[Zyx]

http://www.why-war.com/guides/2003/09/security.html -- This link has hyperlinked text and so to see some explanations it'd be better to go to this website than to read it from my pasting.

Introduction

The government is reading this pamphlet. Possibly over your shoulder. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Okay, so you don’t have to be that afraid, but the fact is that these days we have very little or no privacy in our every day lives. The USA-PATRIOT Act essentially took away all of our rights to privacy. All of ’em. Anything you say on the phone, e-mail, through letters, etc. is up for grabs for the police/FBI to use against you. Security Culture is a necessary aspect of any activist community. It is not something to be turned on and off when necessary, it is exactly what it’s called, a culture, that must remain omnipresent at all times. Security culture is especially important for more groups with definitions of nonviolence extend beyond the majority conception, but even traditional groups need to take care. The police and the State take great pains to prevent dissent.

Electronic Communication

A little story: I worked with a direct action group in ****** known as *****. One member of ***** who was new and did not know the protocols of security culture sent out an e-mail that indirectly implicated specific members of the group in an action that had happened in the area. His e-mail resulted in four arrests. Two people went to jail for six months.

SECURITY TIP 1

E-mail is never safe. Ever. Listservs especially are monitored daily by local police departments and the FBI. If you’re planning a mass direct action event, you must use a spokescouncil meeting or other face-to-face organizing strategy. Never send specifics (date, time, or location) about a direct action over e-mail. Some e-mail is more secure. Hushmail provides encrypted e-mail service for its users that can be more secure than regular e-mail, and using an encryption program like PGP can greatly increase your security. Still, it’s never a good idea to talk about specifics over e-mail. Keep any discussion of direct action extremely vague, and never give the location and time. So you get up every day looking for your chance to make your voice heard. Where do you look? Why, Indymedia, infoshop and protest.net, of course! Well guess what? Someone else is reading those websites too.

SECURITY TIP 2

The State reads protest websites all the time. Why War’s website has received hits from most branches of the military. If you post specific details about a direct action on the Internet, you can expect there to be cops there when you show up. I believe, The best way to organize is to call a spokescouncil meeting and post the information on Indymedia. Always remember that everything you say on the Internet is there forever. Don’t make jokes. Even visually representing an attack on the president has cost one person a visit from the Secret Service.

SECURITY TIP 3

Assume everyone is a cop. I am a cop. You are a cop. The only people you can assume are not cops is your mother (unless she is a cop) and your affinity group. If someone e-mails you saying they are from one group or another, they are a cop. (Not necessarily, in fact, probably not, but you need to treat them like they are.) Especially on the Internet, you can never assume anyone is who they claim they are. Nothing is less secure than the Internet, where anyone can read anything you say at any time. Still, after the passing of the Patriot Act, phones are not secure. They tapped our phones in Boston. The ACLU has its phones tapped. It’s not that rare. Using cell phones to communicate at an action seems like a really good idea, and it can be. But cell phones are easily monitored, and the special operations cops have the ability to monitor cell phones in a certain area. So don’t say, “Swarm the corner of 33rd and 5th!” Plan everything out ahead of time, and be able to say, “Are you coming?” and have everyone know what that means.

SECURITY TIP 4

For immediate actions, the phone can be fairly secure, if you can act before the police can react. However, unless you are using a payphone, this leaves your name implicated with whatever action you do. In general treat a payphone as if someone were listing. Never give specifics. There are ways to know if your phones are tapped, if you really want to know, but it’s best always just to assume that they are.

Perhaps the easiest (and most detrimental) time for security culture to break down is in the heat of a protest when the police begin their repression tactics. You see your friends being taken away by police and its your first instinct to call out to them. Or perhaps the group you are marching with shatters and you feel the need to remind everyone of where your pre-planned re-convergence space is.

SECURITY TIP 5

Don’t use people’s names at a direct action protest. If you want, come up with aliases or something, but concealing your identity from the authorities is important. You might not think they are listening, but they are. Another story: at a peace rally in ****town, the local radical groups held a spokescouncil meeting at the beginning of the rally to decide when we were going to break away from the main march. In the middle of our meeting, we were surrounded by police who then walked with us the entire way.

SECURITY TIP 6

Don’t look sketchy. If you’re having a spokescouncil meeting in a public place, take off your bandanas! Put away the red and black banners, steal a “Peace is Patriotic” sign from a nearby liberal, whatever. Increasingly, the cops are targeting radical groups for arrest and “special treatment” (i.e. police brutality.) Black flags and radical banners are all well and good, but keep them out of sight while your planning. Some of you might be saying, “Wait, take off our bandanas? That’s such a bad plan!” In some ways, you’re correct. As I said before, concealing your identity is important. The average American is photographed 300 times a day (every time you use an ATM, get gas, go into a convenience store, pay a toll, etc.) Protests are very well monitored by video and snapshots.

SECURITY TIP 7

If you are engaging in autonomous civil disobedience (not a sit-in) and you don’t plan on being arrested (i.e. you want to get away with it) you should conceal your face using a bandana, or other cloth. Wearing a bandana can make you a target for police, since they associate it with radicals, so only wear one if you are actually doing something illegal and concealing your identity makes sense. Gas masks and ski masks certainly conceal your identity well, but they look extremely militant, and tend to both incite police violence and frighten other protesters. Unless you plan on directly and forcibly confronting the police, I would not recommend wearing a gas mask. (If you think that there will be teargas, you can always have a pair of swim goggles and a bandana soaked in apple cider vinegar in your pocket.) [ed.: the ISM uses onion to counter the effects of Israeli tear gas. Merely hold a piece of sliced onion up to your nose — it helps.]

Remember to practice security culture with your friends. This is the hardest aspect of security culture for many of us to perfect. You’ve just finished a successful and awesome direct action! Yay! The first thing you want to do is tell all your friends about it. Chances are, your friends won’t turn you into the cops. However, bragging/gossiping about direct action can be a chronic breach of security culture.

SECURITY TIP 8

There are some things that you can’t talk about with people that you don’t know very well and on a personal basis:

Your involvement or someone else’s in a specific illegal direct action. The only exception is if you have already been convicted of that action, or if you are outside the jurisdiction of where that action took place, or if significant time has passed that you cannot be prosecuted for that action.

Your involvement or someone else’s in an underground group. (i.e. a group that has claimed actions for the Earth Liberation Front, etc.)

Someone’s knowledge of an illegal direct action.

Specific plans for future direct actions. With a good security culture, everyone is on a need-to-know don’t-ask-don’t-tell basis. The less you know about an action that you will not be involved in, the safer you and the people engaging in that action will be. Obviously you can discuss future actions with your affinity group, but do so in a safe place and manner.

SECURITY TIP 9

When discussing plans for a radical direct action with your affinity group, do not discuss them any place that’s likely to be monitored. (i.e the place you usually meet, an activist’s car, Unitarian churches, radical bookstores, etc.) Find someplace safe for your discussion. There are some things that we as humans tend to do that can be extremely risky for us as activists. Using activism as a social device can be detrimental to security culture. There are liars: people who claim to have engaged in illegal actions in order to impress others. This is not okay. Those people are putting themselves and the people they lie to in danger by breaking security culture in this way. Bragging to your friends, I can’t emphasize enough, is dangerous. One on one, in a safe location, it is okay to talk about less radical direct actions, but only talk about secure things with people who know about security culture and won’t go and gossip it to others. This brings us to gossiping. If you’ve heard anything about a direct action that you’re not involved in, don’t say anything about it to anyone. You will jeopardize your security and the security of those planning the action.

SECURITY TIP 10

Security culture is not a spy game or a joke. Pretending to have an overdeveloped sense of security culture in order to impress others is no different than bragging about an action. This is not “I could tell you but I’d have to kill you.” If someone asks you a question that you don’t want to answer, or if you think someone is talking about something that they shouldn’t be talking about, just change the subject.

Before I end we should also note that there are informants out there. They infiltrate activist groups, (and sometimes even activist affinity groups) and jeopardize (intentionally) everyone’s security. It can be hard to distinguish between new members of a group who want to learn about what’s going on and don’t know much about security culture and infiltrators who are trying to gather enough information to have you all arrested. If you think your group may have been infiltrated, check out the Security Survival Skills guide produced by the Collective Opposed to Police Brutality. It’s the most extensive guide to security culture that I’ve found on the web and it has a section that explains how to identify counterinsurgents within the ranks.

This is by no means a complete and definitive guide to security culture. Again I urge you to read the Security Survival Skills guide produced by the Collective Opposed to Police Brutality. For the purposes of Why War?, I think that this should be more than sufficient. Remember: just because we’re non-violent doesn’t meant that the police don’t see us as a threat. It also doesn’t mean that we will not be charged with violent crimes if arrested. You can be charged for assault if you even brush against a police officer, for carrying a weapon if you have a pencil, and for reckless endangerment if you hang a banner on a building. Maintaining a tight security culture is essential for creating a cohesive, safe, and effective movement based on the principals of trust and solidarity. This guide may seem harsh and paranoid, and you should always use reason, you’re probably not gonna get yourself in trouble by talking about some snake-march you participated in, but always be thinking, “Would I say this to a cop?”

Why is not the Patriot Act a bigger issue in this election? Anyway, fellow activists, be careful!

As-Salamu Alaykum!

P.S. Besides from "Why-War," http://security.resist.ca/personal/culture.shtml is supposedly good for activists to read. Oh how history repeats.

[Spintroll]

"Any society that would give up a little freedom for a little security will deserve neither and lose both."
-- Benjamin Franklin

I think that about sums up my view on the topic.

[Goranhammer]

[Alim]

"Any society that would give up a little freedom for a little security will deserve neither and lose both."
-- Benjamin Franklin

I think that about sums up my view on the topic.

Thank you. Thats one of my favourite quotes and one of the most appropriate quotes to describe modern times.