This document is designed to give you a basic tool kit for protecting your identity while performing anonymous activities. It is not designed or intended for use as a toolkit for breaking the law, and any use in that fashion is condemned. Any contributions both technical and social would be appreciated.
Technical and social security in communications
If you need to make private calls do not use a contract mobile phone or landline. Even if you replace the SIM chip in a mobile it can still be tracked back to you. Inserting a new SIM chip will change the number of the phone, but not the MAC address. This is the underlying device ID on the frame relay network. If you need to talk to people regularly in a private environment then use external phones, (be aware that most phone boxes are tagged by the police in certain areas due to drug dealing, so might not be as anonymous as you think).
The only way to truly guarantee your identity remains secret is to use cheap (cheap enough to throw away) pay as you go mobile phones. Buy these with cash. When you buy them do not look up at any cameras and disguise your face. Surveillance cameras in shops are usually mounted above eye level, but to not assume that this will be the case.
If you are buying something that you don’t want to be traceable, wear something that disguises your features and breaks up the shape of your face. Face recognition software works by creating a map of your features as distances between selected points, i.e. the distance between your eyes, the width of your eyes, the distance from your brow to the tip of your nose, from your nose to you lips, etc. The more of this you can break up the better, but you also don’t want to look so extreme that resemble a criminal robbing a bank, or indeed the shop itself.
Also getting someone else to buy the phones for you, for instance a homeless person is another useful strategy if you can be sure that the buyer is not themselves a target of surveillance. Learn the signs of hard drug use as many homeless people will be hard drug users, and that will increase the likely hood that they are also drug runners, and make them less trustworthy. This is not prejudice, but based on experience.
A drug runner acts as the middle man between the dealer and the buyer, and takes groups of drug users to predetermined place. Drug runners will often be identifiable as putting themselves forward to do you a favour. On the whole if you are approached by a homeless person they are either a stinger (someone selling empty or wraps, or counterfeit drugs) or a runner. Either way you will attract attention, and you will also probably lose your money. Learn to remember distinctive characteristics of the people you see on the streets. Homeless people will often ware the same cloths, hats, etc. from day to day. Do not go back to the same person, but instead stake out potentials.
An easy way to do this is by simply giving a beggar, busker, or big issue vendor a small amount of money. This will allow you leeway to start a conversation and asses any risk. Understanding the mentality of a drug addict takes practice, they will either be eager to leave [because they have made their target amount of money, usually the cost of a snow ball], or they will keep you talking and spin out a bleeding heart story, often about needing to makes a certain amount of cash to get into a hostel, or buy food.
This is most likely not true, all hostels in this country are free and there are a lot of food distribution centres. You can usually tell a genuine homeless person by the state of their hands, which will be dirty, although people in hostels might not wash or bath, it’s actually quite difficult to keep your hands really dirty, and rough. Also truly homeless people will more than likely have a bag of cloths and bedding (Contrary to popular belief homeless people do not hide bedding as it is too valuable). Also a lack of track marks on someone’s arms is not an indicator that they do not use and traffic narcotics. A lot of homeless people hit up in the main vein in the groin precisely so that they can wear t-shirts during the summer.
If you are going to use a homeless person you are better off choosing clean looking, slightly overweight, and possibly foreign man selling the big issue. They are less likely to be a runner, and therefore less likely to be under surveillance.
Really heavy drinkers will also usually be barred from most shops anyway, or have ASBO’s against them for most major central commercial districts, they are likely to be stopped and will definitely point a finger in your direction to avoid arrest, this will draw attention to you.
Also beware of homeless shoplifters as they are simply not to be trusted. If you are buying the phone off them directly it will probably be stolen and they are likely to be under surveillance for that very reason.
This is information is presented as is, and is based upon personal experience in the UK, and for the basis of identifying reliable contacts that can be used in the UK homeless community.
Mobile Apparatus
If you can, try to buy an activated phone with time on it. There are a number of ways that you can do this. On has been outlined above. Homeless big issue vendors will often have mobiles which they will be willing to sell (Make sure that there is actually air time on the phone). Note that this apparatus will most likely have been used to contact drug dealers. Familiarise yourself with the main methods the means of evaluating the amount of air time available on the main networks for pay as you go networks for the country that you are operating in. This will most likely be a set of numbers, do not trust apps that count available minutes as these can be reset.
Managing data communications
Using free wireless locations such as book stores, Starbucks, McDonald’s directly should be avoided. It is the first place that people will look for you because the signal origination point will be tracked to that location, also they will have cameras. If you must use those services, do so from a spot that is within range, possibly from a parked vehicle, and only for short periods to send and receive mail. Small portable Wi-Fi devices are also useful for this if you can swap them out frequently. Try to get devices that use memory cards as this makes it easier to store data directly onto them for reasons explained in the next paragraph.
If you need to swap out machines make sure that you clean the machine first, both physically, and eradicate the data, then dispose of it. The easiest way to do this is to minimize the amount of data that is stored on the machine’s drive. Use a memory dongle as a virtual drive for data, and use a login directory for all other services such as temporary internet files. Most modern operating systems will do this by default if you provide a user logon, which will allow you to clean the data by using drive wiping software to overwrite the data partition for that user. Do not simply delete the user directory. This will only remove the file descriptor, but not the data. Top make the data unrecoverable you need to use a utility to overwrite each disk sector used by the file and directory structure. Using windows have a lot of convenience for removability, but is inherently insecure. The following link will give you the software you need for that OS. Disk Wipe 5.1 is freeware, and does not need installing. You simply need to download it and execute it: https://www.bestfreewaredownload.com/freeware/t-free-disk-wipe-freeware-rdtawfxk.html. If you are using Linux then Wipe is a good utility: http://sourceforge.net/projects/wipe/files/. Mac users can get a freeware utility from http://www.supershareware.com/disk-wipe-for-mac-free/.
Try to use disposable dongles rather than Wi-Fi enabled laptops. The Wi-Fi can easily be disabled on a machine, and the dongle used in its place. This means that the MAC address layer will reside with the dongle, and not the machine, and will allow you to swap out connection devices rather than the whole machine which is costly and dangerous as it draws attention to you.
Data Security
The best way to insure that any data that falls into the wrong hands can’t be accessed is to use an encryption utility such as PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) which is available on most machines. It will most likely come as a compressed file like a .zip or .gz file, and you may need the relevant utility to open it. Latter versions of windows have ZIP compatibility built into the file browser [Windows Vista onwards] but an unzipped is easy to get hold of and free.
PGP is a public private key encryption utility that also comes with a file shredder, this does the same job as a disk wiper, but for a single file and is an easy way to create encrypted documents, and shred the originals. Information on how to use the software can be found at: http://www.pgpi.org/doc/.
Microphones and Communications
The following links give detailed information about how sensitive microphone technology works and are good links for other technical resources.
- https://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-directional-microphone.htm
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microphone
Outside communication is easy to pry on through directional sensitive microphones. There are several types, but three basically recognisable ones:
Parabolic microphones: This type uses a reflective dish in the same way as a radio telescope to amplify the incoming noise and focus it into one place where the actual microphone capsule is placed. They are often controlled by a laptop computer, but are available as hand held highly portable devices.
Shotgun: This type is an inherently directional and sensitive microphone, so named due to its length. They are usually hand held using and grip mounted and used with a sighting device.
Laser Microphones: These fire a laser beam at a window [or other sound surface] and use the disrupted returning beam to record the sound. These require a site to site level deployment to work as physics dictates that a beam cannot be returned at an angle.
Personal Microphones: These are devices that are usually placed in an object such as a pen or any object large enough to contain both the microphone capsule and the transmitter. Frequently these will be digital and scrambled so as to protect the output from covert hostiles working against both you and the people monitoring you conversations.
Basic Anonymous Communications Protocols
Nothing can totally guarantee that what you are saying will remain private, but you can minimize the risk of monitoring by hostiles. Most forms of covert listening devices require a stationary target, or one that can be tracked through a space by a number of hostiles with listening devices coordination surveillance. This does not include personal microphones, which are planted on the target and generally have a rage of between 1.5 and 3 Km. The receiver does not have to be large for such a device, and could easily be something the sizes of a cigarette packet or an MP3 player.
To prevent being listened to by external directional devices chose urban spaces, and randomly vary them, if someone knows where you are going to be [i.e. if you go to the same place to make a call] then they can easily set up a listening operation. An open space such as a park is actually easy to monitor because it provides a boundary where hostiles can deploy listening equipment.
If you are involved in any operation where you will be performing activities that hostiles might wish to listen in on be careful with personal possessions. Limit the number of items that you carry, and be aware of the origin of those items, i.e. do not pick up pens from hotel rooms, or carry around gifts from people that you do not know and trust. If you are offered things like pens accept them, but get rid of them, or at the very least examine then carefully. Refusing a simple offer of a free pen by someone like a car rental clerk will simply arouse suspicion.
Internet Browsing
When browsing the internet be aware that your activities are usually tracked by sites such as Facebook for marketing purposes, but as we have seen through “Metal Gear” there is an effort on the part of security companies to obtain information on the use of social networking sites, and it is very probable that they are already acquiring Facebook data. If your using Google Chrome a plug in exists that will prevent Facebook from obtaining data about where you click through called “Facebook Disconnect” which will do the job. Simply click the “Spanner” icon in the far right corner->Tools->Extensions at the bottom of the screen is a link “Get more extensions »” Click on that, find the tool and press install.
Protecting Your Friends and Contacts List
Why do this: To avoid unfriendly or hostiles from gaining information about friends and contacts, although this won’t stop a determined hacker it will protect you from idle mischief makers getting their hands on your list of friends and using them to discredit you, harass then, or generally sent rude or abusive messages to people you know. Remember that Facebook is a social site and you probably have sensitive contacts about your family.
In Facebook go to Account Settings->Privacy Settings
On the “Choose your privacy settings” Page you will see a blue highlighted link
Go to the “See your friend list” setting and set it to “only me”
Another option is to create a new email account [Microsoft Live allows you to have multiple account connected to one main account] then use that account for Anonymous Activities. Again, though this is slightly more secure, a determined hacker can still get you real identity from your email address. Measures to prevent this will be covered in detail when I have more time, or when other people start posting information. Thank you
From now on any technical information that can be show to be valid [That can be replicated, or is accompanied by some form of proof via a link will automatically be included in this document. I cannot guarantee that everything will be 100% accurate as I do not have all platforms on which to test every surjection, but if another Anon says that it works, backs it up with evidence, that’s good enough. I do this only in the hope that it is useful.
This great article written by : Anonymous on http://anoncentral.tumblr.com/post/11733497886/moar-anonimity-stuff-by-anonymous.
