In 2025, we've seen great declines in global democracy and human rights, and it is safe to say we live in a time of worldwide democratic backsliding. The United States (just to name an example), once considered a global superpower and democratic stronghold, is now cozying up to fascist-aligned billionaires and quickly eroding civil rights. Mahmoud Khalil is one example of how civil rights are being eroded, and how the government is being weaponized to sow fear and obedience. I try to keep this website apolitical, as I have no want or need to make it so beyond the typical security/privacy politics, but these actions taken by the US and similar governments are a genuine security threat to average people. As a result, it is time for a crash course in OPSEC.
This tip is self explanatory, know your rights in your government. If you get a phone call when taken in to the slammer, make sure you have memorized a lawyer or loved one's phone number. Write on your arm in sharpie if you have to. If your government has protections for pins and passwords, but not for biometrics, steer clear of using biometrics for login. Otherwise, your protections can be legally bypassed. If your adversary has a lot of big tech companies cozying up to them, avoid big tech. If your adversary releases bounties for certain software, that software is probably a major thorn in their side, and you should see if you can use it in your workflow to protect yourself. Simple stuff like this is important to know when threat modeling.
Think of the "cloud" as another person's hard drive. The "cloud" is a group of servers under the control of someone who is not yourself, and it is imperative to maintain ownership of your data. This could mean self-hosting your own cloud services on a rented server or at home, buying a metric buttload of offline storage for your devices, or it could even mean encrypting files before uploading them to the cloud. Don't trust the "cloud" without knowing exactly what code it is running, and the infrastructure it runs on. Even then, using the "cloud" increases the risk of files being leaked or stolen. Find your balance of convenience vs. security, and make sure you're in control.
Backup all your devices, make sure you keep both offline and online encrypted backups. This is important for data preservation, guarding against technical mishaps, and making sure you always have a copy of your data even in the absolute worst-case scenario. There is nothing worse than losing all of your data, so BACK IT UP.
That survey you did about what potato chip you are, your Amazon wishlist, what you watch on Netflix, and your social media profiles are all used to build a profile. They know who you are, what you do, and how you think. This data is then used to predict what you want to buy (with great accuracy, mind you), and serve you ads for said products. The technology used to arrest individuals for thoughtcrime is already here, and if your adversarial government can access it, this technology can rat you out before you even do anything. It is important to make sure only the essentials are connected to your identity: banking, government accounts, work emails, etc. Other accounts, you should be using different usernames, email aliasing, paying in cash or Monero XMR cryptocurrency, using fake names, public package pickup, etc. DO NOT use your personal email, phone number, or identity for anything unless it is strictly required by the service. If that service can be replaced with another service that can be used anonymously, replace it ASAP. When not logging into accounts, hide yourself using a common browser (that respects privacy) at a minimum. However, as tracking software gets more mature, I personally recommend using Tor to hide generic internet activity. Tor is the most mature system for hiding internet traffic, and has the most robust protections for hiding who you are. Using a Live OS like Tails, or a virtualized OS like Whonix will make Tor protections even better.
Beyond the typical libre, free, open source politics, avoid software that has a political leaning. An example of this type of software is Brave browser. Yes, the browser is open source, and it is a widely recommended browser. However, I advise against using it because their leadership leans heavily conservative. Even if Brave leaned progressive, I would still not recommend it. Software like this might protect you if you're THEIR people, or if THEIR people aren't in charge, but the moment THEIR people are in charge they may have to make a choice that sacrifices your safety.
I shouldn't have to say this in 2025, but people need to use an encrypted password manager and AT A MINIMUM app-based 2FA. The amount of people who still raw dog the internet with no 2FA and hand-written passwords are doing themselves a massive disservice, and need to be dragged kicking and screaming into the present. If you already do this, please hound your loved ones to start doing this, as their security also impacts you. I'd personally recommend using a modern KeePass client or Bitwarden, and to use an open source TOTP application as a starting point. Later on, you can consider other options like PassKeys or Hardware Keys.
The market for traditional x64 computers is lacking in security, and many low-end or mid-range computers lack basic features for a secure computing experience. Make sure your hardware has tamper protection features, has a TPM for measured boot, utilizes Intel BootGuard (or some other protection for verifying UEFI firmware), and still (preferably) receives UEFI updates or (at a minimum) receives microcode updates from their chip manufacturers. Typically, newer enterprise hardware will have all of these features. I personally don't recommend that most people fret over whether or not hardware was bought anonymously because most people have computers, however you should not talk at length about your setup online, and you should make sure your OS doesn't expose information about your system over the network. If you are someone at risk of being specifically targeted, you should maybe look at used laptops or buying with cash in person. As a last resort, buying with Monero and shipping to a secure drop off point.
My first recommendation for desktop software is to use Qubes OS. Qubes OS is the only stateful OS I would recommend for desktop computing. Qubes OS leverages IOMMU and Virtualization to provide strong seperation between virtual machines, or qubes. Qubes OS follows the principal of least privilege, giving VMs the least amount of privileges, in the context of the system as a whole, they need to operate. Qubes OS also uses a system of template qubes to make spinning up new qubes easier, and to also make it harder (but not impossible) to persistently compromise a stateful qube. Qubes OS has another trick up its sleeve for more at-risk qubes: disposable qubes. Qubes can be made entirely stateless, which means they'll clear themselves on shutdown and restart from a clean state. The most impressive part about Qubes OS is how it ties everything together in an easy to use XFCE-based desktop, with tools to facilitate secure inter-qube interaction. That being said, Qubes OS has a couple pitfalls: to increase usability Qubes OS gives qubes sudo access by default, and uses templates that are not hardened enough (with the exception of Whonix). My first recommendation is to revoke passwordless sudo, and replace it with a secure prompt that is sandboxed from the qube. My next recommendation is to replace the default templates with more secure alternatives: Kicksecure can be installed on top of Debian, and Brace can be installed on top of Fedora. If you're more DIY-minded, there's also the option to use Gentoo or Arch Linux templates, which can be manually hardened by the user using the respective distros' wiki. Users can also install traditional hardened systems like SecureBlue, HardenedBSD, or OpenBSD as HVMs (at the cost of increased attack surface). Make sure you're either splitting activities across as many qubes as possible, or using sandboxing tools like bubblejail. Finally, I recommend using features like LUKS Encryption (default on Qubes), tamper protection, UEFI Admin passwords, and a UEFI Boot Password or GRUB Password at a minimum. For higher security, set up measured boot using your TPM module. Qubes OS is a reasonably secure system by default, that makes some concessions for the user experience. That being said, in a higher threat model environment, we should be using more secure templates and locking down our systems. I recommend reading through the Qubes OS documentation as well, as it has important information on security contexts, configurations for split-VM activities, and how to organize your system effectively.
My next recommendation is to use a Live OS run in RAM or from a read-only medium. Live OS systems are typically are distributed in ISO format, and burned to a bootable medium like a flash drive. They are completely stateless, meaning they will revert to a clean state on shutdown. This is great for security as it means if you are hacked, only the files from your session could potentially be leaked, and your system should revert to a clean state on shutdown. That being said, a weakness of these systems is that they could theoretically still install a rootkit, or override a read-write medium with a malicious version of your live system. If you followed my advice and got a system with UEFI protection, you can run a Live OS from RAM or a read-only medium for a (mostly) stateless, and robust verified boot chain. Examples of read-only mediums include CDR/DVDR discs, SD Cards with a physical read-write switch flipped to the read-only position, and specialized USB Flash Drives with read-write switches flipped to the read-only position. If you decide to go the route of running your system from RAM, make sure that a compromised root user can't overwrite your system by physically unplugging your boot medium. On a system like the one I described, your UEFI, bootloader, kernel, initramfs, and filesystem are all protected from tampering. That being said, many live systems follow a typical unix desktop security model, which has been criticized for a lack of exploit mitigations and sandboxing. This means before doing anything sensitive, you may want to reboot and consider not connecting to the internet. You'll also want to make sure you have no data on the internal hard drive of the system, as live systems can mount these drives. Live OS systems also have the unfortunate downside of requiring an external way to store files, since they cannot store files by design. Buy some external storage so that you can work with files on the go, or learn how to use encryption software to safely store files in the cloud. My personal Live OS recommendations are: Tails OS for Tor users, and Easy OS for clearnet users. These are the only systems that are updated regularly enough to be used as a completely Live OS with no persistence. Easy OS is a bit of a special case, as it can either be run as a persistent system or as a live system. I recommend that users use the persistent function to update Easy OS to the latest version, or install apps via PKGET (the other installers won't work in Lockdown Mode), and then switch to Lockdown Mode when done, which will automatically copy your system to RAM and unmount all drives currently plugged in. Tails OS has none of these considerations, and can be updated in Live Mode or Persistent mode as long as the user hasn't booted to RAM and has their boot medium set to read-write. The user can also build their own clearnet live system from a standard Linux install. Live systems satisfy a particular threat model where one's device is likely to be seized, since there is no data to be extracted from the device, there will not be any evidence of any activity that goes against your adversary. In particular, live systems can be very useful for devices that are frequently taken across the border, or if you expect the secret police to bust down your door to take your shit. I have no issues mentioning both Qubes OS and live systems for desktop users, as they both have completely different threat models and usability constraints. Use the one that fits your situation accordingly.
On mobile devices, there is really only one good option: Graphene OS. It is one of few mobile operating systems that comes completely deGoogled out of the box, while also maintaining the Android security model. However, it is the only system that makes substantial improvements to the Android security model, including features like: comprehensive exploit mitigations, improved sandboxing, measured boot, usb-c port control, sandboxed Google Play, built-in firewall, added permissions, two factor unlock, shorter auto reboot, clearing ram on shutdown, duress PIN, better user profiles, and more! Graphene OS carefully considers the hardware it runs on, but still manages to be one of the most flexible Android systems to date; Graphene OS can be used as a normal phone, a Qubes OS-like device with up to 32 different profiles, Tablet, Desktop, and even as a Laptop. With some of the latest updates, Graphene OS can even run a Debian bookworm virtual machine. Here's where I would mention downsides or security considerations, but Graphene OS really has no downsides to mention. The only considerations one may want to take into account would be the usage guide on the Graphene OS website, and how locked-down you want their experience to be. Seriously get Graphene OS, it has solutions for almost all Android privacy woes, and improves security measurably while also avoiding the usual user experience concessions. It is that good, get Graphene OS. I am not paid, and I try to avoid shilling, but I can't not express how much of a game changer this OS is.
There are a lot of forces at work that want you to believe they are all-seeing, all-knowing, and that want to scare you into obedience. However, even though computing is more complicated than it has ever been, the computer can still be your friend. Leveraging the most secure free, and open source projects in accordance with a well-thought plan to protect yourself is crucial in these trying times. This is not so much a comprehensive guide to threat modeling, but some unique tips I've thought up that I haven't seen anywhere else, and some recommendations for different secure workflows. That being said, this is not your last stop. I have some assigned reading material for you, and there will surely be a real-world test coming your way if you live in a place that is experiencing democratic backsliding. I'm assigning you to read the EFF's Surveilance Self Defense guide, the Graphene OS FAQs, the Qubes OS documentation, and the Privacy Guides website (which has a helpful list of privacy-respecting tools and services, upheld to a strict criteria). Before you go, I have some helpful advice for you: be excellent to others, improve your community, protect yourself and others in your community, invite your neighbors to dinner, and whatever you do, bear witness to the horror.
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