Old School Comms in an Age of Censorship and Surveillance

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground so what if i were to tell you that a century-old technology could actually be quite useful when it comes to navigating through the world of mass surveillance and censorship that we find ourselves living in today the answer to that question is field telephones which is what we're going to be talking about today so a lot of people might be wondering why we're talking about a technology that is well over 100 years old and is in fact in museums in a lot of places right it's not very often that you want to you know surf ebay to find essentially what would be a museum relic and use that as one of your communications methods well here's exactly why you might want to do just that so we find ourselves at the end of 2020 moving into 2021 we find ourselves moving into a new age of surveillance and we're not talking just the typical you know governmental surveillance that everybody's become numb to now we find ourselves moving into an era of corporate surveillance you know you know facebook twitter social media in general spying on you uh not just for ads but to see what you're thinking and then if they don't like what you're thinking th twitter social media in general spying on you uh not just for ads but to see what you're thinking and then if they don't like what you're thinking they're going to censor what you're posting so we've gotten a lot of messages from people over the past few months really since the election of people who say hey look you know i don't post anything political on my facebook page i don't post anything political on twitter i don't like or follow anything remotely political and yet my account was deleted based on political radicalism you know that doesn't make any sense so one of the things that that is coming out and is becoming readily apparent is that social media and particularly a lot of these private companies are spying on people and censoring people far more accurately far more personally than governmental forces could ever imagine so one of the ways that we're trying to move forward in this new era is trying to figure out how to get around that so one of the ways that we we tried getting around it is with things like ham radio and you know peer-to-peer you know uh decentralized social media things like that things that we're actively working on but we also found another way and th u know peer-to-peer you know uh decentralized social media things like that things that we're actively working on but we also found another way and this method is particularly useful in cases where you're trying to send a very short message from say your house to say your neighbor's house it's like either right next door across the street or something like that if you're trying to send a short message that's you know maybe a sentence or two back and forth you know just to check up on things you know just say hey you know have you seen anything stuff like that if you have a short message like that you don't necessarily want to be beaming it out of your house right you don't want to necessarily be using it in with you know like either a ham radio which is in a lot of cases going to require license and if it doesn't require a license it's still broadcasting an open signal throughout the airwaves right so anyone who's listening in can listen to what you're saying and you know you could you know use code words and things like that but that requires a lot of effort right and if we're going to be you know try to branch out we don't want to specialize so much on a lot of this technology we requires a lot of effort right and if we're going to be you know try to branch out we don't want to specialize so much on a lot of this technology we want to be able to simplify it right to get more people on it i would much rather have 10 people on my communications network that don't really know much about communications than to have one person on my communications network who's an expert right so keeping that in mind we have a lot of criteria and one of those criteria is to not use cloud type services because news flash for everybody out there there's no such thing as the cloud it's all just a server on somebody else's property so that's why we wanted to avoid things like you know texting texting can be picked up by a dirt box flying over a city we don't want that you know things like emails well that's going through a server somewhere and i guarantee you it's not your server you know things like secure messaging apps and things like that like whatsapp and signal and key base those are great and they are secure but at the same time they are they're they're totally reliant on the internets what if the internet goes down what if this you know the particular app gets bought out by e they are they're they're totally reliant on the internets what if the internet goes down what if this you know the particular app gets bought out by somebody else right so that's one of the huge considerations that we're trying to make sure that if we're going to invest in a system it's going to have to be foolproof right to some certain degree and in this particular example which is what we're talking about these small short range point-to-point communications a single uh telephone wire you know stretched between two field telephones one in your house one in your neighbor's house might actually be uh fit to build quite well the only vulnerabilities that come from the the field telephone setup are the actual wire itself so anybody who's on the wire or can tap into the wire can hear what you're saying but if that wire is hidden to where no one can find it you've got a pretty secure communication system right you know even the best hackers in the world even the best spy tools and things like that they can't get your information if they can't find it right so if the wire is hidden pretty well you're going to have a very secure communications plan and moving on to the sort of criteri y can't find it right so if the wire is hidden pretty well you're going to have a very secure communications plan and moving on to the sort of criteria that we were looking at we wanted the system to be analog we didn't want a digital type system that is vulnerable to the normal things that digital systems are you know vulnerable to we wanted something that's very you know very caveman very barney style very durable very long lasting and the systems on planet earth that tend to be to fit those bills are analog they're not necessarily a digital type system we have a plethora of digital type systems for communicating let me download our com card it's almost all digital communication systems but the point is that we also wanted an analog method that is you know fits these other criteria as well so one of the other ways that we want one of the other criterias we wanted was that it doesn't transmit any signal we wanted nothing going through the air that could be listened to and heard by somebody because you know it's not like you know for most of us here it's not like anybody's sitting out there with a scanner listening to our vhf radio traffic right no there's not very people not very most of us here it's not like anybody's sitting out there with a scanner listening to our vhf radio traffic right no there's not very people not very many governmental agencies even capable of doing that much less doing it but there are other people and we don't want to be direction found by you know transmitting a short two-second message to somebody else who's across the yard from us you know we don't want to do that if we can avoid you transmitting right we want to practice m-con emissions control right we don't want to emit anything if we don't have to we also wanted the system to have very little power draw or preferably no power at all so these sound power telephones the sound powered ones are they don't require any batteries at all they will work without any power whatsoever because they generate it themselves whereas most field telephones require at least a couple of batteries which are good but you know we would prefer something that has that requires no power at all and certainly nothing that plugs into a wall if it plugs into a wall outlet or requires a router to be turned on or if it requires a cell tower to have power to it that's a no go we didn't want that we wanted to a wall outlet or requires a router to be turned on or if it requires a cell tower to have power to it that's a no go we didn't want that we wanted to be able to create the infrastructure ourselves and use it because we know it's more reliable we also it's sort of a this is a minor one minor criteria but we also wanted a system that is emp slash cme coronal mass ejection hardened you know i think as we've learned from recent you know sort of solar events that have come you know reignited a lot of the you know coronal mass ejection slash emp vulnerabilities of our systems you know the fact of the matter is is that we i i can't quite speak intelligently on this because i'm not a scientist but i do believe that most scientists sort of agree that we're starting we're beginning the start of another solar cycle so we're going to start seeing a lot more solar activity and things like that so we wanted a system that is not just prepared for you know nuclear annihilation right we want something that is more hardened against something that's far more likely like us coronal mass ejection right we we have learned that you know even though these events are rare they can happen and they can ha far more likely like us coronal mass ejection right we we have learned that you know even though these events are rare they can happen and they can happen very very quickly so we wanted something that's naturally hardened against that and the the field telephone system is naturally hardened against all sort of electromagnetic interference right it cannot be affected by electromagnetic interference which is what we really wanted we also wanted something that is completely impervious to jamming like you can jam all day long and it's not going to stop a field telephone so which is unlike things like bowel things you can jam someone with a balafang with another bow thing right if you have a bow thing and someone's transmitting on one watt and you crank your barfing up to five watts and transmit on the same frequency and guess what you just did you jammed them so we're starting to see that riders and looters are starting to use handheld radios for communication much like a lot of insurgent groups do overseas so we're starting to see that and we're starting to see people you know jam them by hot miking over them so of course this is not really a huge concern for most people there's only nd we're starting to see people you know jam them by hot miking over them so of course this is not really a huge concern for most people there's only a couple of cases in the whole country of this happening but it's a future it's the future of what's going to happen that's what we think so we wanted something that is if we're going to invest in something we'll want to make sure that we don't have to retrofit it five years down the line when everybody and their cousin has a valve thing and they're jamming each other we wanted something that is naturally impervious to it from the start and then lastly we also wanted something that is the whole system had to be simple and cheap and fortunately for us field telephones are the simplest form of technology out there in the world today with the exception of maybe semaphore and morse code they are very uh they're the simplest form of of relatively long distance um voice communication out there and they're really cheap they're not as cheap as they used to be but you can get into field telephones for quite cheap we'll talk about that in a minute so a lot of people get turned off from the concept of sound powered telephones or field telephones s for quite cheap we'll talk about that in a minute so a lot of people get turned off from the concept of sound powered telephones or field telephones because they think it's an ancient technology they think it's it's simply because it was around during world war ii and even world war one they think that because it was around during those times that it's now obsolete that could not be further from the truth right in fact a lot of modern groups have learned a lot the importance of having some power telephones and no group out there has learned the importance of these field telephones more than the us navy so so the united states navy uh sort of got a black eye from the the attack on the uss cole because uh one of the main takeaways from the subsequent investigations was the lack of communication so the insurgents the terrorist bomb blew a hole right into a few compartments and one of the it just so happened that the compartments that were affected and blown to some of the rings and flooded were things like the communications compartment where a lot of internal shipboard communications were and also where a lot of power switching stations were so in short what happened was the bomb b t where a lot of internal shipboard communications were and also where a lot of power switching stations were so in short what happened was the bomb blew a hole in the ship and the ship lost power for about three weeks so three weeks afterwards um even you know weeks afterwards the crew was still using they were using during the disaster and as far as you know several weeks after they were using handheld uh you know like motorola radios right because all communications on the ship were you know essentially destroyed and they learned their lesson from that and moving on to another more recent attack the united states navy again had learned had to learn their lesson when it comes to sound powered telephones so on the uss fitzgerald during their you know collision incident on 17 june 2017 they also learned the importance because when they when that ship rammed them they uh one of the main things that went down were communications and power it's almost like they hit yet again one of the most vulnerable parts of the ship which was where the sailors were sleeping where you know the communications were routed through and where power was routed through so the ship lost power and lost commu e sailors were sleeping where you know the communications were routed through and where power was routed through so the ship lost power and lost communications and they had you know people in trouble and all that kind of stuff so it was a disaster scenario of one of the worst kind really and once again sound power telephones made their debut again because the ship had lost power and the only things that worked were those handheld radios and the sound powered telephones so the united states navy has learned their lesson multiple times when it comes to sound powered telephones on board ships so it's definitely not a technology that is you know ancient or obsolete so now we arrive at the phones that we use and we actually use what is one of the least favorable in the you know collector community phones called the ta1 the ta1 is a sound powered telephone and like i said it's not very favorable because it has no batteries most field telephones take actual batteries but we use the ta-1 because it doesn't require them and we're not exactly concerned about transmitting over a long distance right the ta1 is also very much more lightweight than the ta-312 it's a lot smaller so you can put it oncerned about transmitting over a long distance right the ta1 is also very much more lightweight than the ta-312 it's a lot smaller so you can put it in a lot more areas and it's a lot it looks on the surface of it a lot simpler to use it also has options right built right into the receiver of the the phone to you know turn the ringer off so that if you're in like an observation post or something you don't want you know a telephone ringing to give your position away so it has a little visual dial that lets you know you're getting a phone call so that's you know all these criteria add up to make the ta-1 a very good option for us so what we our normal setup and how these sort of sound power telephones work is you take one telephone you take another telephone and you stretch a wire between them it's a double stranded wire so you have you know two terminals on each phone and uh you know double stranded wire between the two and you'd think that it's basically just a really high-tech version of the tin can and strings sort of toy that you know children use and you'd be right the only real difference is the quality of the phone call and the fact that the range on this particular phone f know children use and you'd be right the only real difference is the quality of the phone call and the fact that the range on this particular phone from ta1 to ta1 is about four miles with standard you know field wire now if you had the resources money time effort and well really desire to stretch out more wire you could upgrade to like i mentioned the main field telephone that the us forces have used since really vietnam which is the ta-312 or the earlier variant which is a ta-43 but they're essentially the same phone the ta-312 is a little different it takes batteries it still has a mechanical ringer and everything but the difference is is that once you put batteries in it to amplify the signal now you're increasing your range to 24 miles roughly uh with the same amount with the same you know wire standard wd1 field wire and that is that is significant see a lot of people think that these fuel telephones they go like 100 yards or so no no these field telephones go you know miles and miles and miles and miles and miles so those are the two sort of main us phones that you can find on the internet now if you wanted to branch out you could also find foreign phones like for instance the two sort of main us phones that you can find on the internet now if you wanted to branch out you could also find foreign phones like for instance we use the we use the swedish fuel telephones as well as the russian field telephones here as well they're essentially all the same technology the only difference is the ringer devices on them are different and you know they all take d batteries so you know you can get rechargeable d batteries that work with those as well so if you wanted to you know have rechargeables that works as well and the battery drain is very very very low you can talk for hours and hours and hours and you would not uh you would not eat up the batteries in in the slightest i would say though that the foreign field telephones are a little bit cheaper you can tend to get them pretty pretty cheap you can get i think the swedish variant is still on sportsman's guide um as of late uh 2020 um and the russian ones can be found all over ebay and things like that you can find these on ebay just you know search for a field telephone on ebay and you'll be able to find a lot of these and you know i hate to quote a price on a video that's probably going to be around for yo telephone on ebay and you'll be able to find a lot of these and you know i hate to quote a price on a video that's probably going to be around for you know many years but right now the current price for these is um a ta-312 costs around maybe 100 bucks or so if you could find one i think i think it's usually around 80 or so and then there's about 20 bucks of shipping put on top of that and then the russian variant and the swedish variant go from anywhere from depending on the quality you know 50 bucks a piece to a hundred bucks a piece and sometimes you can get a set so like what we did was we jumped on a surplus website and got a a couple of pairs of these swedish telephones for i think 60 bucks for two so it ended up being 30 bucks a piece with free shipping so that was a great deal um so yeah you can find these field telephones everywhere and it's it's kind of interesting because like the swedish phones that we have were actually developed you know slightly after world war ii so quite literally we're using a military field telephone from you know a conflict from the 40s here in the year you know 2020. so very interesting and uh if you're a history buff these would be you know k ne from you know a conflict from the 40s here in the year you know 2020. so very interesting and uh if you're a history buff these would be you know kind of a more of a a cool thing for you to get but also it has a very very useful function so before moving on i did want to mention that the reason that the ta1 is not very well liked is because it doesn't work with the ta-312 so the ta ones were mostly used as like short-range you know um phones for like observation posts you know just like 100 yards that way right put it to take a ta-1 with you and string out some wire or they were used to test test connections between lines because they were very you know small and easy to carry but they do not work with the ta-312s however i have noticed and some of our guys here have reported that they do work with field telephones from other countries so the ta-312 will talk with every other country's field telephone and the ta-1 will also work with every other country's field telephone that we have found but they will not work together which is interesting the ta-312 and the ta-1 do not work together which is interesting but you know you can set up very interesting networks uh that way so i ju nteresting the ta-312 and the ta-1 do not work together which is interesting but you know you can set up very interesting networks uh that way so i just wanted to point that out if you're trying to buy a field telephone and you see a bunch of ones on ebay i personally prefer the the field telephones field telephones from other countries because they tend to be a little bit cheaper they tend to be and they work with the ta ones which is what we use you know throughout our you know setup here so another thing that's very fascinating if you're into you know science and how radio waves work and how electricity works is a concept that was come up with during world war one and you gotta remember during world war one there really wasn't anything you know like uh double-stranded wire it literally it was wire which was covered with rubber if you're lucky or cloth in most cases you know we're going back to the very beginning of the electrical field really so what they figured out was normally you have a field telephone in this first location and you have a field field telephone located in another location and you need two wires to string between them so one wire per terminal for the field te d you have a field field telephone located in another location and you need two wires to string between them so one wire per terminal for the field telephones to complete the circuit you can't just do it with one wire so what they figured out was that you could actually get rid of that second wire and instead of the second wire you could actually use the earth's crust as a return wire so this is called earth return technology and what soldiers would do is they would take either specially made stakes made for this or they would take their bayonet which is very common as well and they would hook one lead to the bayonet and shove it in the ground and the other guy at the other end of the line would do the same thing so that way you only had to stretch one strand of wire and this also meant that you could effectively double the length of wire that you had because you only needed one wire between points you could take the that second strand and tie you know um sort of tie it together because back in the day wires were actually tied with knots they weren't actually you know twisted together like normal stranded wire we have today actually tied together like string and you could effective ots they weren't actually you know twisted together like normal stranded wire we have today actually tied together like string and you could effectively double the range and uh the way this would work is the signal would go um this is the animation here is kind of backwards on the youtube video sorry for those of you who are watching but the um this signal would actually go down the line and be returned via the ground the stake in the ground so it actually works we've tried this out here in the shop and most importantly we've tried it out using magnet wire now magna wire is fascinating because this is a brand new technology that well it's not really brand new but it's a you know we now in you know the 21st century have the capability of producing really really thin wire you know thinner than a 16 of an inch wire and we can put a lot of it on a spool so you know like right here i've got a spool of wire which is not even sold by length it's sold by weight but it just so happens that it weighs about two pounds and it is a little over a mile of wire that's amazing you know and it's a small little you know four inch roll of wire so literally i can put a ta-1 in my backpack i can put a l ile of wire that's amazing you know and it's a small little you know four inch roll of wire so literally i can put a ta-1 in my backpack i can put a little over a mile of wire in my backpack and i could take my you know bayonet or knife and that would be the connection so literally all i would have to do is hop on the back of a motorcycle or something like that or even just run and or walk you know spooling out this single strand of really really thin wire if i had to right and uh once i get to the end i don't need to do it again to string that second wire i could you know just stick a stake in the ground and have the other guy do it on the other end of the line and there's my connection so that's a fascinating technology now of course there are downsides it's not extremely long range we're talking just you know a couple of miles here not you know 10 and 20 miles like on some other field telephones and of course it doesn't work in sand so if there's a patch of sand like a patch of sandy ground between you but you know between you and the other station it's not going to work you have to bridge over it which you know you can go look up vintage uh you know handbooks and training manua the other station it's not going to work you have to bridge over it which you know you can go look up vintage uh you know handbooks and training manuals on how to do this but uh yeah it's a fascinating technology that not a lot of people know about and this is you know you know like i said over a hundred years old which is just a fascinating part of it and you know like here like we were showing on the youtube video for those of you watching us on youtube um you know the soldiers using bayonets is very very was very very common um you know even these are german soldiers and the british soldiers invented it so it's very very interesting that this old uh technology is still useful today and not just useful but like really useful in the concept of or in the context of what we're dealing with in society today now of course it would not be a sort of s2 underground video without talking about the cons of this product right there there is a reason that you know militaries don't use field telephones anymore for the most part a lot of uh interestingly enough a lot of armies and militaries in europe still do for like guard shacks and things like that but there's a reason we don't send out du estingly enough a lot of armies and militaries in europe still do for like guard shacks and things like that but there's a reason we don't send out dudes like you know on the slide here with you know backpacks of reels of wire it's because it's horrifically dangerous um in a war in wartime scenario your wire layer is a huge target because communications are always an issue and it's usually got a pretty good uh identifying feature of this big spool of wire on his back for you to you know easily be shot at so you know laying wire in a combat scenario is extraordinarily dangerous which is why we got away from it when it comes to you know once um radio technology got to the point of where it was able to be secured and long distance and reliable would you know wire uh feel a telephone sort of went away and you know put in context of you know the civilian you know market you know wire laying is dangerous in wartime but it's suspicious in peace time you know in some areas you're not going to be able to lay wire without some neighbor you know who isn't in on what's going on you know gets you know you call either calls the police on you or something like that now for those of you who live i who isn't in on what's going on you know gets you know you call either calls the police on you or something like that now for those of you who live in a more rural area not so much a concern but for for our guys that live in cities and this is going to be kind of a harder thing to do because you can't exactly you know lay wire over roads or anything like that you have to lay them through culverts and things like that so depending on your scenario this might not be an option at all um especially running wire outside your house now you could run a line you know inside your house you know from your front door to your back door all day long and nobody nobody would really care or even know about it but if you're trying to do it outside it's a little bit more of a concern so um just keep that in mind is that it's not necessarily a foolproof option for a lot of people but it is just another piece of the puzzle so if this is your you know ideal communications network um you know field telephones and you know laying wire for field telephones definitely has a place um in in our scenario here we're talking about neighbor to neighbor communication right and it's not just something that you kn definitely has a place um in in our scenario here we're talking about neighbor to neighbor communication right and it's not just something that you know a couple of your neighbors can do if you have a lot of neighbors if you are lucky enough to live in an area where you're on very good terms very friend you know very friendly with your neighbors um then you might have a better option you might be able to create a lot more a lot more of a community preparedness mindset right so you could have you know a neighbor who has like this you know on this slide here a listening post observation post an lpop right in their attic which is nothing more than just a uh a a so you know a chair at a window right it doesn't have to be anything specific or you know grandiose right you could just have this sort of lpop there which covers you know this part of the road and then you know another neighbor at the under the street could have the same thing facing the other way so you monitor traffic in and out of your area if an emergency occurs uh you could also have a house with that has you know dedicated supplies or you know maybe a community building where everybody you know which is a shelter for peo also have a house with that has you know dedicated supplies or you know maybe a community building where everybody you know which is a shelter for people right you could also have you know your local ham radio operator because every community especially in a rural area has got that one guy who loves ham radio and he's got those gigantic antennas and that guy is probably going to know what the heck is going on a lot more a lot sooner than a lot of other people might in your community you might have a neighbor or you know who's maybe elderly or shut in and and can't uh can't provide for themselves so much they might need some assistance during an emergency you also might have a neighbor who has you know like a child with diabetes or something like that and therefore needs their insulin to be refrigerated you know things like that um can be very very helpful to have them you know all connected on a network you know if you want to be an asset to your community this can be very very helpful and if you're saying if you're thinking well you know there's ways to do that you can have you know handheld radios that you can give to all your neighbors and things like that and that's good you kn know there's ways to do that you can have you know handheld radios that you can give to all your neighbors and things like that and that's good you know you can go out you know with like your cert team and distribute things you know you can go door to door make sure your neighbors are okay that is perfect but what we're finding out in 2020 and what we're going to be you know learning the hard way in 2021 is that we might not have the luxury of leaving our own home we might not have the luxury of going out and helping our neighbors because we've got either private citizens going out there and and sort of you know goons squatting each other up uh for not wearing masks on sidewalks or things like that we might have you know like in the case of australia the military and police literally locking people in their own homes and not letting them out without special permits you know this is not being pessimistic this is being realistic as to what might happen in the united states so if you take the time to create your network ahead of time you could have a pretty good system of community watch a system that is able to take care of anyone moving in and around your neighborhood and nobody has could have a pretty good system of community watch a system that is able to take care of anyone moving in and around your neighborhood and nobody has to leave their homes to do so so that is a good thing to have you always want a community watch system to be as effective as it is it can be and if you set up a good party line for all this you could even have you know community uh community messages and you know you could even hold church services over a field telephone wire from house to house to house um and no one would ever know about it no one could spy on you no no technology like you know facetime or or zoom is going to be spying on you and recording what you say it's all your own network because you created the network and it's your infrastructure so that's why we wanted to talk about field telephones because it's a very vital communications method it might not work for everybody but it's sure going to work for some and we wanted to bring it up and mention it because we think that not a whole lot of people know about this technology and talk about it so that's why we wanted to talk about it today so let us know what you think make sure that you you know like comment subscrib ology and talk about it so that's why we wanted to talk about it today so let us know what you think make sure that you you know like comment subscribe uh check out our other content i we're going to host this video on our lbry page our library page for those of you that don't know so that it doesn't get censored or taken down we're also going to take the audio from this and put it on our podcast for those of you who like our podcast and we will also have lots more resources on our key base so join the discussion there if you want to learn more about this sort of technology so thank you for tuning in to this uh to this episode and we will see you next time and always remember to find the shade s2 actual out