Even if you practice ideal opsec possible given the permissions, the range of bitchat is maybe the length of a city block in ideal conditions. I think that is more of a false sense of security than a useful tool. LoRA blows that range out of the water and there is elevated repeater infrastructure in a lot of places, but still most people hear no one on their meshtastic node and ultimately it just goes in a drawer to be forgotten.
You can't fully. If you transmit wirelessly a motivated attacker can foxhunt you. Listeners are all safe from being triangulated which helps.
There are scales of trackable though. Precise location uploaded to the internet to data brokers r us is easier for the state than being forced to come out and foxhunt you personally. Also pay attention to the difference between broadcast type transmissions and handshake type transmissions. A ham radio can be on and never transmit. Many can have transmit disabled to prevent accidents. A Bluetooth, cell, or wifi device always transmits looking for peers the moment you turn it on.
If you need a level of opsec for a threat model where being personally hunted is an issue... Scheduled short checkins from random locations at random times. This is a broadcast not a conversation because of the safety of listeners. A ham foxhunt on 2m takes 2 hours or so depending, pros with better resources will be faster. You need to be able to complete transmission, tear down, and be gone before they can locate and get to you. You also need to be truly random. Keep in mind that from first key-down they have a rough idea of your location that gets more precise over time. Also they have travel time to get to the location they triangulated. This means that not getting caught doesn't mean they didn't know where you were. The implication here is that your random locations can't add up to drawing a 5 mile circle around your base. They also can't repeat because the hunters can stage teams close to known previous transmission sites.
Replies (2)
This is awesome, thanks!
Any chance you can go on a similar rant sometime about what this could look like for masses/groups of people? 😅
Example scenario: group of activists or degens + their frens + family = small community of people, with some normies and some degens sprinkled in
Objective: Just comms? 💬
How do they merely communicate with each other without being tracked by the govt/state/insurgent entities?
Buying everyone ham radios 📻 is seeming like quite the uphill task just yet, but agree it will make life easy.
HF is expensive and high skill. Probably best reserved for long range needs. City to city or to get out of the country. This will have to be handled by a dedicated comms guy with skills and knowledge. It isn't like becoming a nuclear physicist but don't expect someone to pick it up and go like a blister pack walkie talkie.
Even for HT style Ham radios are usually expensive and always more complicated. Unless you have ham repeaters they are probably an unnecessary barrier to entry.
Blister pack radios in FRS, GMRS, or MURS are much easier because they are channelized and cheaper than all but baofengs or other Chinese ham radios. FRS and GMRS share frequencies which makes them interoperable. A carefully chosen ham HT can talk and listen on all 3 of those.
Most radios for FRS, GMRS, and MURS will say they offer thousands of "privacy" channels using DCS or CTCSS. That is a lie, disable those tones completely. Those settings deafen you to people who aren't running the same code but by turning it off you can hear everyone no matter what code they use.
All of those are broadcast style services that never transmit unless you key the transmitter. You can listen forever and never have your location triangulated.
Even with those you lose the convenience of phones. Carefully planned transmissions of information coded using manual encryption techniques, think numbers stations, is going to offer the best privacy.
At a certain level of insurgent type situation you have to break the modern always connected bidirectionally mindset. People in the know will broadcast limited critical information to many silent listeners after careful planning only.
Threats are everywhere. The question is what is the oppositions skill and dedication to finding you personally. No amount of care will make you invincible. Remember the Israeli icom supply chain attack?
