A question that is asked to us in everyday life or on the internet is what exactly is Battle Stations, a publication which automatically precedes the publication of any of our articles. The answer is complicated so we decided to do an article on the subject for the second time in under a year. It started out as an explanatory one but then turned out to be one much more complex and sophisticated than we assumed it would be, a bit like last month’s article on the African Space Agency ‘Quo Vadis AfSA, where is the African Moon Lander? ‘. The story behind Battle Station turned into a flagship article. So buckle up, there are a few pretty funny, quite incredible and ugly things that will follow. The article became instead one where the interviewer became the person interviewed. 
One which is closely related to the Outsiders part 3 and the Outsiders part 3a where we related instances of internet fraud and the strange roles that are played by the Secret Services in their relationships with the fraudsters. We left this work mostly unedited as after fruitful discussions, we found that it then was more real. The article is separated into several disparate sections.
A brief story of Battle Station.
An interview with Deep Throat
An interview with Julia B.Brooks
An interview with Anton Komarov
The audio section carries parts of the real voice of the interviewer but the other voices were specifically modified by our AI as a precautionary measure for those of us who are taking a serious risk with their security, their freedom and their lives as well as those of their nearest and dearest.
Except in one or two instances because we were taken by time, all the voices have been dubbed by AI. However, the voices of Steven Martin, Anton Komarov and others can be found on Astroverbot Julia’s YouTube channel if anyone is interested. It is a token precaution but very important for those who have not appeared on YouTube.
The following are used to indicate the people participating in the interviewing and being interviewed.
AK=Anton Komarov
SM=Steven Martin
JBB= Julia Bean Brooks
DT=Deep Throat
What exactly is Battle Station?
The simplest answer to this question is that it is a message to all the Outsiders that an article is ready to be published and that they should report by direct messaging on Twitter, especially if they do not have access to our secure network due to their present location on the globe. But that ‘nice’ answer hides another truth. A few years ago, The International Outsider found itself attacked continuously on a regular basis, at one point; we had tries at infiltration almost twice a day. We wanted to be able to be in contact with our people without the possibility of people hostile to us to being able to understand anything. Our operatives were using Internet Cafés to send each other pictures by email, which were worked with a technique called Steganography. Simply, it is the inclusion of a message or a picture inside the original picture. Anyone not having access to the key was unable to extract the message or the picture hidden within. This worked well through email and does not attract attention; however we needed a system able to communicate which would work if our network or mail had been corrupted. Twitter was therefore chosen as the only social media we would operate on officially. Battle Station was created with a code almost impossible to break except if human treachery was involved. Why it was unbreakable, well because a live human being teaches another the exact meaning of each image,
there is no code breaker that can overcome that. An AI could make some good guesses, but since each and every Battle Station differs, sometimes radically, it makes it almost impossible to know what it really carries as specific information. Most Battle Stations are straightforward and say, that there is a geopolitical article or one on space exploration or simply Hello to the world. The worst Battle Station is the one which is embedded with this article which meant that we were under heavy attack, that the threats were at the highest level, that members of the Outsiders are being directly targeted and that precautions have to be implemented to ensure the security of mail and that we must enhance communication security and so on. It is on that fateful date that our story starts…
Deep throat allow me to introduce you to our listeners and readers. You have been a friend of the Outsiders for a considerable time and after the interview that we conducted with you, you became the Advisor of the International Outsider regarding matters of security. This mainly concerned what we call like many others, the three letter agencies or the ‘Intelligence’ agencies. (Part of this was not originally to be included in the text…) I do not really know how to put it, so should I explain that in the Outsider article about Internet Café fraud, the interview conducted was more an overview of your advice and that it was in reality an interview of two distinct people or should I start by our phone call and allow him to speak?
Better let him talk since doing the first one makes it even more complicated.
Is that ok for you Deep Throat?
Ok.
On a certain date I woke you up to inform you that we needed your help immediately, can you please tell us what happened next?
Happy to be with you guys as usual but to clarify, you didn’t wake me up Steven as I received Battle Station but I could only understand the message after playing the video at least three times. Then I used the wee basic phone that we all use when these situations occur and after our lengthy conversation, I understood the following points.
1- A relatively High Officer of an Intelligence Service that we code named Captain Helena, (NB: his name and rank are obviously quite different) contacted an operative of The International Outsider to convince him to spy on a specific person working at the newspaper, whom we will call the Target. The operative was supposed to connect an android phone to the computer used by the Target. The phone contained the software Team Viewer and would therefore infect the Target and his computer.
2- A nominal sum of 500 South African Rand would be given with the phone delivery to the operative and if it worked as planned by Helena, then a further sum of 5000 Rand will be delivered as full payment for his services.
3- The operative accepted but categorically refused to sign any papers as an informer which was indeed an excellent move. Additionally, the assumed traitor (the operative) asked to be given a phone with a removable battery…
(Interrupting) this has the making of a bad Series B spy movie. You do know that Captain Helena asked the operative why he wanted such a phone and the operative said ‘Because I do not trust you’.
Absolutely Steven; why did that not ring his alarm bell as it rang mine instantly and the idea popped into my head that this entrapment was not your usual one. The deal was supposed to be done the next day leaving you little time to mount an effective defense. I drove later in the night to what was supposed to be the place where the exchange was to happen to scout it out. Upon returning, I called Julia asking her what she knew about Team Viewer and our conclusions were similar. Team Viewer is legitimate software allowing several people to work together on different computers so they can interact, capture screen shots of each other and do other things. 
Obviously, you have to agree that your computer is part of the network which they can access. There are many videos on the net about ethical hackers targeting fraudsters often based in India. In these videos, the hacker is the one being hacked and instead of him turning your camera on, opening your files, you instead send him into what is called a honey pot, he thinks that he is in the legitimate computer but rather it’s you who took total control of him. Julia informed me she was fully capable of doing exactly the same thing.
Those who fight monsters must be careful not to become monsters themselves, because when you look deeply into the abyss, the abyss also looks deep inside of you.
Here we are and I could not have put it better but I sincerely doubt Steven that Captain Helena has ever read any philosophy in his life, even less so Nietzsche. What bothered us both was them using Team Viewer, why would the Secret Service make use of such a basic tool. There were a few possible reasons: Helena was mounting a low cost operation, he was known not to be technically savvy and was barely computer literate so it was quite possibly the case that he generically calls every software of this type Team Viewer and what we were facing from them was essentially something much nastier indeed.
What was the next course of action that transpired?
I requested your station in South Korea (NB: One of our backup storages is found in South Korea.) to upload everything that we had gathered on Helena including his very good friend the Pastor and an individual code named by us’ The Queen of Sheba’. It became quite clear that Helena held a long standing grudge against the Target even though they had worked together on very few occasions. The Pastor was an excellent friend of Helena and was oddly close to him which meant a long standing friendship or a long standing association of their families. The Pastor often talked far too much. Concerning the Queen of Sheba, it was even more interesting because he
was the major mastermind behind a Bank Fraud who however didn't find himself behind bars and was one of their close friends. The Target once complained about Helena to his superior. The Pastor is definitely not on good terms with the Target and the Queen blames the Target for denying him his ‘justly’ deserved share of several Million Rand from the Bank Fraud he had organised. We also had information that could possibly involve the Pastor in a really dodgy unpleasant story. I want to make it clear that I do not believe that the Pastor has had anything to do with the entrapment and I don’t believe the dodgy story referred to is true. I think you all will agree with me on this.
More or less yes.
Since you were also attacked, then if we wanted him to send a message for us to Helena, we would have to encourage him to do so.
Is that strictly legal?
What do you mean, kicking the crap out of potentially innocent people in the early hours of the morning? It’s certainly not legal in any way, it’s quite seriously borderline blackmail, since if you do not tell your friend to stop, and we may or may not reveal a crime that someone has potentially accused you of.
When you put it like that, that is fair and square blackmail by any measure.
It is, which is why everyone has to understand that no one should play the vigilante because if someone has information regarding a crime, they have to report it to the Authorities and if they then fail to respond, go on by speaking to the press which by making the story enter the public domain, help to make the crime be taken more seriously by the Police. No one should play these games at any cost. 
That is why the Target had no choice but to call the Pastor. At this point, the Target was fuming like Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991and was cursing the devil in an extinct language known only in the underworld. My reasoning was that any Judge would understand the emotional state the victim was in and who had in rage said something that he had no intention of doing. That does not in any way excuse him but makes it less unpleasant and he could eventually possibly get away with it by presenting his excuses to the Pastor. I also told him to follow up the conversation by SMS in which the line ‘If you consider this message threatening, feel free to go to the Cops’ is included. If that then worked like I thought it would have, then there could be only two outcomes to the matter.
Which were?
If it was a legitimate operation they would have backed off completely and disappeared like a puff of smoke in the dark as they would have been compromised. It would mean that they had only unverified suspicions and that the computer data would have provided confirmation of what they thought they already knew. The fact that they would disappear from sight did not mean that you are out of their minds; they would simply have changed their tactics and proceeded to attack the Target from a different direction in time. But at least we would have been warned and could have secured legal advice well in advance. The second option would mean Helena has virtually nothing and he was just fishing for information. It would therefore be then almost a certainty that the operation was not legal and that it would not have had available to it the necessary documents like the absolutely indispensible Court Order.
By now I know what you were thinking then, can you clarify this for our readers as sometimes it looks like you have a crystal ball.
Thank you for the flattery but it is rather simple when you think it through. I had not explained the nature of your relationship with the operative. I had come to understand that he was not working fulltime for the Outsiders and the rumor was that he had terrible fallout with you. What had happened is that Helena quietly observed the operative over a period of time and collected information on him. He then made his approach, he would also have suspected that the operative could betray him but he probably thought it was worth the gamble at this time. We knew that the Pastor would have confirmed that there was a real unpleasantness and separation between you and the operative. You though are better placed to tell us more about this Steven.
The operative had some very serious personal issues and so had chosen to distance himself for a time. It occurred when we had admin problems though the two are not related. As a matter of fact, the operative and the Target have a friendship of more than a decade and during this time, visited each other for matters seldom to do with the Outsider. That is not all; the operative was and still remains one of the owners of the newspaper and is a founder member. I could not personally believe such a level of incompetence. If it was not so dangerous, it would have been comical as this time we jumped from a B series scenario to a Pink Panther comedy.
More of a Leslie Nielson one. Bear with me, though I don’t think that Helena is a total idiot, it is however clear that there is a bug in his brain which makes him constantly underestimate you. He did not do a Company Check because he most likely does not believe that you have a Registered Company in the UK, something which is not at all common in South Africa. It is clear that he does not believe that the Target has any technical skills. We have the Pastor on record saying that Helena told him that he understands that the Target knows a few things but is not as smart as he thinks he is. The Pastor is on record saying that Helena told him that he was sorry for what the Target did to the Pastor and his family. This is something that he alone knew what he was talking about and was probably used to assert his grip on the Pastor. Remember these people always betray each other which mean that they automatically believe that others will do exactly the same thing to them.
We are now on the next day, how did that unfold?
With a lot of black coffee. I told you guys that if he came back, he will have to scare the bejesus out of us more than we scared his dear friend by letting us know that he knew something about the Target which would balance the game. The probability of us seeing this phone was dropping at an alarming rate. But if I was right, then he would be in big trouble anyway.
Explain to us why?
The two main obvious reasons are no Court Order and plotting for a civilian to commit an illegal act. There are others but those are already sufficient to cause him sufficient trouble. Hours passed slowly for those who were waiting anxiously and desperately quickly for the ones who were installing the honey pots and getting ready to go out and cover the area in Birchleigh where the action was going to take place. Then Helena arrived but he did not bring the cash or the phone, pretending that it would be done the next day but however managed to drop a bomb designed to scare you, in the conversation he had with the operative. The operative was shocked so he asked a question since he could not understand how this information could be relevant but still he continued to play the game. Helena promised to come back the very next day. I was personally relieved but there still existed the possibility that he had other cards up his sleeve so I decided to shift instantly to the offensive. Firstly without telling anyone else, I asked the Target to get ready to go to Birchleigh in full combat gear, mobile phone, camera, the lot. I asked him to arrive there well before the appointed meeting time. I was not blowing up the game because there was evidently no game, what I wanted him to do was to mark any potential Scout of the Intelligence Service and make them clearly notice that he saw them.
You were absolutely right I was there, I was there before him and was wondering what the Target was doing there speaking to the operative but I did not ask either of them. And as night follows day, roughly one hour before Helena arrived on the scene, a suspicious White Bakkie with the classic, white Caucasian wearing the white shirt with a short military hair cut appeared. He clearly noticed the Target and saw that he had been burned. The Target even captured video of the Scout with his Tablet and soon afterwards, the Target left the area. The presumed Scout then followed the operative in a way he obviously thought was extremely subtle. When the operative went to KFC, the Scout followed him and entered KFC, checked the menu but did not buy anything and then went out when the operative left. You definitely made some accurate predictions.
by The Team
What is not written does not exist.
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