Communication
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Communication
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Modern Communications
In a age where all phones are pre-tapped to some degree and a tap can legally be put on a person, meaning every phone they could or do use, staying in touch when you have gone to the mattresses can be tough. Part of being underground and hiding out is staying quiet but if you are a leader your continuing free existence may be needed to rally the troops.
Safe Transmitters
Surprisingly a well grounded CB radio with a horizontal to the ground wire antenna 264 cm (104') long suspended or sloped 5 meters from the ground with gives good sky wave and local/regional propagation especially if the atmospherics are right, with the bonus that is almost impossible to trace. Try to buy a radio that can easily be modified for out of band transmission and if you have the extra cash sideband really increases the range and free channels. Better yet for the price of a good CB you can get your hands on a real HF radio transmitter, tuner, and set up a wire stealth antenna, you could keep in contact with almost anyone who is just listening to a shortwave receiver, or have conversation with other members using HF radio gear, try to keep the transmit power set as low as possible so neighbors won't report the radio operator jamming their TV and trackers will need to search harder. Using a horizontal antenna it is nearly impossible to triangulate or trace location beyond the general region of the country the transmitter is in. To calculate antenna length of a half wave antenna wire divide 492 by your frequency in Megahertz (MHz), antenna length is measured in feet for this formula. If you are bad at morse code pre-key your transmission into a tape recorder and when the time comes run the tape on Single-Side-Band into the mike, morse works much better at long range than voice, you can also tape and slowly decode recieved messages.
Pocket Radio
Why not build from scratch, kit, or buy a small QRP radio and keep it in your pack. Have a regular time that a friend with a quality antenna and radio setup listens for you. You can keep in touch over hundreds or even thousands of miles using morse code and a transmitter/receiver the size of a pack of cards that is almost impossible to trace. There are many designs on the internet for building such a radio set from easy to get parts. Many QRP radio kits are made to fit an Altoid mint tin, this makes it possible with some creativity to hide a transceiver inside a normal AM/FM walkman type radio case, this disguise might mean that the pigs will return your radio if they pick you up. We have even seen radio transceiver kits smaller and lighter than paperback book for around $100 that let you transmit SSB voice or with minor modifications RTTY data when plugged into a laptop or PDA, these have a range from hundreds to even thousands of miles with a decent wire antenna and good location.
See Backpacking and Camping for some wilderness radio tips for the wilderness fugitive.
Phones
Your voice is really your fingerprint and the police can use it, with the help of modern computers, to hunt you back to the telephones you use. If you are in trouble get rid and never use again both your current cell phone and the SIM card inside, don't make calls on a residential phone, even pay phones are risky.
Taped Broadcasts
Abbie's advice on voice and video tapes is very good. Be sure to have a generic indoor background unless you need to show that you are in a certain location, a clean blue sheet is a perfect backdrop as there is no way to guess where you are and a video editor can easily make a pleasing background. Background sound is even more important on the audio of both voice and videotapes. The audio can give away your location better than the video, make sure to have good white noise or soft music covering the background and that you are taping in a quiet room, have a friend with some quality sound editing software check out the background and edit out any passing sirens, trains, or recognizable noise.
Secure SneakerNet
Files can be burned to CDs or stored in USB drives and distributed, carrier pigeon delivered, or mailed from an out of town drop box, then a GPG passphrase and signature is used to unlock operation details for secure meets and backup plans that are somewhat less likely to be compromised than without the codes.
Easy Cyphers
Solitare Encryption and Decryption
(Copyright Wikipedia GNU FDL[[1]])
The algorithm generates a stream of values which are combined with the message to encrypt and decrypt it. Each value of the keystream is to be used for one value of the message, thus the keystream will need to be the same length as the message.
1. Remove all punctuation and convert the characters to the same case.
2. Convert all the characters to their natural numerical values, A = 1, B = 2, etc, Z = 26.
3. To encrypt a message, add each keystream value to its corresponding character in the plaintext, rolling over back to 1 if the resulting value exceeds 26. To decrypt, subtract each keystream value from its corresponding character in the ciphertext, rolling back up to 26 if the resulting value should be lower than 1.
Algorithm
This algorithm assumes that the user has a deck of cards and two jokers. For simplicity's sake, only two suits will be used in this example. Each card will be assigned a numerical value: the first suit of cards will be numbered from 1 to 13 (Ace through King) and the second suit will be numbered 14 through 26 in the same manner. The jokers will be assigned the values of 27 and 28. Thus, a 5 from the first suit would have the value 5 in our combined deck, the value 1 in the second suit would have the value 14 in the combined deck.
The deck will be assumed to be a circular array, meaning that should a card ever need to advance below the bottom card in the deck, it will simply rotate back to the top (in other words, the first card follows the last card).
1. Arrange the deck of cards according to a specific key. This is the most important part as anyone who knows the deck's starting value can easily generate the same values from it. How the deck is initialized is up to the recipients, shuffling the deck perfectly randomly is preferable, although there are many other methods. For this example, the deck will simply start at 1 and count up by 3's, modulo 28. Thus the starting deck will look like this:
- 1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 3 6 9 12 15 18 21 24 27 2 5 8 11 14 17 20 23 26
2. Locate the first joker (value 27) and move it down the deck by one place, basically just exchanging with the card below it. The deck now looks like this:
- 1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 3 6 9 12 15 18 21 24 2 27 5 8 11 14 17 20 23 26
3. Locate the second joker (value 28) and move it down the deck by two places.
- 1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 3 6 28 9 12 15 18 21 24 2 27 5 8 11 14 17 20 23 26
4. Perform a triple-cut on the deck. That is, split the deck into three sections. Everything above the top joker (which, after several repetitions, may not necessarily be the first joker) and everything below the bottom joker will be exchanged. The jokers themselves, and the cards between them, are left untouched.
- 5 8 11 14 17 20 23 26 28 9 12 15 18 21 24 2 27 1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 3 6
5. Observe the value of the card at the bottom of the deck, if the card is either joker let the value just be 27. Take that number of cards from the top of the deck and insert them back to the bottom of the deck just above the last card.
- 23 26 28 9 12 15 18 21 24 2 27 1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 3 5 8 11 14 17 20 6
6. Note the value of the top card. Count this many places below that card and take the value of the card there. This value is the next value in the keystream, in this example it would be 11. (Note that no cards are changing places in this step, this step simply determines the value).
7. Repeat steps 2 through 6 for as many keystream values as required.
Book Code
Much less secure but quicker to use than the card cypher a book code gives the page and location of a sentence or word on a page several such instructions makes a readable message, both parties must have the exact same edition of the book. With the advent of massive book digitization this code might be easily broken in the future, and even now is not considered secure since the book you are using may be known to the police or government.
Original COMMUNICATION
Living underground, like exile, can be extremely lonely, especially during the initial adjustment period when you have to reshuffle your living habits. Psychologically it becomes necessary to maintain a few close contacts with other fugitives or folks aboveground. This is also necessary if you plan to continue waging revolutionary struggle. This means communication. If you contact persons or arrange for them to contact you, be super cool. Don't rush into meetings. Stay OFF the phone! If you must, use pay phones. Have the contact person go to a prescribed booth at prescribed time. Knowing the phone number beforehand, you can call from another pay phone. The pay phone system is superior to debugging devices and voice scramblers. Even so, some pay phones, that local police suspect bookies use, are monitored.
Keep your calls short and disguise your voice a bit. If you are a contact and the call does not come as scheduled, don't panic. Perhaps the booth at the other end is occupied or the phone you are on is out of order. In New York, the latter is usually true. Wait a reasonable length of time and then go about your business. Another contact will be made. Personal rendezvous should take place at places that are not movement hangouts or heavy pig scenes. Intermediaries should be used to see if anyone was followed. Just groove on a few good spy flicks and you'll figure it all out.
Communicating to masses of people above ground is very important. It drives the MAN berserk and gives hope to comrades in the struggle. The most important message is that you are alive, in good spirits and carrying on the struggle. The communications of the Weathermen are brilliantly conceived. Develop a mailing list that you keep well hidden in case of a bust. You can devise a system of mailing stuff in envelopes (careful of fingerprints) inside larger envelopes to a trusted contact who will mail the items from another location to further camouflage your area of operation. A host of communication devices are available besides handwritten notes and typed communications. Tape recorders are excellent but better still are video-tape cassette machines. You can wear masks, do all kinds of weird theatrical stuff and send the tapes to television stations. At times you might want to risk being interviewed by a newsman, but this can be very dangerous unless you conceive a super plan and have some degree of trust in the word of the journalist. Don't forget a grand jury could be waiting for him with a six months contempt or perjury charge when he admits contact and does not answer their questions.
The only other advice is to dress warm in the winter and cool in the summer, stay high and...
