The HAM radio idea is a good one, but not just for avoiding surveillance but because the Internet is so fragile. It wouldn’t be difficult for either the government or determined, educated and dedicated terrorists (not too different really in some cases) to take out the Internet as it has several points where a kill-switch (either logical or destructive) could take it out.
As a society we’ve now put ALL of our eggs into the Internet basket, and we have no backup. Imagine if the Internet went down today hard and permanently what tomorrow would look like.
Loss of the Internet is one of the real-world scenarios for the SHTF collapse. And one of the worst long-term aspects of the no-Internet scenario is the loss of stored knowledge. Large numbers of people have gotten rid of their books and new ones aren’t being printed, at least not very many. Even libraries are concentrating on media other than printed books. Stored knowledge has shifted almost exclusively to giant warehouses filled with spinning hard drives. Should the drives cease to spin and/or we lose access to them, then there goes human civilization as we know it.
If you want to be the REAL king when the SHTF, rent a giant warehouse right now and fill it full of every kind of book imaginable, particularly medical books and basic technological books about how to weld, make steel, cement and bricks, how to farm and grow food, etc., etc.
Books on low tech printing would be handy too.
I solved that one, I downloaded the internet to my hard drive.