Circling the wagons

An important part of getting ready for battle is figuring out which resources you have. Just about every tactic you find described here can be done on a bread crumb budget. Luckily for you, the main thing that you will be dealing in is information in one form or another.  Just about everything else costs money which we assume that you do not have.

Communications:

First, it is assumed that since you are here:

1. You have Internet access. If you do this through a cafe or something we are not sure how well this will work for you but for everyone else it should be fine.
2. You are at least somewhat computer-literate.
3. You have time on your hands. I know that sounds awful but in fact, many folks who are in this position cannot work (why they are here), have no income (thanks to the enemy) so cannot seek treatment and are waiting on some kind of judgment from on high.
4. You have the will to do something about it.

Now, to get going you need some kind of faxing capabilities. If you already have a fax machine then you are already set up with the only two methods of document transmission that the enemy negotiators recognize.

Otherwise there are couple of ways to go on this. As it happens for us, we have Android-based phones/tablets/etc so we use a service available on Google Play called MetroFax. Very nice and dependable service. For something like 14 bones per month we get 500 pages of faxing ability along with a unique fax number to call our own. While we have not used this part, you apparently can also use MetroFax via web browser. You can go cheaper but having your own fax number helps. In any event, for this much we can send and get pretty much as many faxes as we need with no machine. We just write our documents in any word processor, convert them to PDF and then send them to the tablet for later faxing. If we get faxes, they come in as PDF.

Failing this, worst comes to worst there is always Kinko's or FedEx etc but this is the most expensive and inconvenient way to go.

Human resources:

This is the resource that you can usually do little about on your own. We got lucky in that we had friends that were great tactical thinkers, really sharp in the tech department and as an added bonus, live in non-extradition countries keeping them out of CDICs clutches. Oh and it helps that they hate bullies.

If you have a partner where you live, at least then you have a team. Doing it all by yourself is possible but will take some learning on your part and of course, time.

If you still want them to think that you have a team or even one evil hacker in your pocket, a little showman-ship might be involved:

They don't know that this...

...isn't this!

Finally on the human resources front, even if you don't know someone who can do deep background investigations for you, there is still a lot you can do in this direction with no hacking skills whatsoever. Our tech team is preparing an Investigations for Fun and Profit document to help people help themselves.

Your war room:

This may sound like a lot advice from Captain Obvious but if you have a filing cabinet, use it for this or at least one good-sized drawer. If not, at least keep all of your records that you own in one box and all paper work from CDIC in another box. Keeping these important documents safe is essential.

Doing your work at a desk or some area set aside for this 'battle' can be helpful not just from an organizational standpoint but also a psychological one as well. This kind of warfare can take it out of a person emotionally and mentally as well as physically. So once your battle day is done, step away from it all. Make dinner if you are able, walk the dog, water the cat, watch a movie, anything to give your mind and soul a break from it.

Data security:

How much data security you need is largely dependent on how far you are willing to go, how far that you think the enemy will go and how capable you are with the computer.

In our case and with help from our friends we have a system set up where we share documents on a computer with an encrypted hard drive.  The security is such that if that computer is seized (and no one is forced to surrender the keys) there is literally no way the hard drive can be read within our lifetime. Not sure I follow it all but it sounds good and safe to me. If you want more details on this, ask and the tech team can show you how to protect yourself too.

Investigations:

If you need to do these for yourself and have no prior experience you can still do some good, perhaps enough.  Our guys are kind of in a different league but almost anyone with an email account, a web browser, a little common sense can find out a lot about a target. We will show you how.

On-line presence:

You can use your existing email, website, etc it you like but we find it better to keep the personal stuff personal, war stuff war-like. Free email accounts are everywhere and one of the quickest to set up in an additional GMail account. Just pick some snazzy name for your war effort, sign up and then use that account for all war correspondence.

If you want to run a simple blog of the process, those too are free and easy to set up (hence this site).

Conclusion:

This should get you ready for the war to come. I know it doesn't sound like much but you don't need much to take on the dragon...and when your "ducks" are in a row, anything is possible!

Keep the faith, baby!

Mom Cobb
CignaWarJournal at Gmail dot com