OpSec Briefing: Free phone security download for Activists and Agitators

For your immediate consumption, I'm releasing a zine on mobile phone security. It covers the basics of how to avoid surveillance, and it does so in depth enough that you can avoid common mistakes and develop your own threat model.

The world is dangerous, but we can be safer. pic.twitter.com/upDSRShUhW

— Håkan Geijer (@hakan_geijer) May 3, 2022

A small crew of anarchists from Europe and North America worked on this “zine”, and it compiles decades of experience in the anarchist movement with “some proper geekery from the technically inclined”.

If you’re interested in some very detailed advice about staying on the downlow and maintaining radio/phone silence, read the pdf below. Thank you @hakan_geijer the more we know about how agitators think, the better we can understand them. This document includes such compelling advice as this:

For a phone to be a burner phone, it needs to meet the following criteria:

1. The phone must be purchased using cash.
2. The SIM card used for the burner phone must be purchased usingcash.
3. The phone and SIM card must be purchased by a user with no otherphones or traceable devices on their person at that time.
4. The phone and SIM card pair must only be used with each other.
5. The phone must never be taken to locations associated with the userunless it is both off and in a Faraday bag.
6. The phone must never be used in the presence of non-burner phones orother devices that can be tracked back to the user or their associates.
7. Any accounts on the phone must be made anonymously, only ever usedwith that phone, and then never used again.
8. The phone must be used for exactly one action.
9. The phone must only ever contact other burner phones or unaffiliatedparties (e.g., an office or adversary who is targeted by the action).
10. The phone and SIM card must be powered off after the action thenimmediately destroyed.

The entire document is an agitator’s guide to avoiding detection. It’s fascinating.

This work is in the public domain under a CC0 license according to the disclaimer here.

There are more “opsec” briefings at this website. https://opsec.riotmedicine.net