photos + security

Actually, I was thinking of the connection to Libcom, not your girlfriend.

Rather Foolish I think.

Yes, shit happens. I wrote before:

No, we are not an underground organisation. Our publication though for example is illegal (which doesn't mean that it is not distributed in bookshops).

I am not sure what you mean by underground activity. I don't think that we have underground activity.

On the point of keeping things secret from your employer, in the past I was involved in a workers' group in a large public sector company. Management knew who I was. When our publications came out, I went round the office selling them during work time, fine. But what are you suggesting that we should have said to a new worker who wrote to us from another office? "Just walk up to the management, and tell them you support the reds". No, we told them to leave the publications in the canteen when it was quite. It would have been very stupid for people who were on a six month probationary period to tell the management they were going to be militants in the future.

It just makes sense to be careful.

No, I don't think that it will protect people. I just don't think that there is any reason for publicising information for the sake of showing off your girlfriend.

I believe that the state monitors political groups. I don't think that our organisation, or yours are the top of their priority list. For example, I am sure that the Turkish state has hundreds of people involved in trying to monitor the PKK. They probably have one bloke, who monitors a whole range of left groups, and maybe reads our publications once a month.

If we intend to grow, the monitoring will increase though.

I am public about my politics. I just don't give away information for nothing.

Flint, we are supposed to be revolutionaries. If there is a revolution in the US, I am 100% certain that it will get more repressive. The coup before last, which I mentioned was in 1980, nearly 30 years ago. The last coup in the 90's didn't have anything like this. I think that the next one won't either.

I just think that people should be careful, and not compromise their security without due reason.

Devrim

Everyone active here with anything more than a couple pebbles bouncing around in their skull cavity has to assume they're thoroughly burned vis-a-vis the government. Those of us who are a little more discreet are mostly worried about fascists and employers. Once it's too late on either of those fronts, some people decide they may as well push for full transparency / notoriety because that can be its own kind of protection.

I'm interested to hear more about the coup you're anticipating. That's gotta be a bad feeling.

Yeah I think you have to do it either way - be quite careful, or pretty transparent. People at my old job knew about this site because I told them, and I put it on a couple of application forms for web jobs I applied for recently - that way less opportunity for come back if they give me the job and find out later (in fact I think it might've got me a job). This is public sector though, it would've been suicidal in a couple of my old jobs, and of course I didn't tell them my username. I don't post my photo up though, and don't use my real name on things, although I used to a while back so there's ways of finding out given things stay on the internet for years with little control. This is why anyone posting up personal information more than once will get banned, and another reason why Chuck Hendricks is an idiot.

To be honest, with employers, the most likely thing is to get burned via internet usage policy rather than the content of the site (which you could do them for under equal ops if they actually tried to use it), sad but true.

I don't think the state necessarily knows who we all are now - obviously they have the capacity to do so, but they may well not have bothered. Clearly redwatch and some employers are very interested and it's not clever to draw too much attention to yourself or make it easy.

More than posting photos up, if you use your real name for your e-mail address, or put any personal information in private messages (phone numbers, addresses etc.) - then you could get burned if we ever get hacked (or if there was a physical breach of the server, or any admin's pc with a database backup on it), since it'd be easy to mine that information out from a database dump. Better to exchange e-mails over pm, then e-mail anything like that - although of course e-mail is completely insecure as well.

We do our best to avoid getting hacked, but it's best to bear that in mind.

If it happens I think you should support the democratically elected wing of the bourgeoisie. Critically of course

On privacy, I'm not bothered about the state knowing who I am. I mean if what we want to happen politically actually happens - mass struggle, near revolutionary situation, etc. there will be mass arrests, disappearings, torture, etc. and I don't think there's anything we can really do about that.

The only thing I'm bothered about is employers, which is why I use a pseudonym, and an alternate username to post about stuff at my workplace.

As for pictures, well lots of us use stuff like facebook and myspace anyway, and not feeling able to would be pretty shit. I don't make the connections between my political activity and personal networking things much. I've had pictures of myself on here briefly, I'm fine with that, and I do like knowing what people look like when you're discussing with them.

I bet Smash Rich Bastards is this guy:

I think employers and fascists can be a concern, but I think at a certain point, with employers at least, the internet makes that all unavoidable, especially if you're name is easy to google. I think the point is that flint's real identity is already totally out there for anyone who bothers looking, so he might as well just go with it.

poor chap, he's lost a glove. no wonder he's resorting to vile hand signals.

I used to try to have one foot in either side and it became apparent that it was fairly useless after some racist cops gave over my name, address, ht, wt, age, social security number etc to organized nazis. So whatever.

And as I said on that thread, it doesn't bother me. It would bother me if they had my address up there or any kind of information that would allow my employer to identify me, but they don't, they have a (actually fairly bad) picture of me. The odds of being able to successfully identify any one individual from that site alone among all the hundreds of pictures nicked from indymedia are slim, to say the least.

As for the police and the security services, if you've ever been to a large demonstration without a mask, they've got your picture. If you've ever been arrested, they've got details to match up to it. It's just not worth wasting time and energy worrying about it.

Of course.

I concur. I'm very publicly linked to radical projects and movements, and have a somewhat high-profile position in my union. I've been followed by plainclothes and uniformed police both inside and outside of the country, and the domestic intelligence agency has showed up at my front door. As incompetent as the state security services may be, they already have way more information on me than a photo or name can ever reveal. This kind of paranoid behaviour just serves to marginalize us further. If you're "underground" then you're certainly not posting on libcom, you're living under an assumed name, and changing locations constantly. That's a lot different, and unless you're doing that, if you're an active rev you're hooped.

That's fair enough Flint, here in this country on the other hand, the police force is really not that competent (in fact they mostly still use typewriters - or so I'm told - possibly an urban legend), they do target people they see as 'ringleaders' based on the amount of information they have about them.....and it isn't just a matter that this person exists and is involved in this, but also that they know these other people over here, used to be involved in that...etc...etc...a whole profile.
I should point out I'm not proposing being 'underground' or some such, but some basic things that make intelligence gathering more difficult, ie making profiles smaller, less exact and scantier...especialy when it costs no effort to do so.

Um.... doesn't this completely nullify your argument. There are few people in the world with a more public face than trade union officials.

To bad they make you wear long sleeves to work in the Nevada desert.

Err no Joe Bloggs shop steward gets another addition to his file and is promoted to a 'more interesting' category in the filing system when he writes several articles for some lefty newspaper.

I'm not talking about being 'secret' I'm talking about minimising the profiling, there is no point in being 'secret', ie keep the file small and with less informtion.

Based on what I've read of the British police published left wing literature is their major source of information.

Based on what I've observed of the Irish police they go for people they see as 'ringleaders'...sometimes seemingly based on who they have known for the longest and hence have the biggest file on (this may be an assumption of rationality - it could be just who they most have it in for).

I'm not really security aware at all by the standards of what I've seen of some of your black bloc types and that....and in fact in pushing this line in this discussion I feel a tad hypocritical*..but there is no harm at all I think in having a culture of being a bit aware of these things and making profiling a bit harder...bearing in mind there is none of the 'security culture' thing here that one would come across among american block block punk anarcho types....if I was around that I would be critical of it! ....especially for people who havn't already burned their boats and have small files and could keep having small files...on the other hand if as youse say the police forces in the US are well into efficent intelligence gathering on everyone..then yeah it would seem a little futile.

* especially given that I've signed articles, done mainstream media interviews, had photos with my name attached up on indymedia.

No one has argued for being underground, or anything like that.
What I said was that we should develop a security culture, and not give away information for nothing.
I wrote to Flint by PM:

I get the feeling that they are so used to arguing, against the left communists, and feeling attacked that they feel obliged to argue even when they know they are wrong. Maybe it is just embaressment at being a little foolish.

Devrim