Wow. It's really great to hear from you. Love what you do.
You do have the right people, and I can speak for all of us when I say that
we're excited about your message! As far as the website, we're in the
middle of an update, and the new site (which includes more information
about this effort) should be launching today... fingers crossed. If you
wanted a sneak peak, and if you can pardon the clutter, you can see it at
opsecprofessionals.org/development.
So from the reddit post, you probably have a pretty good idea of what we're
trying to accomplish. But basically, our flagship initiative is called
Operation: Safe Escape. It's an effort to add the security layer missing in
far too many domestic violence situations. You might be surprised at how
many victims of domestic violence don't get the information they need to
stay safe, even when they're working with a shelter (who often don't know
either). For example, it's very common to tell people to put a "go bag"
together and hide it in their closet, so they can escape at a moment's
notice. Of course you can see the problem with doing that- if the abuser
were to find it, the results could be disastrous.
It was actually thinking along these lines that started us with using
Tails. Many shelters use the same variation of a security plan template,
which is a document the person can print out and plan their escape ahead of
time. It has important questions, like where they can go for the first
night, who's able to loan them money, what safety code words they'll use
with their children, things like that. Important questions that people need
to think about ahead of time. And right at the bottom, it tells the reader
to make sure to hide it very well.
Once again, you can see the problem that. It's the same problem, and it's
only one of many. And Tails actually helps with a lot of them. It lets us
digitize the form and teach people how to store and access it online (in
progress). But it also takes care of the browser history problem (safe
browsing mode is great, but even a cursory level of IT knowledge will let
an abuser view the DNS records. And yes, they teach each other about those
things, believe it or not), protects against inadvertant downloads, allows
for secure communications with their support system and shelters, things
like that. It protects against a multitude of technical threats.
But it also helps on a psychological level. The people we're talking about,
they're scared. They have good reason to be. To them, often, the abuser is
this looming figure that has their hands in everything and will find out if
they try to leave. They control everything, and monitor anything. The user,
they don't feel safe using the same computer, so often they don't seek help
until it's too late. If at all. A Tails instance feels different, and they
can feel safer while using it. Plus it's very easy to use and hard to use
wrong.
As you saw, we're trying to make this as nondescript as possible. The idea
is to give the user a measure of plausible deniability. The amnesiac part
makes that possible.
We also work with the shelters themselves. Security experts in different
disciplines- everything from INFOSEC to PHYSEC- all worked together to
create a basic security plan applicable to both hidden and public shelter
locations. Secure comms is a big piece of that.
If I could have one wish (one wish aside from the fact that we didn't even
have to think about something like this), it would have to do with the
memory wipe screen if the drive is removed. In a situation where the user
has to pull the drive (such as when the abuser comes home unexpectedly), it
would help a lot of the screen were black instead of displaying the memory
wiping process. Although it's a lot better than having a browser window
open with domestic violence resources shown, it still raises questions that
a user may not be able to explain. And we work under the assumption that
any question will have to be answered; we'd rather be able to provide a
good cover if it has to be.
Thank you again for what you do. We've already given out many of these
drives, many from people that saw what we were trying to do and had a need
for themselves or a loved one. So you're already helping, and we really
appreciate it.
Thanks again, for all you do.
Chris
On Wed, Mar 15, 2017 at 8:01 AM, sajolida <sajolida@???> wrote:
Hi,
I'm part of the people developing Tails [1].
[1]:
https://tails.boum.org/
We read with great interest your call for help regarding collecting USB
sticks for domestic violence survivors [2].
[2]:
https://np.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/5zcz12/were_a_nonprofit_group_that_works_with_victims_of/?st=j0awf03a&sh=9584e0d5
We would be extremely interested in learning more about your initiative,
especially to understand how Tails really helps these people out,
learning from experiences on the ground to hopefully make Tails even
better for such scenarios.
But we couldn't find anything about this on opsecprofessionals.org.
Are we contacting the right people?
NB: I'm putting in copy tails-project@??? which is a public mailing
from our community. Feel free to answer to me only if you'd rather keep
the communication private.
