Secure organising for activism
From Envirowiki
When organising for social change, it can be important to maintain security in that organising. Especially if the powers-that-be are worried that your activism poses a real threat to business as usual.
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[edit] 1 Warning
A paranoid man is a man who knows a little about what's going on. - William S. Burroughs, 1970
While it's good to be aware of the risks, it's not good to worry too much. Worrying will get in the way or your organising, and hinder your ability to reach out to other people in your community. Your level of paranoia should be relative to the risks of your activism - if you're just awareness raising, it's likely that no one will care enough to listen in. If you're planning a blockade, then be careful!
[edit] 2 Communication
Nearly all forms of communication can be fairly easily spied upon, depending on the resources of the one doing the spying. Phones can be tapped, letters opened, emails read. But most of these problems can be overcome or avoided to a large extent.
[edit] 2.1 Phones
Phones are tapped frequently by the police in most countries, fo varying reasons. If you're organising something that you don't want the police to know about, then the best idea is to avoid the phone all together. Of course, this isn't always practical. If you must speak on the phone about something risky, try to avoid any details or specifics. Pre-defined code words can be useful
Rumours circulate that various intelligence agencies use computers to listen for code words (like "bomb", or "attack"). This is certainly technically feasible, and could potentially be used to listen for activism-related words, like "blockade" or "protest". Code words could help here.
[edit] 2.1.1 Mobile Phones
Mobiles suffer from the same problems as land lines. In some cases, they are even more risky, because each phone has personal details associated with it, so authorities can track specific targeted people. Some mobiles can transmit even while turned off, some are even able to transmit sound picked up from the microphone when turned off[1]. While most phone probably aren't able to do this off-the-shelf, modifications to enable them to act as covert listening devices would not be terribly difficult for a professional to make. For more info, see w:Covert listening device on Wikipedia.
Some activist groups make a habit of turning off phones during meetings (you do that already for politeness, right?), and even removing them from the room, just in case.
[edit] 2.2 The Internet
The internet, by default, is extremely open, and communications can be seen by almost anyone with a will. This is because for any single connection from computer to computer, messages must be sent via a number of other computers. A typical connection from Australia to a website in Europe or the US will go through 20-30 computers before reaching the end of its journey. If even one of those computers is vulnerable to attack (or voluntarily recording info for the police), then your communication is also vulnerable.
The main ways you can get around these problems are encryption, and anonymisation.
[edit] 2.2.1 The Web
Visiting web pages is usually safe. But if you're looking at something suss, or if you're posting risky information as a comment somewhere, be careful. On the internet, you're only anonymous to people who don't know how to look. Most web servers (the ones that host the sites that you visit) log details of visits, like time, page, and IP address. Mostly, this is fairly harmless, and only used to make the sites better. But these records can identify you.
Basically, if the police subpoena the information, they can look up the IP address - which will point to your Internet Service Provider (ISP). They can then as your ISP who had that IP address at that time, and then they know it was you (or at least, someone on your connection).
[edit] 3 Conspiracy
[edit] 4 Infiltration
This is reasonably rare, however it does happen. There's a case of infiltration documented in Ian Cohen's book Green Fire[2] that's worth reading.
[edit] 5 References
- ↑ "'This goes no further...'", BBC (2004-03-02). Retrieved on 2009-11-13.
- ↑ Cohen, Ian (1997). Green fire. Harper Collins. ISBN 0207186332.
