Simulacra & Simulation
Yes, were here AGAIN.
Simulacra & Simulation isn’t in Reading: Required & Recommended, nor is it in Required Reading: The Online Operations Kill Chain. You guys are here to read, maybe watch some Tool Time videos, then you’re going to roll up your sleeves and get to work. But there are … cultural influences … that one can not escape. If you are able to see this at all, you have some sort of digital shadow. Those who are brand new have a single, sharp outline, you’re standing in the glare of a legion of data brokers who are measuring any slight movement you make, seeking to monopolize your time and money.
But as I touch on periodically, most directly in Reality Under Siege, that reflection of a profound reality is something for the natives of the Amazon basin or the not yet a proper country of Azawad. This is a quote from Baudrillard’s book, one that I use so often that it just lives in my meme’s folder.
So let’s get after those first and second phases, Acquiring and Disguising Assets, from a hands on perspective.
Attention Conservation Notice: Just going through my sock drawer here, talking about degrees of effort, plausibility, and whatnot.
Acquiring:
The foundation document regarding The Online Operations Kill Chain is written from the top of the hill - insiders from the largest social media networks. We don’t have access to the information they use, so we’re left here in the peanut gallery, trying to envision what it looks like from way up there. You can get some sense of things by reading, but adult learners do best when doing. So let’s take a look at some of the more durable things in my aforementioned sock drawer.
There are four things in there worth inspection.
Neal Rauhauser - yes, really, he’s NOT me, hasn’t been for a decade.
Mr. Sox - a professional observation post with Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
Mr. Muttly - multifaceted NAFO-centric guard dog.
Mr. Charles - does what it says on the tin.
The performance artist known as Neal Rauhauser and I started coming unzipped during the winter of 2011/2012. I was going back and forth from D.C. to NYC for Occupy and there was a LOT of attention on finding my physical location. I recruited one friend in D.C. and another in NYC. I shot photos of me at random places in each city, shared them, and then when I was in one place my Twitter account was checking into Foursquare in the other. I knew it was working when I started getting BDSM spam because my NYC presence was checking in at every freakshow in Manhattan.
The sense of fun faded as the malicious prosecution and frivolous litigation ramped up. I bricked my last postpaid phone in 2013 and that was pretty much the end of my point source digital shadow. The swattings and courthouse bomb threats gave way to a kidnapping, a couple instances of arson, and by the time the first person I knew from this world was murdered, “Neal Rauhauser” was a performance art entity with a life far more exciting than mine. The second murdered fellow traveler in the fall of 2021 was the finishing touch. I hope you are paying attention here, lest you get dragged into this curious underworld by your identity.
Mr. Sox was created out of the need to look at things for civil cases without slipping my actual LinkedIn account. I deleted my personal Facebook in 2012 and needed a way to see into there, as well as the related services like Instagram. He was formerly thrown into every scrap that came along and for whatever reason he’s been remarkably durable. He was created with a burner phone and he acquired a Google Voice number, but I lost control of that four or five years ago. Several people I’ve worked with over the years have used him, so he isn’t a complete cipher, and any more his value to me is as a seasoned observer rather than an actor.
Mr. Muttly followed a similar path starting about a year ago when NAFO was growing. He got a phone, a Google Voice, an Authy, and then he started accumulating things. Telegram and Twitter were easy, Facebook rejected him and I didn’t need it in that context, and he had a fun GV number but they've gotten really grabby about taking ones that are unused, so that made a real mess for me. I completely lost control of him for a couple months when I cleaned up old virtual machines, just recently got him back after I found a backup with desktop Authy. Like Mr. Sox, people I worked with know that account to be me. Like all social movements, the initial burst of energy faded, and what’s left are the hardcore committed, and hardcore grifters that work social movements. He’s managed to tree a couple bad actors and as NAFO fades I debate what to do with him long term.
Mr. Charles, so named for the subconscious bodyguard in Inception, was created in a similar spirit.
Chuckie got a New Burner Phone, a Beater Laptop, and Cell Phone Hotspot & Tethering has improved a LOT since the last time I needed it. The burner number got a Google Voice, he had a “job interview”, and now he’s on overwatch duty. The phone has never touched my wifi and neither has the laptop since it got a fresh OS install. The person I am seconding knows the Google Voice number works for Signal but is otherwise unaware of the social media presence that’s associated.
A civil opponent would be confounded by this. A U.S. criminal case would require a social media warrant, a Google warrant, a telco warrant, and that would only get them the geolocation of a prepaid phone purchased with cash. Replacement SIMs are not expensive so they’d be forced to dig further with the IMEI. And if I sell the device, or forget it on the back of a toilet in a public restroom in a bad part of town …
I should pause here and remind all of you to NOT do crimes. That “loss of phone” bit will get you a sentence enhancement if you’re caught out on other stuff.
If there were some FISA/natsec angle to this, that chain would quickly come undone to the point of being attributed to me. I’ve grown cautious about who I do anything substantive with so if that’s an issue at all, and I’m not saying that it is, the most that would happen is ongoing observation.
Disguising:
This isn’t so complex at this level. You need enough of a presence in the form of a burner phone, which is a de facto persona tax, and then you create the associated things you know you’ll need. If you’re going to be at this long term you’ll end up creating a similar set of things, so you can be flexible and perhaps recycle the presence.
What works best on LinkedIn during the fall of 2023 is to look for the mother of all sock drawers, the ONPASSIVE grifters/marks, and join the flow. Once you get to a minimum number of them, you can start spamming connect requests to LIONs - LinkedIn Open Networkers. Many will ignore you but there are enough that only care about their contact count that if you do this for each NFL city you’ll get sixty to ninety contacts. Give it a week, do an NBA tour, then maybe have a go at soccer or rugby club cities. The grifters will just glom on to anything that comes near, the LIONs give you enhanced visibility.
Facebook is easier to get started, don’t even need a transnational scam, but the going is slower. Twitter is an absolute cesspool, I no longer know what works there, and I don’t care in the context of what I do.
People used to pillage social media accounts in a language other than what they are using for images, but that’s given way to AI generated faces. I haven’t yet seen an AI generated life but it’s not a stretch to imagine it, given what’s happening to Hollywood extras.
You’ll need some activity on such accounts and this is where I’d do a minimal clone job. Mr. Sox parallels someone I’ve known in real life for a number of years. My memories of them serve as a guide, without having any trace of the real person. If you’re like me, an older Gen-X, and you need to pose as a Millennial or a Zoomer, it’s best to have some grounding in reality, because you will always be a cultural alien in their spaces, even if you live in the same house.
Conclusion:
You need to be aware of What Hunts You?, and you should be able to respond with a statement of fact ending with a period rather than a question mark. The September 2023 articles here are all about the basics of moving around the virtual world without some psych patient following you around for a decade after the fact.
I am not at all sure how this gets done “at scale”, but the swarms of fakes on every social media platform make me think that countries with relatively low wages and easily accessible cell phones/SIMs are part of the ritual.
One area I need to explore is “phone farming”. This kid is running some sort of crypto mining scheme, but there are ad fraud games that get played using setups like this. I wouldn’t be interested in the revenue angle, but this is another environment where there might be social networks akin to the one around ONPASSIVE, which tolerates all sorts of weirdness for the sake of audience.