Controlled territory and safety

[the grugq]

Hey,


A recurring theme in the book "Terrorism and Counter Intelligence" is
how important controlled territory is for a terrorist group. Having
territory that is known safe provides: an environment for training and
vetting; allows high value members to have stronger security, and
enables face to face contact between group members. There are also
direct COINTEL strengths: allowing monitoring of access, and enables
detection of "outsiders". There are, of course, downsides: it is easier
for _everyone_ to monitor, including the adversary; it provides direct
targets for retaliation, and it has infrastructure costs.

I'd like to explore what corollary to controlled territory exists for
Freedom Fighters (tm). A lot is different in cyberspace because,
obviously, it isn't a physical place. There is no there, there.

I posit that a controlled server in a remote jurisdiction (eg bullet
proof hosting), provides a sort of safehouse. There is a small subset of
the benefits of controlled territory, but not complete. There is also a
subset of the problems of a territory. I believe adversarial monitoring
can be mitigated against by accessing only via a Tor hidden service.
Beyond that, I'm open to suggestions and opinions.

Any thoughts on controlled territory for hackers?


--gq