Field Journal Guide
The field journal is a throughline of the entire book. It starts as a personal record in Chapter 2 and evolves through three phases as your work grows. This page explains what it is, how to keep it, and collects every prompt from across the 36 chapters.
What It Is
The field journal is your private, offline record of what you notice, what you try, and what changes. It’s not a diary. It’s not a to-do list. It’s a working document — a place to think on paper.
Recommended tools: Paper notebook, Obsidian (free, local-first), or Logseq (free, local-first). Do not use cloud-based tools like Google Docs or Notion. The journal should stay on your device or on paper you control.
How It Evolves
The journal changes shape as the book progresses. Understanding this arc helps you organize yours.
Phase 1: Personal Record (Level 1, Chapters 1–12)
The journal tracks what you’ve done and what you’ve found. Location history results, advertising ID deletion, app permission audits, threat model, security checklist, SIFT practice, opt-out records. It’s a log of your own security posture — evidence that you’ve done the work, and a reference when you need to check what’s still outstanding.
Phase 2: Group Resource (Level 2, Chapters 13–26)
The journal becomes a tool for individual reflection that feeds group learning. After meetings and conversations, you write in your journal alone before comparing notes with others. Debrief questions, meeting observations, onboarding reflections, identity conversations. The journal is still private — but the insights it produces are shared.
Phase 3: Network Tool (Level 3, Chapters 27–36)
The journal becomes a coordination record. Coalition agreements, debrief findings, civic monitoring observations, shared principles, institutional maps. It’s how the network remembers what it learned.
By Chapter 36: “The field journal is whatever the network needs it to be.”
Principles
- Offline and local. Nothing goes to a cloud service.
- Private by default. Share insights from your journal, not the journal itself.
- Honest. Record what actually happened, not what you wish had happened.
- Consistent. Write after every chapter, every meeting, every action. The habit matters more than the length.
- Cumulative. Don’t start over. The journal is a record of your trajectory — early entries are valuable precisely because they show where you started.
Prompts by Chapter
Every field journal entry assigned in the book, collected in one place.
Level 1: See Clearly
Chapter 2: The Invisible Auction — Set up your field journal. Record what you’ve done so far: location history check, advertising ID deletion, app permission audit, and what you found.
Chapter 3: What Are You Actually Protecting? — Answer the five threat-modeling questions: (1) What do I have worth protecting? (2) Who might want access? (3) How likely is it? (4) How bad would it be? (5) How much trouble am I willing to go through? This is the framework every future chapter builds on.
Chapter 4: Your Passwords Are Already For Sale — Record which breaches appeared in your Have I Been Pwned check, your email’s new 2FA status, and a list of accounts still using reused passwords.
Chapter 5: Who’s Listening? — Record who you moved to Signal, what resistance you encountered, what persuasion worked.
Chapter 6: The Watchers — Map your physical environment: ALPR cameras, facial recognition use, social media monitoring contracts in your area. You’re mapping your physical environment now, not just your digital one.
Chapter 7: COINTELPRO Never Ended — Write down the four phrases: “Am I free to go?” / “I do not consent to this search.” / “I am exercising my right to remain silent.” / “I want to speak to a lawyer.”
Chapter 8: You Are Not Hard to Find — Record your self-OSINT audit results: what you found, where, what you’ve requested removal from, what’s still outstanding.
Chapter 9: Your Browser Is a Fingerprint — Test your browser fingerprint at coveryourtracks.eff.org. Record the result.
Chapter 10: Seeing Through the Noise — Apply SIFT to a claim. Record each step (Stop, Investigate the source, Find better coverage, Trace to origin) and your findings.
Chapter 11: When to Worry and When to Live — Build your personal security checklist with three sections: permanent changes (new defaults), scheduled maintenance (with calendar frequency), and situational activations (with trigger conditions).
Chapter 12: The Hardest Skill — Teach one concept from this book to someone who hasn’t read it. Record: who, what, how it landed, what resistance you encountered. Complete the Level 1 self-assessment: field journal with threat model and security checklist, Signal installed with at least one active conversation, at least one teaching interaction documented.
Level 2: Find Each Other
Chapter 13: The First Conversation — What moved your partner? What moved you? Where do your concerns overlap? Where do they diverge? What surprised you about listening for 15 uninterrupted minutes?
Chapter 14: Security Is a Conversation Now — What was the security conversation like? What surprised you about your partner’s risk tolerance? What was awkward? What was easier than expected?
Chapter 15: How to See Your Neighborhood — Write the neighborhood map: people who care about local issues, places where people gather, existing organizations or informal networks. Analog, not digital.
Chapter 16: The Approach — Don’t record what you said. Record what you heard. What mattered to them? What was the local thing you both could see? Did you feel yourself rehearsing — and if so, when did you stop?
Chapter 17: What You’re Building — After your first meeting: What worked? What was awkward? What surprised you? What would you change for next time?
Chapter 18: The First Meeting — Each person answers individually: (1) What worked? (2) What was awkward? (3) What surprised you? Reflect alone first; compare notes with the group before your next meeting.
Chapter 19: Security Culture Is Care — What did the security conversation feel like? Was it harder or easier than expected? What surprised you about what your group members worry about?
Chapter 20: The Platform Move — Did everyone move? Was there resistance? How did it resolve?
Chapter 21: The Groan Zone — Did the group use the consensus spectrum? Did it feel mechanical or useful? Did anyone block or stand aside? What was the disagreement about, and how did it resolve?
Chapter 22: Growing Without Breaking — Who did you bring in? Who vouched? What changed at four? What do you expect at five?
Chapter 24: Teaching Each Other — What did each person teach? What surprised you? What’s on the first-steps guide? Anything to add after a week?
Chapter 25: What Keeps You Together — What surprised you in the identity conversation? What motivations did people name? Who did you connect with and what did you learn?
Chapter 26: What Five People Can Do — What did your first collective action teach you? What are you ready for now? What would you tell someone just starting?
Level 3: Build Together
Chapter 29: Do Something Small Together — Record debrief findings from the joint action — both the structured responses and your group’s internal reflections. The debrief is the curriculum. The journal is the record.
Chapter 30: Decisions Without a Boss — File all governance documents: coalition agreement, decision domain map, spokes council protocol.
Chapter 31: The Landscape Around You — File the institutional map and legal awareness resources.
Chapter 32: What Holds When It’s Hard — Document the network health check baseline: workload distribution, pace identification, friction and success inventory.
Chapter 36: The Path Is People — Final entry. Snapshot: how many groups, what you’re working on, what’s functioning, what’s unresolved, what you’re worried about, what you’re proud of. Date it.