Communications are HUGE. Being able to contact others at a moment's notice has almost become obsessive to most Americans. Cut off that link, and people get all hinky. In times of emergency, the ability to have communications - primarily two-way communications - can at a minimum allow family members to know you're safe (or not).
When doing preparations, not every emergency or situation necessarily means that the world is coming to an end. Circumstances like the recent natural gas explosion in San Bruno show that having some flexibility and redundancy in communications is important.
(See our previous posts on large-scale emergency communications -
One and
Two)
The way data is delivered is the key to understanding how to design your options. In my area, we have regular telephone land lines (
POTS), mobile phone service and Internet service. Using the concept of PACE (Primary, Alternate, Contingency and Emergency), we want to have alternatives because our planning process assumes one or more communications paths will be out-of-commission.
Minor, regional emergency -
Traditional Telephone Service:
POTS is usually the first system to go down, or be over-loaded. While it can be your primary communications tool, expect failure. Plus, if your lines are cut, your communications are cut.
Mobile Services:
Cell towers give us the most flexible option. Even if your home blows up, you can still get cell service, since radio waves are used to transmit the voice and data messages. If the tower is destroyed, other nearby towers can provide service.
During emergencies, voice calls on cell phones are the first service to be interrupted. The cells become overloaded with traffic.
A widely used alternative is text messaging, or
SMS (Short Message Service). While it uses the cell towers, the size of the data packets are very small. The messages are limited to 160 characters.
Another thing that is nice about SMS is that the messages aren't sent directly to the recipient's cell phone. They use a technique called "store and send". When you send a message, the cell service holds the message until the receipient cell phone is either turned on or is within range of a cell tower. They will usually hold the messages for a few days before they are purged.
Most smart-phones now also come with either
G3 or G4 Internet access. This is delivered via radio waves as well. These allow you mobile access to Internet services. While not as fast as a fiber optic, cable or DSL connection, you DO get on the Internet.
Not all traditional Internet services can be accessed via G3 or G4, as there are restrictions on the amount of bandwidth that may be utilized, plus memory limitations of the mobile devices themselves.
Traditional Fiber Optic/Cable/DSL:
All of these delivery methods are used for various Internet services. As with POTS service, if your lines are cut, you're cut off.
These include Instant Messaging (IM - AOL Messaging, Google Chat, etc.), Social Networking sites (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc), free/low cost
VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol -Skype, MagicJack) and Internet-based email accounts (Gmail, Yahoo Mail, etc.).
>Instant Messaging - as far as I can tell, this is rapidly being replaced by SMS messages. Maybe it's just me, but it's a pain to use. If I need to send short messages, I use SMS.
>Social Networking - These are VERY heavily used and have exploded in popularity. Just be careful what you post, as it will be there, for all the world to see, forever. Did I mention it will be there forever? Good.
>VOIP - I'm a big user of these systems. My training business uses them exclusively. I can re-route calls to my cell or a land line system. With my MagicJack account, I connect a USB cable to my PC, and the other end into a regular telephone, and I'm up and talking.
Regardless of the service provider, the quality of the phone calls is still not as good as a POTS system.
>Email - I strongly recommend everyone have an email account where your contacts are stored online (Gmail, Yahoo mail, etc.), as opposed to on your local hard drive using an email program (Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.). Why? If your computer is destroyed, or you must make email contact on someone else's computer, you still have access to your contact list.
Clandestine Communications -
So, you wanna be a spy, huh? Maybe you just want some privacy. You can have hundreds of reasons for not wanting to have someone know what you're communicating.
You may have a business competitor that has a "mole" in your business, and you don't want trade secrets to be leaked. You may have a spouse that is a bit too "curious" about your phone calls or text messages, even though nothing untoward is happening. You may not want the government to know what you're saying and to whom you're saying it.
BTW, contrary to popular belief, that IS all legal and ethical, although you're presumed to be a criminal or doing something slimy, because only criminals and slime-balls need to protect their privacy, right?.
Some options:
>Pre-paid cell phones - Get these while you still can. There has already been discussion of requiring the presentation of identification for their use. Terrorists have used them in the past, so all of us must have our rights infringed upon so we are safe and protected from the boogie-man.
For now, you buy the phones (about $20) and a pre-paid minutes card. Your card must match the service provided by the phone manufacturer (meaning all cards won't work on all phones). When you first get the phone, you can activate it in one of two ways: You use your own phone to call your new phone, OR you go online and register it.
I've heard wild and unsubstantiated stories that people have email accounts that don't have any obvious relationship to themselves (Gasp! Anonymity?!). These email accounts are used to enter the phone data with a fictitious name and address to register the phone.
I've also read scary stories that if you want to maintain your anonymity, you should be careful how you enter phone numbers into this phone (names being used) and with whom you call with your "secret squirrel" phone, as patterns might emerge.
Be warned, though, that the pre-paid minute cards have a limited lifespan. Once you enter them into your phone, the clock starts ticking. The time will expire at the earlier of you using up the purchased minutes, OR the life span given the minutes. For instance, most plans for 120 minutes must be used within 3 months.
Some systems give you an automatic, "Lifetime Double the Minutes" feature with the purchase of their phone. If you buy 120 minutes, you're credited with 240. Shop around.
>Encrypted emails - once used primarily by business to protect sensitive trade information, they are now more widely used by plain old folks. A key is that BOTH ends of the message (sender and receiver) must be encrypted to be effective against snooping.
The best solution to this is to use one of the paid or free email encryption services. You and your recipient each set up accounts with the service. In most cases, even the owners of the email service cannot access your messages because they don't have your decryption key.
Still, it's a bit cumbersome. One way around this is to send an encrypted file in a regular email message. The sender and the receiver both have a shared key which is used to encrypt then decrypt the file.
>Steganography, -
Steganography is very cool. Very James Bond-ish. Essentially, you hide a message in a picture.
Most folks know that words and images on computers are just a bunch of 1's and 0's - binary code. Steganography uses some of those "0's" and pastes your message into the picture. The picture looks no different whether it has a message in it or not. The only "give away" is that the file size is bigger with the message. Unless you know the original file size, you can't tell the difference.
There are a number of free programs out there that allow you to insert and extract the messages. You could insert a message into a photo, then post it on your website or Facebook account. Your recipient could then download the image to their hard drive and extract the message.
A million years ago (OK, it was in 2001) I did a security presentation for my bank's board of directors. I showed them a picture, then extracted a message that said something to the effect of, "Give Chief Instructor A Raise for Saving Your Butts!". I got both a chuckle and a raise!
Anyways, it works, and is very effective.
>Old School Codes -
ITS Tactical wrote an article on this subject that is one of the best I've seen. Take a look-see. The important thing with this system is that it must be established before you need it. What is nice is that, if you do it right (like not re-using the keys or sharing them with others) the code is unbreakable.
Accept The Challenge
Use this time right now to develop a PACE-based communications plan. Make it for simple local emergencies and for TEOTWAWKI scenarios.
And practice what you've set up. Start texting once in a while. Get an inexpensive pre-paid phone and give it a whirl. Set up a Skype account and make sure your computer has the necessary parts (speaker AND microphone) to be able to make calls.
Practice with your tools before you need them.
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Many of you have heard the story of the Northern California couple that found 6 rusty cans on their property. Those cans contained coins with a face amount of $27,000. Nice haul, huh? Woo hoo! Par-tay!
