothing, tattoos, and other visible features can get people arrested as well. This section needs serious elaboration.
- "Leave Signal groups that aren’t a part of this action" is unrealistic. It's correct to say that, but I cannot imagine anyone will actually do that unless they are part of very few groups and there are infrequent actions.

"Burner Phone" vs "Secondary Phone"
- Disagree that a secondary phone is a demo phone. There's threat modeling per individual here about whether the second phone should be for actions only or if it should be for organizing only (and not for actions). "reuse it over many actions" might suggest puttting all your organizing on to your secondary phone then bringing it to actions rather than for just *planning* them.
- "What data am I protecting?" needs to be split on secondary/burner/demo as it's not clear which phone offers what security properties
- This quote "You’re protecting not just yourself, but the people you’re organizing with who may be at higher risk than you because of their identity or circumstances (person of color, queer, trans, undocumented person, Arab/muslim)." and this one "You’re likely to be targeted by the cops based on identities you hold (person of color, queer, trans, documentation status, etc.)" belie the fact that cops *fucking hate anarchists* and they are highly targeted. I know it's popular to phrase it as you did, but that's not the most materialist of analyses. Just say "if you're highly targeted because of race, gender, or political activities." Because that's the actual criteria that matters.
- When you say "If you are already the target of state surveillance, it’s much less likely that they know about this secondary device (assuming you rarely use it)" you are blending secondary/burner. If you secondary is almost always at your home or paid with your bank card, then they very likely know it's you. This is not a reliable diversion and should be called out as such. Plus, if they raid your flat, they're going to find it.
- "Setup Guide" needs to be split into secondary/burner
- With how much data is collected and resold, I disagree that Tracphone is worth it. I would consider this to be a security risk for tracking even if it's cheap.
- You don't mention GrapheneOS at all. You should at least note this.
- The setup guide doesn't mention leaving all electronics at home while procuring the burner items.
- "Option 2: Migrate your existing account to this new number temporarily" completely undoes a huge amount of the security benefits of a seconday/burner phone. This should be removed.

"Action Research & Scouting"
- "Take scouting photos/videos directly in the Signal camera" I don't know what things you're scouting, but I would *never* suggest bringing a phone for scouting.

"DA Organizing"
- "Use Signal for secure texts/calls for action organizing" I think you're mixing protests and DA because, and maybe it's just my experiences, but we absolutely do not have phones involved in any stages of DA *at all* so 🤷
- "Use CryptPad for document collaboration related to the action/protest" Again, maybe we're talking about different actions, but for spicy things, we only do pen/paper.
- Don't recommend Proton Docs. They collaborate with cops.
- Don't recommend Zoom as they also collaborate with cops
- "Avoid using the Signal desktop app" without clarifying threat models about phone trackability or security of a mobile OS vs desktop OS amounts to FUD
- "Use VeraCrypt to create a secure folders on your computer" does not mesh with you saying not Signal. If someone hacks your laptop (spyware, trojan) then they will just wait for you to type your password.

the world burns, and i'm 110k words into an entirely self-indulgent writing endeavour.

@abolisyonista @notrace guessing they used a tool like danger zone in it to make it a "safe" PDF so yeah those are raster images

@abolisyonista @notrace answering on the main thread

Shout out to @notrace for the grammar and content corrections in my last zine before adding it to their site

https://kolektiva.social/@notrace/113816892389600499

This whole article is good, but this line stuck out.

> The American health care workers know their audience. They announce that their testimony will focus on women and children. To a bomb, a body is a body; sex and age make little difference against the weight of a collapsing home. To the West, the Arab man and male teenager are killable; the doctors’ reticence to mention them reflects an accommodation of this narrowing of the human. The right to life of Palestinian women and children is less contestable in words—though it is denied every day by deeds.

Not the main point, but one that continuously bothers me.

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/doctors-without-politics-turfah

@prolrage @joenepraat @vreer @GrapheneOS my friend, do you trust the CPUs in the devices you're using because if you want to play this game at your level of paranoia, the only conclusion would never be to use any computer or phone or tablet

May 2025 be the year of saying less, saying only what's important or poignant, not saying anything st all, not adding chum to the slurry of "content" being heaped on us.

@ZeroEcks Xubuntu or Linux Mint seem particularly user friendly, though I'd only used them occasionally, not ever as my daily driver. Because Ubuntu seems to dominate the market, I'd generally suggest a Debian-based distro to make searching for errors the easiest. Not that CentOS-based or Arch don't have good docs and many questions, I just am less convinced they're best for newbies.

@KevinCarson1 @richpuchalsky @neonsnake @waitworry some of this trend seems to be a bit of people feeling superior for being into a niche thing, and the techies have some serious superiority complexes in general. Gray tribe is being inherently elevated above plebian left/right politics

Shifting? In your baseline? It's more likely than you think!

@KevinCarson1 @waitworry @neonsnake I would be fucking THRILLED if you could write more about this whole mess. UCH assassin Luigi neostoic nietzchean ubermensch gray tribe shite.

@richpuchalsky @KevinCarson1 @waitworry @neonsnake I wish I kept up with it more because I work in an office and frequently enough bump into these types that I wish I had good canned answers for all their shite, but I'm spread thin enough as is. Basically it's not use a USian libertarian / techie thing. It's over here too

@richpuchalsky @waitworry @neonsnake Also if it's not clear, I'm fairly sure Scott Alexander is an actual race scientist and eugenicist. It's not that the milieu is trite and boring but actively evil

@richpuchalsky @waitworry @neonsnake Ah sorry, I thought you meant an article Gillis linked about SSC. Yeah, they're terrible, and in my non-radical life often enough bump into well meaning progressives and soft-radicals who are caught up with that milieu's nonsense. It's awful drivel.

@richpuchalsky @waitworry @neonsnake Which article are you referring to?

@waitworry @neonsnake I don't think he's left wing at all. This is just techie culture. "Gray Tribe" kinda stuff.

@neonsnake His goodreads list is full of Great Man ass books. Mein Kampf was added a week after Unite the Right. I wouldn't bet he's a nazi, but he's some kinda meritocratic neo stoicist SV-esque tech bro. Gillis is a bit more in turn with this stuff and has some posts about it suggesting he's a of the class of SSC readers or (i think too) LessWrong-ers.

@rechelon reads Ted K but is a programmer. My dude. Come on

@cthon1c sauce