Hi all!
I wanted to share a story about how things can go south. For me, it all happened one morning as I was browsing TOR and the web in general. Suddenly, someone knocked at the door and rang the doorbell. Normally, I don't react to this sort of thing, but this time my dog was out and barking, so after a while, I decided to take a look through the front yard cameras. Well, my internet had gone down for whatever reason, and my new mobile phone refused to connect to the WiFi, which would have allowed me to check who was at the door. I thought that maybe it was someone I was expecting, so I opened the door. Well, it wasn't!
Then we started a chase to the computers, which I won, but after that, there was a brief moment where I had to decide if these people were after all my stuff or if they were agents wanting to arrest me, so I had to decide whether to fight or not. I decided not to when I saw pistols on both of these guys. Soon after, 10 more people showed up, which was way too much to handle in any case. I was wrestled down and put in handcuffs in a matter of seconds. Then a home search began, which took a few hours. After that, I was taken to the local police prison where I stayed for about 10 days before being transferred to another prison where I spent around 8 weeks. During all this time, I had no contact with the outside world. All my computers and belongings were confiscated and are still under investigation. My Pixel phone was transferred to the capital city within 24 hours in hopes of unlocking it, but that hasn't happened to this day. Also, my main laptop remained unlocked after being confiscated for 8 weeks. I found out because the only evidence some people had against me were pictures they took with a mobile phone while in my home, and from there, I could see the date and time, etc. I asked why they didn't take proper screenshots when they questioned me, and I got an answer like "What difference does it make how the pictures were taken?" I replied that I could see they were from my computer, and the date and time was when they still had access to it. After this, the pictures were taken away from me, and I think I somehow upset the agent responsible for the questioning. He or she had a very bad temper. Shame.
I can't go into too much detail about the case because there's still an active investigation against me, which also involves ongoing surveillance, including monitoring my internet activity and whatever else you can imagine. Those agents are good, I can tell you that, but they're also only human and have limited resources.
Some key takeaways I could mention are Thinkpad, Veracrypt, Google Pixel, GrapheneOS, and QubesOS. If they don't make you bulletproof, they won't make your job any easier on the other side either. And on any side of the game, everything is about resources. If you hide your ass well enough, or at least encrypt your stuff enough, there's a good chance the case against you will be dropped due to lack of resources to continue the investigation. Though I wouldn't count on it, haha.
In jail, there was quite a bit of psychological manipulation used against me, but once I figured it out, it became kind of useless. If not funny. One more thing to add: always get a lawyer from the beginning. I didn't have a proper one available from the start for reasons I can't disclose here. I had to deal with that guy for a month or so before I was able to get another one who actually helped me. Before that, I had to read my rights from books written by other people in similar situations.
That's quite a few words already. Long story short, I'm willing to answer any questions about how things unfolded.
Peace and mind your OPSEC <3