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Suppose you fear you could meet someone who will threaten you with death.

Assuming the bad guy won't destroy your handheld (for example an Ubuntu Touch device) on sight, a barely decent form of protection would be to have your phone continuously stream its microphone to a remote server you do not have access to, programmed to publicly upload the recorded audio content on a popular YouTube channel on a regular basis, unless a circle of neutral, trusted, physically unavailable people for the threatener do not cancel it if nothing happened.

I want to know how to do that.

Scrooge McDuck
  • 1,084

1 Answers1

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The following is simplest procedure I came up with. It will work on any GNU/Linux handheld, but instructions for an Ubuntu touch device are provided, anyway.

On the handheld device

  • Ubuntu Touch specific: Increase the size of the system.img of your Ubports phone with some extra gigs.

  • Ubuntu Touch specific: Make your rootfs writable

sudo mount -o remount,rw /
  • Proceed to install tor and rsync; for an Ubuntu Touch device it would be
sudo apt install tor rsync
  • Have this uncommented in your torrc
/etc/tor/torrc
----------------
HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/ssh/
HiddenServicePort 22 127.0.0.1:22
  • Start tor
service tor start     # Ubuntu touch
systemctl enable tor  # Any other Ubuntu version
systemctl start tor   # Any other Ubuntu version
  • Get the onion address of your handheld
/var/lib/tor/ssh/hostname
--------------------------
your_onion_address.onion
  • Record from microphone with
arecord ~/Music/recording.wav

On the remote computer

  • Install rsync and youtube-video-upload (follow the instructions on the website to configure it for your account).

  • Write the recording.yaml corresponding to your recording.wav.

  • Run the sync_and_upload.sh script

sync_and_upload.sh
-------------------------
#!/usr/bin/env bash
watch -n <seconds_between_consecutive_syncs> rsync phablet@your_onion_address.onion /path/to/recording.wav &
watch -n <seconds_between_consecutive_uploads> python3 -m youtube_video_upload /path/to/recording.yaml

Known issues

  • It is not adviced by Ubuntu Touch manual to write on the rootfs, so you will have to repeat the procedure every time you upgrade your phone;
  • After receiving a call, microphone mutes in the recording;
  • Tor should start at boot;
  • In Ubports/Ubuntu Touch everything should run into a libertine container.
Scrooge McDuck
  • 1,084