Claire Reilly writes about her commutes and other travels in Sydney, Australia while trying to avoid the excessive surveillance that arrived with the abolition of paper tickets. Australia passed invasive surveillance laws that also affect travel. It eventually emerged that authorities could search commuter card data tied to individual users, including all movement and payments.
I'm all for escaping the Orwellian nightmare of the modern surveillance state. But when you rage against the machine, you still have to associate with the bulls on parade.
All the top-up machines at train stations, light rail stops and ferry terminals were card-only affairs. One tap on that baby and you were back in the system.
So, if I was busing downtown for a work meeting, I'd have to factor in extra time to get to an ATM, get cash out and then find somewhere to top up my card. Running for the train with friends, I was the one who had to divert three blocks, change jackets, burn off my fingerprints and find a nondescript corner store to top up.
Here's what I learned.
She gave a good effort at traveling in traditional, anonymous style. Eventually, a shortfall of 9 cents made all the difference.
From CNet : How I went dark in Australia's surveillance state for 2 years
(Score: 5, Insightful) by looorg on Friday March 30 2018, @11:20AM (11 children)
I'm not entirely sure what this is supposed to be. As noted at the top -- opsec is hard. But she clearly isn't smart enough to be this paranoid or go dark. It seems she learned most of her "skills" from movies and TV and she has no idea how the systems actually work.
So she paid for her card in cash. Big deal. The card will have a unique identifiying number. "The Man" knows where that card was sold, even if paid in cash. They know every single time she swiped it and where. So they can plot her travel without knowing her name. If they wanted to ID her so badly they would just use the massive camera surveillance infrastructure associated with most public transport systems to catch her when she swiped her card. Then compare that picture with passports, ID cards or drivers licenses.
So is this how "normal" people thing they are doing it when they "go dark"? Clearly she watched to much TV and movies.
Perhaps it would be more interesting to actually talk about "going dark" in the public transport system, I assume you can't actually go totally dark unless you somehow get into the system without swiping any cards. So how to go darkish perhaps?
Some suggestions might be to have multiple cards, bought with cash, by other people (pay some hobo outside the store to buy one etc). Somewhat more maintenance to have them and top them off. Or since the cards are "free" just keep buying new once instead of topping them off. Have a few different once, in some kind of shielded bag. Pull a random out per trip and use that, perferably then not using the one on the return trip as the trip out. Wearing disguises while travelling might be a bit much. How about that?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @11:30AM (1 child)
Yeah give money for your tickets to an australian hobo, they will come out of the shop with the best value alcohol every time.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Gaaark on Friday March 30 2018, @02:27PM
You gotta buy the booze, then have them buy the ticket: then mutual hand off. Or hand job. Whatever.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Insightful) by MostCynical on Friday March 30 2018, @12:13PM (1 child)
Did she also change her appearance sufficiently to fool facial recognition cameras, or just plain cameras?
Did she change her route every time she travelled, randomly, or did she get on and off at the same stops?
Did she use several cards, on different days?
Does her phone run a custom OS with GPS-off? Or a "proper" pile of burner phones?
Did she meet a group of friends regularly?
Did she really want to go "dark", or just give herself a warm feeling from thinking she wasn't being tracked?
Or just something to write about?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday March 30 2018, @06:39PM
IIUC, with current cameras/recognition systems it's easy to change your appearance enough that they won't recognize you as the same, and your friends won't notice the change. Don't expect that to be true next year, or maybe another year after that.
The patterns of activity is much more difficult, though, already.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Friday March 30 2018, @02:24PM (1 child)
No need to do that. Just correlate her phone movement data (which is tied to her identity) with the card movement data.
And yes, her phone was tied to her identity, burner phone or not. From TFA, emphasis by me:
So she was tweeting from her phone. That linked her phone to her Twitter account. Which has her real identity. [twitter.com]
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday March 30 2018, @02:31PM
Yup: I went dark by going to the same ice cream shop I always go to (they know me well there) and I bought CHERRY instead of my usual CHOCOLATE! That fooled EVERYONE!
Darkish is right.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1) by loonycyborg on Friday March 30 2018, @02:45PM
Properly going dark requires using someone else's identities, and many of them at that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @04:01PM
i had a good laugh when the ATM was mentioned.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday March 30 2018, @04:37PM (1 child)
Dark as lightning! Hell, she wasn't even "off the grid". Still paying rent, still using a debit/credit card, openly using ATM's, still carrying that cell phone, and probably dozens of other things that are tracked. I have my own little idiot-syncrocies, like not applying for the convenience store gas discount card. The cell phone in my car hasn't been charged in months. But, I don't pretend that I can't be tracked. I've avoided many of those data mining pitfalls, but I know that I'm still being tracked. I'm not sure just how ubiquitous license plate readers are, but I just assume that if a cop gets a view of the rear of my vehicle, I'm tracked, yet again.
In the case of the author, we can be fairly sure that her black opal was flagged for tracking early on. The movement of that card would have easily matched with the movement of her cellphone. Busted. You can't escape the police state, Sister
ChristianCitizen.(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2018, @09:40AM
Or now via license plate tracking.
But I keep the battery out of my cell when travelling, have a bicycle and selection of baggy clothes to throw off body analysis, and a selection of hats and glasses to throw off my facial appearance.
Plenty of limitations that will lead to you being tracked. The only way to really avoid it carrying multiple changes of clothes and fake beards/wigs to throw off facial/body tracking. And even then they might be able to flag you by gait or method of transportation if you're not careful. Staying anonymous is possible, but doing it effectively will either cost you money or require criminal acts to stay in a constant supply of identity changing apparel and equipment so that you never appear as the same person on two linkable feeds.
The only real solution for anyone who cares is moving to the sticks. But if you do that in America you will have just boxed yourself in for when they inevitably bring cameras to your closest store or intersection. At which point you've lost your privacy/anonymity once again. Which means you need to find someone outside the US if you still care. And expect to have to find somewhere else after that when the flaming eye comes to roost above your new lands once more.
Maybe it is time for more people to chant about the 9th Amendment instead of dicking around with 1,2,4,5. Because the 9th was the catchall for privacy after all.
(Score: 2) by legont on Saturday March 31 2018, @12:12AM
You are, of-course, correct. There is no chance to "go dark" if they are specifically after you. Perhaps some well trained agents with support of serious organizations still can, but I doubt it.
What this strategy gives you is an ability to stay lower than most of the population. A dragnet will not get you (well, unlikely). This is important. Say somebody needs a scape goat to blame a crime on, it's not gonna be you. There are riots and authorities are putting folks into camps by thousands - again not likely you.
Common criminals use similar strategies. Yes, each one of them can be caught, but there are matters of budget and success percentages.
Finally, if/when shit hits the fan there will be a few days when it would be possible to leave quietly. That's if one is prepared, at least mentally, and below the radar most of the time. Stay low and be ready to drop everything and run on short notice. Folks like this will survive even the worst scenarios.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @11:39AM (4 children)
We appreciate Ms Reilly's efforts, but rest assured that we knew. We knew what she was doing. When her patterns changed she popped up on our radar rather quickly. Not that we were initially concerned, but her ongoing success gave us insights into how to better track our subjects. Had any anti-governmental activities occurred in any area she visited we would have suspected her involvement simply because of her evasive exercises. If she's doing nothing wrong then she has nothing to hide.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @12:17PM
Where is the +1 for ominous?
Or maybe for +1 for Orwellian?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @12:48PM (2 children)
"her ongoing success".
No, she just thought she had limited success. In reality there was none. This whole thing was lame.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @06:20PM
Shhh. You don't want to discourage women in tech, do you?
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Friday March 30 2018, @06:41PM
You think of the government as a unified entity. This is incorrect. She did have success at some levels. E.g. the transit authority didn't know who she was.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @07:34PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Tuesday April 03 2018, @04:04PM
I guess some clueless non-programmer thought they'd fiddle with the code to make it... uh... scarier?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2018, @04:44AM
...has jumped the shark.