[HN Gopher] Ask HN: My country may be in the midst of a coup - h...
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Ask HN: My country may be in the midst of a coup - how should I get
prepared?
I'm sure some of your heard about what's happening in my country,
Tunisia. (tldr: the president made some 'unconstitutional' moves to
thwart rampant corruption. Five days later, everything seems fine
... for now). Even though it seems the president is keeping his
promise on freedom of speech, I don't think it would be extravagant
to get prepared for the worse. So, what should I do to keep myself
safe online? Edit: I'm not worried about my physical safety, I'm
just asking about protecting my privacy online if the government
decides to go full on Big Brother. P.S.: I tried to submit this
question with a throwaway account, for obvious reasons, was told to
"please slow down".
Author : ahmedfromtunis
Score : 70 points
Date : 2021-07-30 14:48 UTC (8 hours ago)
| zoomablemind wrote:
| Hopefully the situation would stabilize soon.
|
| Meanwhile, if you consider yourself more in a danger to become a
| 'collateral damage', so to speak, in a power struggle that
| 'others' do, then the most reasonable strategy could be just
| staying-low and having sufficient resources to live through such
| time.
|
| Especially so if you have something that may make your position
| vulnerable (family, assets, business, prominence etc).
|
| If you don't have an imminent need to flee (hopefully your
| assessment is sound), then not turning attention to yourself
| should let you weather this period of instability, just as for
| the most part of the populace.
|
| Know your friends! Don't self-incriminate, know what you keep on
| your devices and storage. Be like everybody, just live your life,
| if you can afford not to choose a side.
|
| Have a plan B (even C) about money, not just relying on the
| routine access way.
|
| Freedom of speech _is_ important. However, if you don't consider
| yourself part of the struggle, then just wait it out.
|
| Stay healthy!
| arkitaip wrote:
| You need to make plans to leave the country in an orderly way so
| you can move somewhere safe with job opportunities.
| [deleted]
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Get out of the capital city.
| csomar wrote:
| Not sure if you are familiar with Tunisia but this is
| particularly very sound advice. I got out of the capital a few
| months ago because where my family lives is kind of tribal. I
| used to live alone in some neighborhood and although it is
| nice, nobody really knows anybody.
|
| Of course, it could be the case that the OP already lives near
| his family or maybe doesn't have one. In which case, it might
| help but only a little.
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| I'm not really worried about my physical safety; there's no way
| this can devolve into a full on war; I just need to protect my
| online privacy.
|
| Also, we're in the middle of pandemic lock-down and leaving is
| not an option.
| novok wrote:
| Prepare to leave, even if it is not an 'option' right now.
| Make relationships with people smugglers today, not when you
| need it. Research which countries would accept you as a
| political refugee, which in your case is pretty clear cut as
| a journalist and what would be the best process. Don't only
| choose one country as part of your research, have a list in
| case one or more fall through. You will probably have to live
| in an easy to move to neutral country such as indonesia or
| the phillipines first while you apply.
|
| You might have to leave fast, so create a 'leave the country'
| go away backpack (aka go bag) and bring it with you
| everywhere, in case you can't actually go home. Install
| online cameras to see the state of your house before getting
| close to it in case you are raided or setup for an ambush.
| Turn off the cell phone when your close to where you live by
| a few km, use wifi where all your internet connection is
| piped through a VPN. Be prepared to abandon everything in
| your house if it comes to that, maybe distribute your
| important sentimental objects elsewhere with trusted friends
| or family or other secret storage spots. When you begin to
| stash such things, turn off all electronic devices with
| radios (wifi, bluetooth, cellphone, etc) or just do not bring
| them going there and coming back. Use cash for in person
| transactions from now on, maybe change your habits up.
|
| You may not be worried about general physical safety, but you
| might be targeted specifically.
|
| Michael Bazzel's book is pretty good if you want to further
| go down the rabbit hole:
| https://inteltechniques.com/book7.html . It is US focused,
| but many of the principles still apply.
| floxy wrote:
| >there's no way this can devolve into a full on war
|
| I know nothing of your particular situation, but I bet there
| is usually a long chain of impossibilities that occur when
| things really start to go bad: - There's no
| way this virus will keep economies crippled and shortages
| going for more than a year. - There's no way for a coup
| to happen - There's no way for this to devolve into war
| - There's no way they'd start arresting journalists -
| There's no way they'd suspend elections - There's no
| way the police will start shooting protestors - There's
| no way the army will start rounding up people - There's
| no way the protests will start occurring in my town -
| There's no way that the violence will come to my town -
| There's no way that my neighbors will turn me in -
| There's no way that the outside world will turn a blind eye
| to the atrocities
|
| No doubt it is still a really low probability of really bad
| things happening. But 1% is not never. Thinking that
| something could happen is one step to ensuring that it
| doesn't actually happen. Stay safe.
| csomar wrote:
| > I'm not really worried about my physical safety
|
| You should.
|
| > there's no way this can devolve into a full on war
|
| Ghannouchi might be bluffing but no one really knows for
| sure. This can devolve into a full on war, although it'll
| unlikely touch the coastal cities.
|
| > I just need to protect my online privacy
|
| You don't really need to do much unless you are looking to do
| full-on work on activist journalism. Dictatorships only
| target the most famous or those who make a lot of noise. It's
| very hard to follow everyone, and Tunisia kind of lacks in
| the tech department.
|
| > Also, we're in the middle of pandemic lock-down and leaving
| is not an option.
|
| Most Embassies have re-opened. It is harder, granted; and if
| you are young it is hard to get the vaccine.
| lilsoso wrote:
| Should you need to flee the country, you'll need access to money.
| You could deposit money into cryptocurrency 'stable coins', which
| are generally backed 1:1 by other currencies. The stablecoin
| called USDC would work for this purpose: backed 1:1 by the US
| Dollar. That way you will have access to money from any country.
|
| Berkeley has a report "An Evaluation of Online Security Guides
| for Journalists" which may prove helpful here:
| https://cltc.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Online_... .
|
| I also remember University of Toronto had software tools to help
| journalists and political dissidents communicate securely online,
| however I don't have links at the moment.
|
| You probably want to purchase multiple VPN services, from smaller
| providers, as the bigger ones will likely be blocked entirely.
| You also want to limit ad tracking as much as possible.
|
| Your phone will likely leak your location and provide excellent
| means for tracking you. I am not an expert on this subject. Use
| an iphone, update to the latest ios, limit ad tracking in the
| settings, and disable background app communication (cut off
| internet access for most apps entirely). Use a VPN on your phone.
| See this article for an idea of how pervasive the tracking might
| be:
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/19/opinion/locat...
| novok wrote:
| I would set up vpn service on a datacenter provider like aws or
| digital ocean. That way blocking you means blocking the
| internet effectively. If they block one protocol you can also
| switch it up more quickly. Your threat model is tunsia, not the
| us govt or anti piracy detection, which is where datacenter vpn
| falls short.
| ev1 wrote:
| UT's group is Citizenlab, https://citizenlab.ca/
| kelnos wrote:
| How does converting a stablecoin to cash work when you are in
| an unfamiliar country and don't have a local bank account?
|
| I assume cryptocurrency exchanges won't mail you a wad of cash.
| Maybe they'd mail you a check, though, that you could cash at a
| local bank? Though many banks will not take checks unless you
| have an account with them. And the local check-cashing places
| will take a cut of the proceeds (though that might be
| acceptable given the situation). Even if that does work, you
| might be stuck without money for days or more while the check
| gets to you. Hopefully whatever you managed to bring with you
| will hold you for that long.
| rglullis wrote:
| Hold stablecoins if you don't want the volatility, but when
| you want to sell some, turn them to BTC and to sell on
| localbitcoins.
| ev1 wrote:
| Localbitcoins does not let you arrange f2f or online
| meetings anymore without KYC. You have to pass KYC/AML to
| sign up.
| rglullis wrote:
| Really?! Last time I used it was 2015. What about the
| Mycelium Wallet?
| ev1 wrote:
| Non-VOIP non-prepaid phone required, and ID is optional
| but required for ... well, really, anything more than a
| single small amount trade. You can't get contact info or
| contact an advertisement otherwise.
|
| I also get "Unfortunately we are not serving customers
| located in your current location." from a California IP
| so it's really funny considering it's supposed to be
| nothing more than a craigslist for BTC ads.
| s5300 wrote:
| Well, depending on just exactly where you are, _if_ you have
| access to any way of using credit card to pay for what you
| need, or a way to turn a credit card balance into cash, you
| should be fine with one of several card style options from
| Binance or Crypto.com (is swipe SXP(?) one) and USDC (the
| singular most unbreakable 1:1 physically backed USD
| equivalent in crypto) in your balance.
|
| However in do keep in mind, especially when running from bad
| things (like a dictatorship) - absolutely nothing some cold
| hard money on hand for fares/bribes of whatever kind.
| lilsoso wrote:
| How to stay anonymous online is an interesting problem.
|
| Guides may recommend privacy plugins for chrome: uBlock Origin,
| Privacy Badger, Decentraleyes, PixelBlock, etc... However,
| these plugins may also make your browser easier to fingerprint.
|
| Technology for browser fingerprinting and linking your identity
| across devices is probably quite sophisticated. Perversely,
| there's a guy ordering lunch right now, in San Francisco or New
| York City, who wrote the code to track you. The bill for the
| meal over Uber Eats tallied to $45, delivered to his multi
| million dollar condo. He read your headline and decided to stay
| silent. Good luck!
| h2odragon wrote:
| Start you some alternate, backup accounts on sites that you might
| want to keep using. have email accounts at several providers and
| scatter the other accounts among them. Premade throwaways, if you
| will, to prevent what just happened to you repeating.
|
| Deleting things off the net isn't reliable; but if you've said
| things you might worry about later you can go delete them now and
| at least you'll be able to point to that as a disavowal if need
| be. If you're _really worried_ about something you 've said,
| maybe update it with a retraction an/or publish such separately.
|
| And of course VPNs etc etc... act like you're selling horse porn
| and keep some in stock, just for cover.
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| The thing is that I'm a journalist, and of course I said a lot
| of bad things about the president (even called for him to
| resign) as well as the government he sacked, and much more.
|
| So, on that front, I think my options are limited.
|
| But, yeah, setting up a vpn and alternate accounts is a great
| idea to avoid spying and all that kind of stuff. Thanks!
| csomar wrote:
| > I said a lot of bad things about the president (even called
| for him to resign) as well as the government he sacked, and
| much more.
|
| I wouldn't worry about it much at this particular point. Said
| is a textbook dictator but they only have enough manpower and
| everyone is still everywhere when it comes to publishing
| stuff. Only those who are very visible will be targeted at
| first.
|
| > So, on that front, I think my options are limited.
|
| I'll start contacting embassies on Monday. Many people do
| this as a scam (for homosexuality) and for many of them it
| works. Start building a profile with these embassies.
|
| You'll unlikely be subjected to torture (or killing) but
| maybe arrested for a few days or messed with lightly. Keep
| that as evidence for your asylum application.
| Aachen wrote:
| Might offline maps be helpful? For getting around when Internet
| access is pulled, convenience but also if you actually want to
| see how to get to another town or country without taking the
| obvious roads. Downloading relevant maps from
| osmand.net/download.php onto a hard drive and knowing how to load
| it on your phone might be a way to do that. Or just keep it on
| your phone if you have the space.
|
| What about power, do you think they'd pull power from regions so
| you don't have mobile phones to communicate anymore? Phones are
| efficient enough that hand charging should be pretty doable, so
| you can charge whenever you need to access any info (be it a map,
| or other offline info that you downloaded).
| jrexilius wrote:
| One thing you need to do is establish a set of pre-shared keys or
| passpharses with someone you trust outside of the country. Take a
| look at https://www.openkeychain.org/. You can take a look at a
| guide I wrote for people travelling into hostile network areas
| and adapt some of it to your perosnal circumstance:
| https://www.anomie.tech/craft/secure-tunnel/ Get yourself a good
| high gain directional wifi antenna to support physically distant
| network connections. Make friends with any HAM radio operators in
| your country. Maybe buy your close friends some out-of-band
| communications tools such as https://gotenna.com/ If you'd like
| more advice feel free to reach out to me. [EDIT] forgot to add,
| it is very much worth having a satellite channel for basic
| communications. The cheapest, most consumer friendly is the
| Garmin https://discover.garmin.com/en-US/inreach/personal/
| floxy wrote:
| Download and start using the Tor browser as soon as possible, for
| as much as you can.
|
| https://www.torproject.org/download/
|
| Disable javascript whenever possible. Check your browser
| fingerprint.
|
| https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/
|
| Practice grey man tactics in your online and real life
| situations.
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=grey+man
|
| Download the U.S. Army survival guide, and others. Download other
| books, audiobooks, movies, games, and other entertainments to
| your physical devices in case the internet goes down, or certain
| services start to get blocked in your country/city/neighborhood.
| Get at least a small battery backup solution to keep your devices
| running if the power goes out. Augment with solar charging if
| possible.
| minimalist wrote:
| Seeing as how can very obvious to your ISP when you use Tor, I
| would take this advice with caution. I agree that you should
| download Tor Browser and get used to using it, but also think
| hard about whether it would be a problem if you were found to
| be using it, say from home.
|
| The Whonix wiki has lots of good tips for digital hygiene in
| unfriendly environments. Same with the anon guide. --this
| comment posted via the wonderful community project named Tor
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| There is a transfer strategy designed to look like typical
| Internet/WWW activity, but I don't know how true that is.
| gruez wrote:
| I believe that's an option if you connect to tour using a
| bridge, but that's not the default.
| mikebos wrote:
| Get a protonvpn account and protonmail address. Make a linux
| desktop VM without credentials and keep that safe. When you wan
| to search for something make a copy, and nuke it afterwards.
| Obviously a live cd would work too.
|
| If you need to secure files use the proton drive beta for
| example.
|
| The proton suite of tools is actually quite good and better then
| DIY or several cheap as dirt providers.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| There is no need to spend money on this. You can get an iCloud
| email for free and iCloud storage for very little. I doubt if
| Tunisian government can do anything to cough up credentials
| from Apple.
| jakupovic wrote:
| Get outta there
| batuhanicoz wrote:
| I'm from Turkey and I've been wandering for a while now what can
| I do to still have internet access if the government decides to
| shut everything down.
|
| I'll use thread to ask: what would be the cheapest way to have an
| emergency internet access? I guess Starlink kinda solves this
| problem but paying 100USD/m is a lot for a backup connection.
| Aachen wrote:
| Pool the money with friends, family, neighbors that also want
| access? There also used to be dial-up available like from
| XS4ALL (you'd dial a Dutch number with your modem), but very
| practical I can't imagine it is.
|
| No real solutions, just thoughts. Hope it helps a little
| anyhow.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Sadly, xs4all is dropping its dialup support on October 1,
| it's parent company is slowly dressing the brand down to the
| bare minimum. Use it now if you need or want to, but don't
| rely on it exclusively.
| acuozzo wrote:
| > What would be the cheapest way to have an emergency internet
| access?
|
| How close do you live to the border?
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Have you considered, as an able bodied young man, to do your part
| for the future of your country?
| tacLog wrote:
| What are you implying is this persons part for the future of
| their country?
| vmception wrote:
| such as take the next overcrowded raft to Lampadusa, Italy,
| because he's more likely to be able to swim to shore when it
| capsizes?
| brudgers wrote:
| Against the resources of a nation state, you are no match.
|
| Don't fool yourself.
| Aachen wrote:
| If they target you specifically, sure. One can play the odds of
| being in the 99% and staying under the radar.
| loteck wrote:
| Not downvoting you, since this is a common sentiment. But how
| is this comment helpful? OP has asked for help defending
| themselves and you've offered "Surrender".
| mardiyah wrote:
| buy & store basic needs as much as possible
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| That I already do on a regular basis;
| slim wrote:
| Hey Ahmed I live in Tunisia too. You seem to be young enough to
| not remember how it was to live under the dictatorship 10 years
| ago. I'm a political activist from the Pirate Party, and I've
| been arrested twice under the dictatorship and I'm not as worried
| as you are. Send me an email if you want to chat. I'm
| slim@pirate.tn
| wahern wrote:
| [Some time later] I'm glad you contacted me Ahmed. Lesson #1:
| Don't trust random people on the internet. The secret police
| are everywhere. Now come with me down to the police station so
| we can get you booked and interrogated.
| scotuswroteus wrote:
| This is not funny or clever. It's ghoulish.
| wahern wrote:
| Ghoulish is a stretch. Americans have absolutely daemonized
| any and all aspects of domestic policing, no matter how
| legitimate. The reality is obviously far more complex and
| varied. There's nothing intrinsically sinister or dangerous
| about getting pulled into a police station to be
| interrogated; at least not in the sense portrayed in
| Hollywood movies or pulp history.
|
| On balance of probabilities I would strongly assume that
| slim is legitimate. And I imagine that most of his advice
| would be to explain some practical rules of the road--that
| most of civil society will go on just as before and that
| the legal system is likely to remain relatively equitable
| _except_ and _until_ you transgress a few key areas that
| are politically threatening to the leadership. AFAIU, at
| least for foreigners, Tunisia had a _relatively_ modern and
| legally equitable civil society before the revolution. It
| 's no coincidence that Tunisia was the first (and arguably
| only) only country to adopt democratic governance during
| the Arab Spring. Whatever the situation was two weeks ago
| (i.e. during "democracy"), it probably wasn't much
| different than today or 10 years ago. Indeed, the _lack_ of
| difference is why Tunisia is slipping back into
| authoritarianism.
|
| But of course, authoritarian regimes by necessity require a
| specialized domestic security apparatus. And even in
| societies where violence is unlikely, if ever, to be
| wielded, there are gonna be a lot of blacklists floating
| around, a lot of backroom power broking, and a lot of
| poking around by the security apparatus, so you invariably
| have to be more careful about what you say and to whom you
| say it than in democratic society. Democratic societies by
| their nature tend to have rowdy rhetoric, so the bounds of
| what you can say without raising suspicions are much
| further out. But it's not like democratic societies don't
| have police trolling the community for "troublemakers". Ask
| any Muslim in the U.S. or Europe. What ultimately matters
| (as far as personal safety goes) are the consequences, and
| authoritarianism doesn't necessarily mean no rule of law.
| bostonsre wrote:
| It's satirical to hammer home the point to tread carefully
| with advise from random people on the internet.
| ev1 wrote:
| This is also a valid warning to not trust immediately. This
| kind of reaching out is exactly what many other groups do.
| bwb wrote:
| It is also a very good point in this situation. Just look
| at how many informers there were under the Stasi...
| slim wrote:
| :) While this was good advice under the dictatorship, it is
| not anymore. He specifically said he's not concerned about
| his physical safety. Tunisia is not like saudi arabia or
| syria anymore. It's as safe as any western country. And he
| can easily check me out, I'm on HN since 2007.
| underseacables wrote:
| I think it might be helpful to transfer information that you have
| online that is critical, such as contacts, to hard copy. A lot of
| folks have mentioned some very good ways of keeping yourself safe
| online, but in a coup, I think some of the first things to go
| we're going to be Internet access and power. Having contact
| information and other important details that you usually keep
| online, could be very useful.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Get some hats and prepare to celebrate
| jbverschoor wrote:
| There's no privacy online
| anonAndOn wrote:
| Burner phone(s)? (cheap, throwaway, prepaid in cash)
|
| Also, this guide is a good starting point. [0]
|
| [0]https://cltc.berkeley.edu/2021/01/20/cltc-report-an-
| evaluati...
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2021-07-30 23:01 UTC)