🛡️ How to communicate when everything's down

A Civil Resistance Starter Checklist

Welcome to the beginner's guide to communicating when fascist dictatorships and autocratic Governments shut down communications.

Prepare to Communicate, Move, and Survive When Systems Fail

If you're reading this, you're probably worried — and you're right to be. When the lights go out, the signal dies, or your freedoms vanish, this checklist is your starting line. You don’t need to be an expert. You just need to act now.

Typically one of the first things to happen in times of civil unrest is they shut down civilian communication. They do this to quell dissent. They do it to enforce subservience and keep you in your place.

So before that happens, I'm going to teach the basics that will allow you to:

• Get connected in a way that keeps you off the radar.

• Helps you stay connected when they shut down and/or censor communications, social media.

• Helps you communicate securely so your conversations can remain private.

  
  

I suggest you share this information far and wide - download it. Print it off and keep it handy. Use it when you need to get yourself up and running again.

To be honest, I hope you'll never need any of this information. But as they say it's better to have it and know how to use it and not need it than find yourself in a situation where you wish you needed it and didn't.

So let's keep you connected, defiant and in control of your own destiny as best we can.

HOW TO STAY UNDER THE RADAR

📶 WHEN THE CELL NETWORK/INTERNET IS DOWN

Below is a list of Mesh Communication options that work without any available internet or cellular service. They work with your phone to communicate using ad-hoc Mesh Network protocols. That means if and when Cell Service goes down and Internet service/Social Media is turned off and/or censored, you can still communicate.

GET AN ANDOID PHONE

Get yourself an old Android phone. There are apps for both iPhone and Android that allow you to communicate phone to phone using Bluetooth and Wi-Fi in a mesh formation which means that hundreds of thousands of phones within proximity of each other can be used to hop communication across an entire city without using the cellphone or wifi networks.

WHY NOT AN iPHONE?

Apple have proven numerous times they can remote delete apps from your phone. Near as I can tell, Android can't do that, so that seems like the most reasonable backup plan… and just for the record, I'm an iPhone user. This isn't because I'm Android biased, I'm actually Apple biased in my everyday life because it just works. But in this context, I don't trust it.

Briar (Android Only)

Briar is a secure messaging app that's used by activists and journalists all over the world in regions where despotic authoritarian leadership disables communications networks.

Bridgefy (Android/iOS)

Bridgefy works on Android and iOS is available from the App Store, Google Play, F-Store. This is the app that helped protestors organize and assemble in Hong Kong when internet and cellular services were shut down.

White Mouse (Android Only)

White Mouse works without requiring any internet service and uses BlueTooth and Wi-Fi to communicate with other devices.

🛡️ SECURITY AND PRIVACY

If it has come to the worst, it is essential for your own security, please choose safe communication measures.

There's lots of information out there about secure messaging apps for your phone that allow you to communicate with security and peace of mind. Some of them have caveats you need to know about. Not all applications have the security the way they sell it to you. Here's my unfiltered thoughts about the 4 most prominent and why I do or don't trust them. I've not been paid, asked, coerced or been communicated with to provide these opinions. They are what they are.

WhatsApp (iOS/Android/Windows) - Free
Confidence: I DON'T TRUST ANYTHING META HAS THEIR FINGERS IN ❌

WhatsApp - Owned by Facebook/Meta. The Meta CTO has just been acquired, along with the OpenAI CTO and Palantir are joining the Army Reserve as Lieutenant colonels in a new unit called the "Executive Innovation Corps" know as Detachment 201. That means that puts all of Facebook, OpenAI and Palantir's tech squarely in the hands of the U.S. Government. Which means that anything owned by these companies is now weaponized and can and will be used against you. Additionally, after reading Sarah Wynn-Williams' Careless People - an expose of what goes on inside Facebook and their subversion of U.S. Democracy and democracies all over the world, I don't trust anything to do with anything Meta have their fingers in. I highly recommend everyone read her book and make your own decisions of course, but that's where I stand.

Telegram (iOS/Android/Mac/Windows/Linux) - Free
Confidence: HIGH ✅

Telegram founded by Pavel Durov, a Russian businessman is free to use. Claims to have flawless encryption security and competes with WhatsApp. It's open source which ostensibly makes it safe. Although I wonder about subversion by Russian interests - but given that it's not in the hands of the U.S. Government or Meta, at the moment, that would seem to be better than WhatsApp.

Signal (iOS/Android/Mac/Windows/Linux) - Free
Confidence: HIGH ✅

Signal Software founded by Moxie Marlinspike and Brian Acton. An American Non-Profit orginization. Founded to keep the app independent and free from ads and data tracking. The protocol that Signal uses along with the app itself are both open source which means there's lots of eyeballs on it, keeping it safe for use. I haven't used it yet, but I've been reviewing it this evening and it looks pretty solid. I would typically say I don't trust products founded in the country under control of the authoritarian Government you're trying to sidestep, but this is open source, so I'd say you can likely trust it more than WhatsApp and perhaps more than Telegram.

Threema (iOS/Android/Mac/Windows/Linux) - $5.99
Confidence: HIGH ✅

Threema is developed by Threema GmbH based out of Switzerland. The service operates on decentralized architecture providing end to end encryption. Switzerland known for international neutrality is famous for thumbing their noses at foreign conflict and staying out of it. I've used this on and off over the years and it's solid. Worth the $5.99 if you can justify it. I don't get any kickbacks for recommending it and I've not been asked to recommend it. All I'm offering is my opinion. The thing I really like about this one is that you can use QR codes to provide trusted encryption keys with your friends so you know that who you are talking to is exactly who they say they are and the communication with them is encrypted end-to-end so it's 100% private.