The Greatest E-Warrior
Shamelessly ripping off Stephen R. Donaldson here ...
This is Berek’s Code, part of the Oath of Peace, which is shared by Lord Mhoram on page 53 of The Illearth War.
Do not hurt where holding is enough;
do not wound where hurting is enough;
do not maim where wounding is enough;
and kill not where maiming is enough;
the greatest warrior is he who does not need to kill.
Let’s restate this in internet terms and apply it to your communications.
Attention Conservation Notice:
Reading Donaldson as a teen left far deeper marks on my world view that Tolkien. This is just another way to restate the need to minimize your exposure by having something that could be cognized as COMSEC.
Restatement:
Do not email when a text is enough;
do not text when a call would better serve;
do not gmail when you’ve got Proton;
do not Proton when you’ve got Signal;
do not leave long term text when a week’s retention is enough;
do not PSTN when you can herd people into Signal;
the greatest e-warrior can communicate on urgent matters by simply being present and making small talk.
That’s a bit convoluted, because there’s an encryption axis, and an accessibility axis.
Don’t put stuff in clear text unless you’re damned sure it belongs in clear text. I still have a Gmail account and there are some things in life that get done there. I still meant what I said in Get! Off! Gmail! - but if you’re able to remain mindful about what you’re doing, an email provider that is responsive to civil and criminal discovery still has a role to play.
SMS I use almost never, because I don’t have a lot of muggles in my life at this point, but same rule applies there. PSTN calls are equally unlikely for me for the same reason, but the same principles apply. If you have a call and you neither record nor take notes, “I don’t recall” is a perfectly defensible answer.
Climb the ladder of inaccessibility as high as you can. Email is the base level, there as a thread, and no plausible way to disappear it. Signal text chat can be set for limited retention. And voice calls are nominally private, so long as you trust the other party.
Content:
The improvement in methods will of course improve things, but knowing what matters is a whole other level and it’s much harder to convey. Even so, let me take a swing at it here.
You should read the following:
Those are the things I’ve seen people get in trouble for in the context of online conflict. Don’t do them. Don’t associate with people who even talk about doing them. Just nope tf out immediately, because any mention of this stuff means you’re dealing with a retard, a snitch, or a retard that’s liable to find themself compelled to become a snitch.
I didn’t include 18 U.S. Code § 2261A, as it’s a popular “jackoff statute”. There are a collection of laws that, when they come up in online conflict, should be immediately read as an indication there’s some circular collective auto-eroticism in the works. Any chatter about misprison of a felony, perjury, Logan Act violations, and so forth is a firm indication you’re headed in an unserious direction. There have been two legitimate 2261A charges the whole time I’ve been in the business, one was a celebrity stalker thing, the other was a guy who was a relentless full spectrum shithead and they piled on the stalking charge to maximize the years society would be safe.
But there’s a much broader, subtle sort of leaking that you’d never spot, unless you’ve been in the business of reading other people’s email. People get caught out for silly little things, like lat/lon in photos back in the day, or a photo of a pet with the last four digits of the owner’s phone visible on its tag. I got my start in this area with the HBGary leak back in 2011 and I was quite impressed by the NSA people who’d been involved. Every time there was an attempt to start an exchange, they’d respond with “call me”.
How you get up to speed on that is … counter-intuitive. As a proponent of Paranoia: Pathological Or Professional?, trying to stay on the sensible side of the line, I often take on assessments for others. I periodically force myself to sit and take notes about things that tickle my fight/flight response. I do immediately respond with preplanned measures if something sets me off, but anything complex and/or new I will sleep on, as well as trying to get someone else’s perspective.
Conclusion:
This is conceptually simple. Given a repressive government, don’t leave evidence laying around. If you do mistakenly memorialize something, don’t delete it; the punishment for obstruction is worse than whatever is in your slip.
If personal insecurity, or some other aspect of your character, is such that you just can’t avoid engaging in a lot of cocky admissions of mens rea in group chats … it’s a lot more comfortable contemplating the future course of your life sitting under a tree in a park somewhere than it is while sitting in a cell in a federal camp. Today would not be too soon to start your voyage of self-discovery.
Maybe I talk too much about these concerns and my audience is too small. If you can’t hear it from me, 404 Media has regular features that should motivate you to pay closer attention to remediation recipes. Here’s one that was juicy enough I’ve had a screen shot on my desk for the last month, just waiting for the day I’d write something like this.
