The uses of metadata
From Jane Mayer at the New Yorker:
…[A]ccording to the mathematician and former Sun Microsystems engineer Susan Landau…it’s worse than many might think.
“The public doesn’t understand,” she told me, speaking about so-called metadata. “It’s much more intrusive than content.” She explained that the government can learn immense amounts of proprietary information by studying “who you call, and who they call. If you can track that, you know exactly what is happening””you don’t need the content.”
For example, she said, in the world of business, a pattern of phone calls from key executives can reveal impending corporate takeovers. Personal phone calls can also reveal sensitive medical information: “You can see a call to a gynecologist, and then a call to an oncologist, and then a call to close family members.” And information from cell-phone towers can reveal the caller’s location. Metadata, she pointed out, can be so revelatory about whom reporters talk to in order to get sensitive stories that it can make more traditional tools in leak investigations, like search warrants and subpoenas, look quaint. “You can see the sources,” she said. When the F.B.I. obtains such records from news agencies, the Attorney General is required to sign off on each invasion of privacy. When the N.S.A. sweeps up millions of records a minute, it’s unclear if any such brakes are applied.
Metadata, Landau noted, can also reveal sensitive political information, showing, for instance, if opposition leaders are meeting, who is involved, where they gather, and for how long. Such data can reveal, too, who is romantically involved with whom, by tracking the locations of cell phones at night.
Actually, I think the public does understand the broad outlines, and in particular the “romantically involved” part. That’s not rocket science.
Yes, PRISM is no doubt identifying associations, determining leadership hierarchies as well as communications methods and patterns.
Here’s an illustration of another use for these phone records: http://www.zeit.de/datenschutz/malte-spitz-data-retention
Now consider the results of a MIT and Université Catholique de Louvain study:http://tinyurl.com/llqf472
“After analyzing 1.5 million cellphone users over the course of 15 months, the researchers found they could uniquely identify 95 percent of cellphone users based on just four data points–that is, just four instances of where they were and what hour of the day it was just four times in one year. With just two data points, they could identify more than half of the users. And the researchers suggested that the study may underestimate how easy it is.”
Whether or not someone is listening in is nearly irrelevant.
Setec Astronomy all over again.
And why does the program need to be implemented domestically? Nothing is new here except technology. If Hoover had this ability, he would have argued it was necessary to fight organized crime.
This is invasion of everyone’s privacy because they can. The idea that tracking who people associate with to establish a network of criminal associations isn’t new. They used to do this the hard way. First, with reasonable suspicion, then by following them and watching phone calls.
Now they are saying because the threats exist for crrimes to be committed, they are justified to presume guilt of everyone and randomly look for actual wrong doing. This is utter bullshit. This argument to snoop can be used for any “crime prevention”
no, the public does not, but it likes to think it does.
being a applications engineer who has written such software and other things not far from it years ago, i can tell you the public does not. and those that are on the left, dont care given that they think that not doing anything keeps them safe. it doesnt, but then again they dont know the nature of a system of fear.
phds, and managers who work in the field often do not know what data can give you, and the freaky things that you can do with it
if anyone wants to know, ask a question and i will try to answer it as best as i can.
but note… this gets freaky and wacky… what you can know and not know is not necessarily in the areas you think, or care about, while others are.
with smart meters, internet with wifii, and a smart phone, here is a short list of thigns i can tell.
through wifii, i can monitor you movements around your house by monitoring the wifii. bistatic WiFi radar
i can tell you when you go to the bathroom, and plot that.
i can tell when you eat and open the fridge
i can work out your friends networks, and where you liek to go if your not smart enough to turn the phone off first.
oh..
how about this one, and i bet you dont know!!!!
with the 911 system came a whole bunch of NSA crap.
ie. the power to take over your phone… they can turn your phone camera or voice on, and listen or see.
depending on what devices you have around and what settings, i may listen in to your blue tooth or zig bee…
if i am near your home, i can take your luxury car with a monkey in the middle game, and can tell how much money you have in your pocket.. (rfid in Jefferson eye).
depending on things, ican get the phone to scan and let me know what prescriptions you may have…
depending on what make or model fridge, i may get a list of what you like to eat.
how about kowing what doctor you go to..
hows that proctology problem
tropical desease specialist?
i can tell from the smart meter when you sleep, if you get up in the night, if you go to the bathroom, if your using florescent or tungsten, and so on.
in case you didnt know, we have been protesting this stuff since the 80s… and the general pulbic has not cared or listened and so,there is nothing you can do.
embedded stuff could go farther.
like reading your heart while you play a game
oh, outside the home i can tell where you buy your underwear… other companies had to stop doing things because it was creeping out their customers.
like sending a coupon for one store as you passed their competitor. or monitoring where you walk in a store and so where you linger…
neural net programs trained on good data (which i have written) can gleen some interesting things.
If Hoover had this ability, he would have argued it was necessary to fight organized crime.
he did…
but not globally…
no one had it globally..
but then again, a socialist state sees its peoples as enemies, and they did say they wanted to monitor the enemies…
As a default, I have long assumed that 95% of DC politicians and bureaucrats will abuse the power of their positions, care nothing about the rule of law, and regard everyone else as chattel. Its refreshing that Team Obama has proven this to be undeniably true to anyone not drinking the kool-aid. These sinister clowns are starting to make Alex Jones look cool, calm, and collected.
Would you believe that real criminals of this ilk have switched back to ham? in my neighborhood two of the sept 11 men were… my area is covered in ham rigs
one guy, has so much juice i had to build a filter set to remove his signals as he was all over my equipment…
in case you didnt know, the same old method of communicating that was used during normandy, is still widely used.
ie. regular people who are not paranoid dont change their behavior, and so such things catch them.
but the bad guys, they are using short wave, and encruption, and one time pads, and even radio stations that give out numbers or such
these stations are really freaky..
they are called number stations.
A numbers station is a type of shortwave radio station characterized by their unusual broadcasts, which consist of spoken words, but mostly numbers, often created by artificially generated voices reading streams of numbers, words, letters, tunes or Morse code. They are transmitted in a wide variety of languages and the voices are usually female, although sometimes men’s or children’s voices are used.
some are from china, russia, cuba, some are domestic (the radio monitoring stuff still exists, if you want i can tell you where some major stations are!!!)
The best known of the number stations was the “Lincolnshire Poacher”, which is thought to have been run by the British Secret Intelligence Service.
they are fun…
In 2001, the United States tried the Cuban Five on the charge of spying for Cuba. That group had received and decoded messages that had been broadcast from Cuban numbers stations. Also in 2001, Ana Belen Montes, a senior US Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, was arrested and charged with espionage. The federal prosecutors alleged that Montes was able to communicate with the Cuban Intelligence Directorate through encoded messages, with instructions being received through “encrypted shortwave transmissions from Cuba”. In 2006, Carlos Alvarez and his wife, Elsa, were arrested and charged with espionage. The U. S. District Court Florida stated that “defendants would receive assignments via shortwave radio transmissions”.
when they talk about the boston bombers and others, they never mention short wave as a place to get instructions, they say the phones show no connections.
the “Lincolnshire Poacher”, formerly one of the best known numbers stations (generally thought to be run by SIS, as its transmissions have been traced to RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus), played the first two bars of the folk song “The Lincolnshire Poacher” before each string of numbers. “Magnetic Fields” plays music from French electronic musician Jean Michel Jarre before and after each set of numbers. The “Atencié³n” station begins its transmission with the Spanish word “¡Atencié³n!”
.
Several articles in the radio magazine Popular Communications published in the 1980s and early 1990s described hobbyists using portable radio direction-finding equipment to locate numbers stations in Florida and in the Warrenton, Virginia, areas of the United States.
and a lot of them are on the AM band!!!
why? because you can make a receiver with a razor blade, a pencil, some wire and a earphone!!!
they were called foxhole radios.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxhole_radio
A foxhole radio is a radio built by G.I.s during World War II. The foxhole radio differed from the crystal radio. A razor blade and pencil were used as a diode in a foxhole radio while a piece of crystal is used as a diode in a crystal radio The foxhole radio is like a crystal set in that it does not require an external power source. The radio is powered by the radio frequency that it receives. This made the foxhole radio ideal for the prisoner of war (POW). Prisoners of war made these radios to keep up with current events. [now you know why the red cross sent shaving kits pencils and papers to write home… ]
so, what you will catch monitoring phones are amateurs, and so on… the pros will not get caught as their training takes such things into account and assumes such actions whether they know or not
I find this stuff scary too, but I am also trying to see it in terms of why NSA, FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security might want to do it. It seems like the jihadis have switched tactics. They no longer are into bigger top-down operations; instead they want smaller harder-to-track groups who can work under the radar, like plans for a couple of people to dump poison in a reservoir. This type of op would require minimal contact between different levels of the jihadi organization and it would make it hard to distinguish between radicalized people with no specific plans and ones with the know how and opportunity to do something.
I don’t know quite where I stand on this. Anyone going threw my records would probably fall asleep, but some people could become vulnerable, and that is frightening. On the other hand, seeing a large city lose its water supply isn’t great either. I want the feds to find these people.
It would be so different if we could trust the feds. It would be so different if Obama hadn’t surrounded himself with political hacks more concerned with his poll numbers than serious policy. The person at the top can set a tone for the government. Unfortunalely, Obama has set the wrong tone.
going through, not going threw.
There is a massive apparatus within the United States government that with complete secrecy has been building this enormous structure that has only one goal, and that is to destroy privacy and anonymity, not just in the United States but around the world
glenn greenwald
They have pictures of one of the new facilities in Utah
note… now you know how obama et al are gliechshaltung. everyone on the left has some kind of dirt which makes them manipulable.. without protection they fall, so they do what they are told, in exchange. however, how do you get control of others? well, you collect contact information, and you now have dossiers much like hoover, which if revealed can be at best embarrassing…
through this, you can take control through the vices, sins and such that the social contract made more acceptable (sort of).
anyone wonder if the NSA has been watching obamas blackberry? and what about that medvedev open mic as to flexibility?
and obama?
Obama: ‘Nobody Is Listening to Your Telephone Calls’
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-nobody-listening-your-telephone-calls_733987.html
“If only Stalin knew”…
on another note :
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jun/7/china-encircles-us-arming-western-hemisphere-state/
Rising Red tide: China encircles U.S. by sailing warships in American waters, arming neighbors
The strategy is a Chinese version of what Beijing has charged is a U.S. strategy designed to encircle and “contain” China. It is also directed at countering the Obama administration’s new strategy called the pivot to Asia
Obama urged to ‘punch’ China
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jun/3/obama-urged-to-punch-china/
So America is a big bad wolf after all!
OKAY HERE’S WHAT WE DO.
everybody start talking in whispers
Don’t you know, they have to monitor ALL calls or they would be accused of profiling. Were the insanity of political correctness not rampant the NSA would monitor the metadata of all overseas calls both to and from the US, looking for patterns from Muslim countries and organizations. Any found, would then be monitored for content through software programmed to identify key words. This is what was being done under Bush.
Having sifted the wheat from the chaff, they would then seek a warrant for those individual’s domestic call metadata with quiet FBI background investigation into the identities of those called, if probable cause was determined, (calls to individuals on US soil matching jihadist terrorist profiles and organizations known to be sympathetic to terror groups) they would run the content of the domestic calls through the same key word specific software. Any that passed through all of these steps would then be lawfully wiretapped.
I suspect all of this could be done within days.
artfldgr at 4:46,
I’m in full agreement as to the developing and future threat that China poses. But this is hyperbole writ large.
The article mentions six countries; Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Trinidad and Costa Rica.
China is extending future trade with Mexico for access to its oil. Since China essentially has no oil, they are trying to avoid keeping all their oil ‘eggs’ from residing in the M.E. basket. Venezuela is already hostile, it does have valuable oil so China’s motivation is similar to its with Mexico. Ecuador, Bolivia and Trinidad(!) are inconsequential and Costa Rica is the only country in the world without a standing army…
China is aggressively creating a modern navy but is far from being able to extend its naval power overseas into our backyard.
This is actually a ploy in hopes that Obama will back away from his ‘pivot’ toward Asian countries in exchange for an upset China setting aside vague geo-political threats. And given Obama default position of appeasement, it may work.
can someone (neo) please fix that blockquote…
i am long enough without that… 🙂
Oh btw, assuming there is an election sometime in the future and a Democrat President isn’t in power, people might find that America’s strategic oil reserves are at -10%.
Sold off to fund some Leftist billionaire or trillionaire or some such. Or just given to Islamic organizations.
I’m not sure who Art is quoting or responding to…
“the united states has 1,429,995 active personnel and ranks SECOND
China has 2,285,000 and is ranked FIRST”
But I’ll make 2 simple and short points.
1. China’s Mao Ze Dong (Holy God Father as they think of him) destroyed China’s traditional military history in the form of individual family martial lineages as well as various ancient texts describing warfare and tactics.
2. China has fundamentally zero combat experience, so all their troop numbers can be considered green. Green and full of morale, yes, but still yes. A combat veteran, going by the old metric, was worth anywhere between 5-10 greenies.
Before we go to war with China, we need to settle a few things here at home. 😉
The data collection issue is a knotty one. Interestingly, the issue is crossing party lines. I’m seeing many libs aghast at the idea of the government snooping on all of us. As are many conservatives and nearly all libertarians. But there are libs and conservatives who are defending the program and the NSA. Congress is supposed to maintain oversight on this and they claim they have been doing their job. However, it appears that someone inside is getting creeped out with what is going on. Thus the leaks. Not a trivial issue, but I think it can be fixed with some change sin the law.
All this should not divert our gaze from the IRS targeting conservative, religious, and pro-Israel
groups. This is a direct attack on the First Amendment. If it is not corrected, and corrected in no uncertain terms, this kind of government coercion will continue. IMO, we cannot take our eye off this ball. It is a battle that must be fought. The coercive powers of the IRS are obvious even to low information voters. We don’t want them targeting anyone because of their personal beliefs. This is one area where LIV’s eyes can be opened as to the corrosive affects of the Chicago Way. We have to stay on this one.
As to China:
art, carriers are obsolete in any kind of war where the opposition has credible air power. Been that way for a long time. Our real muscle is in our submarine fleet and intercontinental ballistic missiles. We would never try to go fight a land war with China. Why would we do it? We don’t want their land. It’s polluted and has little oil. They are bunched up in several large cities. Very vulnerable. 20 missiles would cripple their political and industrial capacity for years. And they know it. Do not overestimate them. Yes, they want to throw their weight around in SE Asia. But they need our dollars, our expertise, our purchases of their output. If we quit dealing with China tomorrow, they would suffer more than we would. China and the USA are tied together in ways neither of us like, but neither of us can walk away. China is certainly trying to position themselves to walk away. That’s why we need to get cracking on our energy development, build up more trade with South America, stay close to our allies (Japan, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, the Philippines, South Korea, India, etc.) and closer yet to China.
Okay, folks: Glenn Beck had an interview today, posted on The Blaze, that’s pretty hair-raising. Here is an excerpt:
“We’re talking to NSA whistleblower William Binney. William, what do you say to people who claim, “Well, I don’t — I don’t care if they’re collecting information on me. I’m not doing anything wrong anyway. What are they going to do with it?” What do you say to those people who just don’t understand what this is all about?
BINNEY: Well, you can only try to point out examples of things that go on that could very well be a part of this. Like, for example, all of the IRS targeting of the TEA Party. I’ve said early on, several years ago, that if you wanted to know who was involved in the TEA Party, this kind of [spying] activity would lay out their entire structure and the whole — everybody who’s involved in it, no matter where they are inside the country. And that information then could be passed to the IRS to target people.
PAT: What do you think — what do you think the administration is doing with this information now? Are they doing anything nefarious with it? Are they — I mean, will they turn this against us?
BINNEY: I think they are already doing that.
PAT: Yeah.
BINNEY: But — to a certain degree. But certainly that’s been my major, my major concern is that that’s how — that’s how totalitarian states begin. Once you have that kind of information about the population, you can now control your population. This has been historically true down through the ages of how these totalitarian states work. I mean, the KGB did it in Russia, the Gestapo did it in Germany.
PAT: Yeah, look how much further we can go than the KGB did with the technology available.
GLENN: This is way beyond. There wouldn’t be a Jew alive on the planet today if they’d had this information.
BINNEY: They could never have dreamed of having this kind of capability.
GLENN: Okay. So tell me that — because I’ve heard conflicting reports on this and I would like to get your opinion, because I believe I know what this is capable of. They are saying that, two things: One, “oh, no, they’re just connecting the dots. They are not — they don’t have access to any conversations or anything.” Then on the other side of that I’ve heard “They can take every keystroke. So in other words, you start writing an email and you can delete, delete, delete, delete, and they’ll have what you wrote and all of the deletes if they care to open those packages.” True or false?
BINNEY: That’s true. I mean, their statement about we don’t have content is an outright lie. I mean, that’s been going on —
PAT: Wow.
BINNEY: — the NARIS devices from 2003 give them that data. Even the telecoms. If you looked at that report on PRISM, they were requesting information like emails, you know, videos, all kinds. That’s all content.
GLENN: So, Bill, they have — I know this. We started getting on this because we had Michael Chertoff and John Ashcroft on in the days when Bush was still in office and neither of them would go online. Neither of them would have a phone either and they just laughed at me. And they were like, “If you knew what we could do, you wouldn’t have it either.”
More at the Blaze — including Glenn’s mysterious comment that Pres. Bush told Glenn “my hands are — my hands are pretty much tied, I have no real decisions.” Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
JJ, I agree that we can’t forget the outrageous, criminal, weaponizing of the IRS. But it seems the No Such Agency spying activity is also a part of the government gorilla problem.
All this crap has been building since at least the 1930s, and Roosevelt’s use of the IRS and FBI as his own enforcers. Computers, though, are looking like Archimedes’ lever.
For years I’ve try to do most of my transactions in cash. I drive a pre-internet era car and carry a no contract dumb phone (turned off except to make calls). Am I still considered paranoid?
Beverly,
Thanks for the Beck interview. I often listen to his radio show when I’m out and about in my car. I don’t know who William Binney is. What he’s saying, if true, is troubling. I agree that, if the administration is able to turn the IRS and the NSA into political tools, it would be absolutely terrifying. Congress needs to stay on top of the data mining program. Since so many libs are alarmed, I think they might actually be able to agree to dial the program back – maybe even get rid of it. Since the GWOT is over (Obama told us so), there is no reason to continue it, is there?
Beck is just a bit too apocalyptic for me. I’ve been listening to him off and on since he was on MSNBC and there is a pattern to his shows that ebbs and flows from one apocalyptic view to another. If I took his advice, I would be living in Montana with a safe full of guns and gold and a larder stocked with five years of food. He may be right – eventually. I did the precious metals, mountain hideaway back in the 70s. Today I’d rather live like there is going to be another tomorrow and a better one at that.
I’m not a Blaze regular; I was drawn to William Binney’s testimony. He’s apparently been trying to sound the alarm for a while now, and he was very high up in the NSA.
So, take it for what it’s worth. . . . we’re in for some History, it seems.
Here’s a video exerpt of an interview with Binney that includes photos of the Utah facility: http://www.acting-man.com/?p=23946#more-23946
Makes one think of the Stasi agent in “The Lives of Others.”
Expat is right…”…it would be different if we could trust the feds.” Besides the obvious, with regard to the substantial concerns about potential targeted abuse, I know first-hand the following occurred while Pres. Bush was still in office. A friend’s sister & brother-in-law used their internet on an unsecured network. Long story, short: they woke up one morning to the FBI bursting into their home, an elderly Aunt was visiting from out of state, she wakened to a gun in her face. Their home was pillaged, complete with holes cut into the ceiling and attic. Why? Some type of pornography was being disseminated on their network. No involvement or knowledge on their part. The Feds had been surveilling them for weeks and when they made their move, got it wrong…BIG TIME. Oh and BTW, the damage to their home…their problem. Considering cases like these and the gross incompetence of the Boston Bombers, etc. is there really any benefit to this burgeoning network? I think Mark Steyn has it right. Follow the rule of law on the books with regard to immigration, etc, dispense with politically-correct non-profiling, then maybe we would have less to fear.
The FBI has been big on child pornography for awhile. Whether they have any excesses or not, is probably on par with the SWAT teams raiding the wrong houses for drugs. The right house was 2 doors down That Way.
Nobody’s done anything because the police unions and politicians back SWAT all the time. Hey, law and order all, anyone that wants to get rid of it is a criminal that needs to be marginalized.
The FBI is federal, so their political backing is not quite the same.
“It would be a different thing, if we trusted the Feds.” Yes, democratic government requires that. The well has been poisoned, though. Now we are doubting those parts of our government that are supposed to be there to defend us. FISA started under Bush and was supposed to be the FOREIGN Intelligence Surveillance Act. Yesterday, Obama referred to it as the FEDERAL Intelligence Surveillance Act. Was that a rhetorical fumble? It’s a word change that makes a difference.
I want our defense and law enforcement agencies to be strong and trustworthy. We need them to be both. What really irritates me is the fact that so much of this internal spying is done because of 9/11, but seems to be done much as the TSA airport operation – without profiling. This PC BS that you can’t profile religious and ethnic groups that conduct 99% of terrorism is just nutso. The other thing that irritates me is that just the threat of terrorists acts has caused so much dissension and strife within the nation. That is exactly what the Islamic terrorists are hoping to accomplish. Only by openly recognizing the enemy and marshaling our efforts against them (not against everyone) can we defend ourselves against their purposes. The way we are going weakens us due to bickering and backstabbing within. It’s self-defeating.
Ex-Pat is usually right and very insightful, and I usually agree, wholeheartedly. However, if the O’Boys did nothing about Flash Bang and Speed Bump, who were handed to them by the Russians, I am very doubtful that this meta data analysis is counter terrorism, or even counter terrorism run amok.
Further, and this is key, and does not require the cultivation of paranoia, or the near-obsessive research by our nearly vowel-free friend: When the Demagogue Party and its flacks and hacks start telling obvious and even contradictory cover stories, making flimsy excuses, they are up to something again. e.g. The Benghazi debacle was covered over by: The video, the “fog of war”, not sending in troops when we did not know what was going on, orders to “do everything necessary to save American lives”, the evil Republicans had cut security appropriations, and probably a few others that we do not know or, at least, I can’t remember. (Also, keep in mind that no cuts took place, and even the sequester ‘cut’ did not take effect until three months after the attack.)
The IRS political targeting, again, was screened from view by the use of a kind of air chum, like: We did not know, the Republicans had cut enforcement appropriations, rogue agents, “I did everything right and I plead the Fifth.”
Look at anything that has come to light in the past six weeks, and you see the same pattern of scurrying, after the fact. In NCIS they call them ‘tells.’ We can see them lying, even when their lips are NOT moving.
JJ: FISA started in 1978.
We need surveillance against the terrorists, but we don’t trust Obama with surveillance powers.
Were we satisfied with Bush’s record of balancing them and preserving civil liberties?
If the answer is yes, then review Bush’s record, identify the lines that Bush applied with the same powers for the same legitimate state interest, codify them, and hold Obama and future administrations to Bush’s lines.
Precedent has legal power. Use it.
br549, thanks for pointing that out. I was not aware it started that long ago since it only came into much prominence (at least on my radar) during W’s administration.
Interesting that it was enacted because of Nixon’s use of government resources against his political enemies. Ironic that it has now become a part of the discussion of whether Obama is using government resources to target his political opponents.
“I would be living in Montana with a safe full of guns and gold and a larder stocked with five years of food. He may be right — eventually. I did the precious metals, mountain hideaway,,,”
I have no tin foil hat but I do have food for sons, daughter, their spouses, and grandchildren to last 3 year. Water for 3 months and access to limitless water to purify. I have 4 centerfire rifles and a safe full of ammo, plus a few handguns, a shotgun, and a compound bow with plenty of arrows. I have seeds and know how to preserve what i grow or hunt – fish. My kids have 4 rifles and 2 shotguns between them and a fair aoumt of ammo. In addition I have silver, about 50 lbs in coins and rounds. I save seeds that plant true year to year. I have the little things: mattches, candels, laterns and oil in a adundance. I know how to make vingear and wine, how to create cheese & presrve. I have chickens and rabbits with sufficient fed for 2-3years. Fuel:I have 500 gallons of treated gasoline and 8 cords of treated wood.
parker, congratulations. You are ready for the apocalypse. You and your progeny will be the seed corn for a new beginning should TEOTWAWKI arrive.
I was once ready. Got tired of waiting for the apocalypse to arrive. Now too old to do the drill again.
Don’t have to live in Antarctica for the Apocalypse. Just have to have a guaranteed way to bug out and get to your safe house when the unexpected happens.
Just live a normal life. With a normal exit plan.
Treat the bunker as a family vacation mansion.
I’m a city kid. The only thing I have to fall back on is some very rusty and mostly forgotten general Army training and whatever I have in my apartment’s small kitchen. I pretty much have to ride or die with society.
If TEOTWAWKI, and Locke goes bye forever, then I’ll have to side with Hobbes’s Leviathan. I prefer we save the grand experiment of America so it doesn’t come to that.
There’s always raiding the heck out of resource rich nodes, fallout style.