Hypothetically, if you are a witness or whistleblower who's adversary was a very big corporation (such as boeing), what measures could you take to prevent yourself from being "suicided"?

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• hendrik@palaver.p3x.de ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Take the advice offered by journalists on how to contact them privately and avoid getting caught. I.e. secure and protect evidence without raising suspicion. Contact a reputable journalist via some secure means of communication.

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  • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    This children is why the need for private communication isn’t something you can laugh away by claiming you have nothing to hide

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    • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Absolutely. There are many reasons, but attacks on journalists/whistleblowers and the malicious potential of collated data in a capitalist oligarchy are the first two that come to mind.

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  • tburkhol@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Encrypt email with anyone who publishes a key. If “bad” emails are the only ones you encrypt, then that metadata can be used to raise suspicion of you and to trace your contacts.

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• SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Edward Snowden is a prime example of how to handle it.

  Only communicated via encrypted channels.

  When revealing himself and his leak, he had already left his home country. He was trying to make it to South America when the US canceled his passport.

  I’m sure he has still had to worry about his personal safety after getting stuck in a country he wasn’t planning on getting stuck in.

  But the reality is you have to meticulously plan and basically abandon your entire life and move somewhere they cannot touch you. When it comes to US companies, you generally will have to do like Snowden and avoid US-allied nations.

  See also: Steven Donziger and Chevron

  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Donziger

  Donziger was placed under house arrest in August 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of criminal contempt of court, which arose during his appeal against Kaplan’s RICO decision, when he refused to turn over electronic devices he owned to Chevron’s forensics experts. In July 2021, US District Judge Loretta Preska found him guilty, and Donziger was sentenced to 6 months in jail in October 2021. While Donziger was under house arrest in 2020, twenty-nine Nobel laureates described the actions taken by Chevron against him as “judicial harassment.” Human rights campaigners called Chevron’s actions an example of a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP). In April 2021, six members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus demanded that the Department of Justice review Donziger’s case. In September 2021, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that the pre-trial detention imposed on Donziger was illegal and called for his release. Having spent 45 days in prison and a combined total of 993 days under house arrest, Donziger was released on April 25, 2022.

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  • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yeah so many people talk about Snowden going to Russia and ignore the fact that he was only in Russia transferring to another plane when his passport was cancelled stranding him there. The choice was basically stay there, or go back to the US, and that wasn’t really an option.

    Why the US would want to leave him in Russia as a potential asset for Russian intelligence to break instead of letting him get to a different country that isn’t such a direct threat though is a really good question.

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    • Forester@yiffit.net ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Easy. They got to call him a Russian operative and brush it under the rug. Go ask the average person about snowden

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  • IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Those Boeing Whistleblowers should’ve left the country 😓

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    • sepiroth154@feddit.nl ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Preferably, not via Boeing aircraft.

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  • oce@jlai.lu ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Snowden was an IT expert, it certainly helps. His book is a great read.

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• NutWrench@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Collect all your evidence into one large archive, upload it somewhere and make it known that if you die of anything other than natural causes, that information will become available to EVERYONE.

  Read up on how “dead man’s switches” work. If you don’t send a signal online, log into a particular account on a regular basis, that sends the release signal.

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  • river_chunk@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Related: Image

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  • aaaa@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    But why bother holding back in the first place. If this is whistleblower information like Boeing safety issues, there’s no point in setting up a dead man’s switch. You want to release it all immediately in the first place, because keeping it to yourself undermines the point of blowing the whistle

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    • asmoranomar@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Might be the whistleblowing stuff. Might not. Guess you’ll have to kill me to find out.

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    • InputZero@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Then the incentive becomes to stop a whistleblower faster if they had a dead-man cache than if they released it all at once. There’s no guarantee that the whistleblower is being honest or is capable enough to undertake something like that but there’s always a risk that the whistleblower may disclose that information anyway. Better to stop the whistleblower by arresting them first and deal with the potential fallout than negotiate. Now the whistleblower’s reputation is ruined, if they’re behind bars they’re effectively silenced, and they’re as good as dead to society without all that messy work trying to fake a suicide.

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• Olgratin_Magmatoe@slrpnk.net ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  While it won’t help you getting suicided, setting up a deadman’s switch on the cloud that will release your testimony is definitely worth doing.

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  • Cethin@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Additionally, give a copy of all the documents to your lawyer to release in the case of your death. Multiple Deadman switches are better than one, especially one that’s controlled by a person and not just hoping your cloud service doesn’t go down after you’re dead.

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    • Olgratin_Magmatoe@slrpnk.net ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Absolutely. I was gonna edit my comment to include that but you beat me to the punch.

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  • aaaa@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    With whistleblower information, why hold it back in the first place? Wouldn’t it be better to release it immediately if they might kill you either way?

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    • Olgratin_Magmatoe@slrpnk.net ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      IIRC the problem there is that it potentially makes you liable to be sued by the company for disclosing negative/private information. But they can’t exactly hold you liable if you’re dead, so if you’re dead you may as well speak what you know from beyond the grave.

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• cheese_greater@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Dead Man’s Switch

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  • trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    And you’ll need to publicly advertise that you are using one for it to be effective.

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    • souperk@reddthat.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Also, the payload needs to be worse than what you are already disclosing…

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    • lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Not necessarily. The only people who would need to know are the people who are already researching you to have you killed for a potential leak, and they would operate under the assumption of a DMS in place already.

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• Etterra@discuss.online ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Amongst everything others have said, if you get sucked into an interview or press conference, directly and firmly state that, for the record, you are not suicidal and that if you should die, it was absolutely not suicide. You believe that you’ve become a target and fear for your safety and life.

  It doesn’t matter if you believe yourself to be a target in the privacy of your head. Always say that you are early, often, loudly, and to anyone who will listen.

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  • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Didn’t work for McAfee

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    • TrickDacy@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Probably because he was absolutely bananas

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  • WoodScientist@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I just end all my public speeches with “and Carthage must be destroyed.”

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• jagged_circle@feddit.nl ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Man, lots of crazy, unrealistic advice here.

  The answer is pretty simple, live in a community house with like 8 other people.

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  • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    8 potential aids for your murder.

    They just have to say: “I give you 1.000.000 bucks if you give this food to that person, it will look like a bad flu and you’ll get the money”. If one rejects the offer there’s 7 more to do so.

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    • NiHaDuncan@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      If one rejects the offer then you now have two people you have to kill. Loose ends are one’s end.

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    • jagged_circle@feddit.nl ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      [deleted]

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• BeatTakeshi@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Despite all precautions, if you are one of the few persons whose circumstances could allow the leak, then they’ll narrow it down to you.

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• Shortstack@reddthat.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Was just looking at something like how to execute on that this morning as my morning coffee dive down an internet rabbit hole.

  There’s this guy named Michael Bazzell who used to make a podcast about stuff like this, and he also wrote a book called Extreme Privacy that I thumbed through this morning. He talks about where to go to get a ghost address, how to buy and set up a cell phone to be virtually anonymous, how to buy a house anonymously or how to re-title your car to a trust or LLC, and pretty much everything in between. Even talks about what information to not divulge when you go to the ER and details what to consider you put on your kids birth certificate.

  So if anyone is paranoid enough to know how to avoid getting suicided, I’m going to bet on this guy’s advice

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  • Cl1nk@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Do you know where to find the podcast? Its seems like they dissappeared from the internet 🤨

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    • ifItWasUpToMe@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      He’s THAT good

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    • StaticFlow@feddit.uk ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      His podcast ended and he’s worked to remove them where possible. While I don’t know if there are archives of it I can vouch for the quality of his books. They receive updates throughout the year and are step by step guides on how to lock down certain aspects of your life. Its worth purchasing.

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• LordGimp@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Apparently you just have to kill a ceo in public and dozens of cops will come make sure you don’t get suicided before the state does it.

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• Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Live on cash from different ATMs; stay at a hotel/motel; rent a car and change it at different locations every week; go nowhere you don’t need to go; stay offline; Don’t tell anyone where you are; communicate only with your lawyer; record everything in an official manner as soon as possible.

  And most of all don’t listen to the billy badasses in here. If a multi billion dollar corporation wants you dead and is willing to break the law they can afford a lot of very nasty people. You aren’t getting the tactical training to stand against them in that short amount of time. Your best defense is to be ghost except when you show up for court dates and depositions. That’s what the Secret Service Witness Protection Program does and it works if you have discipline.

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• PriorityMotif@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  [deleted]

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  • NikkiDimes@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    …Jesus Christ

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  • DougHolland@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Oh man, I miss Loompanics.

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• Overboard8171@startrek.website ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Don’t leak. Spread seldom rumours online about the company with plausible deniability. Find a crazy-er person and/or group. Continue spreading dots. Spread info to Youtubers. Others with a platform. Use a VM, a password manager inside the VM. After 12 months, delete all your credentials and the VM. The system can not protect you. Corps rule democracy. Don’t trust the system. Spread the info until it reaches critical mass or the faith in the system collapses. Your life is worth more than some righteous leak. See the Pentagon Papers life. He lived a very humble life afterwards.

  NOTE: method untested and invented just now.

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  • reksas@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    wouldnt it just drown with all the insane crap the crackpots spew anyway and become tainted by association with them? But yeah, you definitely shouldnt use your own name and should spread the leak all over.

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• BestBouclettes@jlai.lu ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Definitely a dead man switch, and several letters from me and my psychiatrist specifying that I’m not suicidal.

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  • Zacryon@feddit.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You have a psychiatrist? Must have been coo coo before.

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  • BeatTakeshi@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    “Circumstances change”

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• PugJesus@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Human beings are fragile creatures. Big corps generally don’t need to make the big effort of a murder and a cover-up when they can almost completely legally harass people into taking their own lives.

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• GhiLA@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  how’d you find the guy?

  Easy. We had a list of the fifteen or so guys that did that specific part of the job, we got their IP addresses, watched them for a while, and as it turns out, two of them regularly use a VPN and send all of their traffic to Canada.

  How long do you think it would take to figure out whether or not which one of these boys are harmless software pirates, or their man?

  People do all of the work in the world without knowing that your preparation will blow your cover.

  Have you ever visited TailsOS’s website off of a VPN? Could the Feds find out? Do you think the other guys have the same level of deniability?

  That trail is not washing off.

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  • BreadOven@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You need at least 7 proxies.

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    • GhiLA@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Not even, it’s just comparing you to the average joe.

      Who’s more suspicious? The dude who visits GitHub, has a Matrix account and visits the arch wiki every six months or the dude who mostly sticks to Facebook talking to his family?

      FBI: …I don’t see anything

      Yeah right.

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  • Amanduh@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Is this some leet hacker fantasy where you are persecuted for using Linux? Lemmy you never disappoint lmao

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    • GhiLA@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Shit take but ok.

      If you want to feel inferior for not using Linux, there’s plenty of boards for that.

      Hell, I’ll make you feel inferior right now if you like. How many comments do you want? I’ll go grab my tech meme folder and we can /g/ this place up.

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• WrenFeathers@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  [deleted]

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  • IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    School aint teaching this shit. That would imply that you should be a whistleblower or be a witness to wrongdoings. No way governments would let this be taught.

    This is what parents should be teaching at home.

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  • Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    If you have a union…

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• meco03211@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  There are apps that will upload video to the web live while recording in the background. Don’t have any interactions with random strangers that you aren’t recording. Have security cams at your house recording 24/7 saving remotely to a secure server.

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• CaptSatelliteJack@lemy.lol ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I can’t believe no one has said to keep and train with a gun. The best way to live is to kill your killer. Secure channels and home security cameras won’t do shit if you don’t have a good way to physically defend yourself.

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  • Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    This isn’t the movies. They aren’t sending one person you can get into a fight with. They’ll just shoot you and ransack your house to make it look like you died in a robbery gone wrong. Just don’t be there.

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    • CaptSatelliteJack@lemy.lol ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      So, what, just be homeless instead? I don’t understand how having a tool to physically defend your corporeal form could possibly be a bad thing, and this counterpoint makes no sense.

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  • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You are not John Wick.

    The other guy coming for you IS John Wick.

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    • CaptSatelliteJack@lemy.lol ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      1. That’s why I said keep and train, as in practice often and thoroughly. If you just buy a gun and shove it in your nightstand, you’re not going to be effective with it. You have to practice to get good, and that practice will save you if it ever comes to it.

      2. Just because a gun won’t magically eradicate the killer for you, it’s not worth having? If we’re talking about maximally increasing the odds of your survival, we should be including every advantage you can get. If two people are being targeted for a killing, assuming all else is equal, the one that has a gun they are proficient with on their person is objectively more likely to survive than the one that doesn’t. You don’t need to be John Wick, you just need to not die.

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• Brkdncr@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Psych eval, video uploads, video camera on me at all times with an atty that has access to the recordings.

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• reksas@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I wonder if giving the information to the coporations competitor (as anonymously as possible of course) would do anything good? At least you would know if they are secretly in league if the competitor doesnt expose them.

  Also, i think anyone who is in position to do something like this should try to find more like minded people and continue as a group. Even then its dangerous but much less so than alone since there are more people to help. You wouldnt resist enemy occupation alone and expect to live long either.

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  • wetsoggybread@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    This likely wouldnt work because that corporation could get in trouble for corporate espianoge. Some guy reportedly stole the recipe for cococola and tried to sell it to pepsi and they ratted him out

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• muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Tails on a usb on a personal device only. Never do anything in person. Redact all personal information for all people yourself included. Use a pdf to image embedded pdf conversion tool to hide all possible pdf metadata. Remove all image metadata. Never tell anyone any traceable information this includes names, locations, times, contacts, you voice, anything that can in any way be identified as unique to u.

  Do not raise suspicion quit within a short period of disclosure of information, speak out about issurs, etc. Use simplex chat or pgp encrypted email with a new randomly generated email address not linked to personal info (phone number, existing email etc). Do this all via tor on ur tails install.

  Data exfiltration is difficult and can be linked/traced depending on threat model (boing will have extreme capacity and can be considered as dangerouse as a government actor). If u can take the device home and their is no device opened detection in BIOS then extract drive plug into personal device thats booted with tails and copy files from drive to tails (avoids any logging of files being copied or what fikes).

  If files are on a secure server then exfil will be traceable. U can avoid this by taking pictures of screen with an oldschoop dslr (be carfull of information leakage (the monitor reflections etc).

  If u are to testify and therefore need to disclose your real identity then u could theoreticly livestream ur entire life untill the point of testifying at which point u state clearly for the record u are not suicidal that u fear for you life and hope to hell thwy dont suicide u out of spite. Also if ur in the states carry a firearm and learn how to use it effectively.

  Also deadmans switch which publicly dumps info. Files, audio/video from ur phone streamed to a remote server (in an internal durastinction they cant get to easily or quickly)

  Idk tho just some thoughts

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• sunbrrnslapper@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  None. If you’ve ever worked at Boeing, you know this is not something they are capable of doing (honestly it is a shock they are in business at all).

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  • Waldowal@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    All it takes is money to hire someone who is capable.

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    • sunbrrnslapper@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Their margins are negative (like 45%negative) in 2 of 3 business units. Business skills like those suggest the leadership isn’t even smart enough to think of suiciding anyone.

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• kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Only use encrypted communication, use a phone running GraphineOS, and your computer should be running a secure OS like QubesOS (in addition to Tor and/or MullvadVPN). Basically you need maximum security and maximum privacy, a Thinkpad running Libreboot is the best laptop and a Pixel will be the best phone.

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  • IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Good suggestions, however, I don’t think even pigeon carriers will stop yourself from mysteriously dying of suicide with 2 shots in the back of your head.

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    • kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Of course, at the same time its not harmful to do as much as you can. However, as the saying goes “the game was rigged from the start”

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• dutchkimble@lemy.lol ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The trick is to suicide yourself before they do it

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  • IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Lmfao. That’s like cops saying: “Wait, you can’t kill your self!” shoot you to death “There, we fixed it!”

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• victorz@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  *whose adversary

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• babybus@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  You don’t become a whistleblower.

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• werefreeatlast@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  No busy roads, no flights with very few onboard, no views from balconies or other such places like large hotel windows. Cook everything yourself and you’ll be alright!

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• corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  who’s

  Who is?

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  • IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    That’s probably the CIA poison affecting my ability to typ…

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