This is an update of some of our activities for the month of May, 2025.

In this post:

• tracking the trackers at anti-ICE and No Kings demonstrations
• Combat bad “protest tips” with water and things that are actually true.
• What some of our members have actually been doing
• A cool antenna tower made out of bamboo.

This post is quite a bit later in the month than we like to make them, but a lot has been happening in June so far and we honestly don’t have much to contribute other than advising everyone to stay safe, stay dangerous, and protect each other.

TRACKING THE TRACKERS

Since the ongoing anti-ICE and No Kings protests are probably what’s on most people’s minds at the moment, let’s start there. 404 Media has a pretty good article about the flight patterns of manned and unmanned aircraft during that time.

DHS Black Hawks and Military Aircraft Surveil the LA Protests

If you would like to be a part of the network that tracks and monitors flight patterns, you can build your own node with a single-board computer, an SDR dongle, and some software. Here’s one guide, but there are many others.

BAD “PROTEST TIPS” AND OVER-HYPING MESHTASTIC

there are so many bad “protest tips” flying around on social media. Probably the most important thing to know is that WATER is the only thing you should ever put in your eyes. Not Maalox, not milk, not baking soda, not any other cockamamie social media influencer crap. WATER.

The second thing, at least for us, is that Meshtastic is cool, but it’s not a miracle, and it’s more complicated than people like to make it out to be. One Instagram post made several false and conflicting claims, such as:

1. “It works in blackouts, signal jams, or shutdown zones when everything else fails or is compromised.” (why is this false? Any part of the radio spectrum can be jammed, including 433, 866, and 915 MHz. It’s not magic.)
2. “Leaves behind zero metadata.” (how do you figure? Metadata are data about data. Wherever there are data, there are metadata.)
3. “Surveillance tech isn’t built to track LoRa yet.” (Surveillance networks are literally being built out of LoRa devices right now. Namely, Amazon’s Ring cameras. Furthermore, it’s still radio. Even if it’s encrypted, it can be surveilled at least as easily as any other encrypted radio transmission.)

So yeah. Meshtastic is indeed very cool, and can be used as an encrypted communication tool, but we think hyping it up with false claims will just end up frustrating people. We don’t need to be panic-buying e-waste, we need to be learning and practicing the use of tools for autonomous communication.

WHAT HAVE WE ACTUALLY BEEN UP TO LATELY?

• Our Australian comrade is messing around with Reticulum. They have gotten the system working over Ethernet as a WiFi node, as well as transmitting data via QR codes on paper. (QR codes can store up to 3kB of data)
• A comrade in the Upper Midwest has received their Extra license. While they are slowly building up their HF capability, they are working to build local contacts and learning more, so that they can be another resource both locally and online.
• A comrade on the West Coast got their General license.
• One of our Northern European comrades has gotten pretty good at quickly deploying an End-Fed Half Wave antenna, as long as there is a tree. They can go from putting down their pack to making digital contacts in less than 10 minutes.
• A comrade in southern Appalachia is building a VHF flowerpot antenna, which is apparently a less popular antenna in the US than it is in Europe and Asia despite being quite cheap to make and very discreet.

Check out this 30 foot tower made of bamboo!

NOTE: This will likely be our last post on Blackblogs.org, as the site is shutting down July 1. We will be publishing new posts on https://anarchistrrl.noblogs.org from now on.