Re: Important: Security alert for activists

[jjf <xdaydreamx@gmx.net>]

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I find that most of what the security agencies must have found according to this article is actually quite positive about the activists in question. Why else would they have said been so unprepared? 
The fact is that 99% of the discussion probably dealt with protest which was in no way illegal. People were talking about where to stay, where to march, which venues to target with which protest, which costumes to bring etc. This kind of talk could have had two effects: 
1) It lifted the security agency's fears that there would be a mass riot (and in the end there wasn't, though the media portrayed it so and the police did their best to provoke it) and 
2) it might have created some sympathy for the protesters. 

I'm serious about this. There is nothing better for winning over the other side than showing them two flat palms. Lots of them. Hundreds and hundreds of people posting about peaceful, legal stuff openly can only be perceived as less of a threat than a few posting "dangerous material". This openness was probably what threw them off their feet and left them not knowing what was going to happen. 
The intelligence gatheres, told to be on the look-out for scheming anarchists, were left to sift through endless cheerful chatter. I expect they squeezed just about all the violent potential out of the messages they found and used it to justify their behaviour but that was hardly very convincing, was it?
No, like the surveillance camera players, open discussion monitored by security agencies is actually an asset for us activists, at least in most cases. Activists should perhaps remember that whatever they are saying is being projected out and held up to the camera.

Of course there are times when security becomes and issue. Then use PGP or other means of communication. But it would do more harm than good to start encrypting everything in the belief that "everything you say can be used against you", as they say in American films.

jjf



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