What measures can protesters take against this? With agents actively infiltrating groups, it seems impossible to prevent this level of spying.
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Vet /screen everyone. Cross check personal references, have an onboarding period before introducing new members to anything sensitive, do background checks if you’re concerned about it. There are already experienced community leaders and activists in your network; ask them how they establish trust. Teach people to think more critically about how and why they trust information and people. Make vetting part of recruitment and onboarding processes, and make recruitment work a self sustaining perpetual process with a team of people to support it. After you establish trust, use it. Ask around for feedback about new members.
Accept that you aren't going to always outsmart infiltrators and guard your information silos accordingly. Have processes for auditing threats, removing members. Avoid creating large group chats or exposing names/ contacts without consent. Keep working groups small, and don’t include people who aren’t actively participating. Use encryption, use pseudonyms. Use the basic tools available (Signal, GrapheneOS, Tails, Tor, etc). Don’t retain things like chat history or files you don't need. Give people basic training on social engineering techniques, cyber security (or honestly just how to use a computer 101), operational security, and how to recruit.
Ultimately, retain a good legal defense. You probably aren't doing anything illegal anyway, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a good lawyer and a plan… legal ground is shifting, and you will never have more resources than a motivated agency task force. Get a dash camera, and non-evil doorbell camera. Have a group of friends who will check in on you regularly. If you are discussing illegal shit, don’t do it around people or devices you don’t completely trust. Retain plausible deniability.
So compartmentalization, limiting blast radius... that sounds oddly familiar.
Irl network security has its similarities
I was thinking terrorist cells.
Makes sense. Terrorist people acting against a normal government would need the same precautions as normal people acting against a terrorist government.
IANAL but is CircuitSeuss not committing a crime here by giving the advice:
"If you are discussing illegal shit, don’t do it around people or devices you don’t completely trust. Retain plausible deniability."
Or is it legal to discuss "illegal shit"? Maybe with a lawyer? Maybe with a lawyer present? Maybe "illegal shit" is legal jargon I'm unfamiliar with?
> IANAL but is CircuitSeuss not committing a crime here by giving the advice
> "If you are discussing illegal shit, don’t do it around people or devices you don’t completely trust. Retain plausible deniability."
> Or is it legal to discuss "illegal shit"?
The answer to that question is extremely jurisdiction-dependent. That being said, in the US the statement you quote is almost certainly not illegal under current 1st Amendment jurisprudence. The main case of interest is Brandenberg v. Ohio [0], which held:
> Freedoms of speech and press do not permit a State to forbid advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.
[0]: https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep...
Indeed, they are not committing a crime here. They are not discussing illegal shit, they are merely talking about discussing illegal shit, and that is still protected by the First Amendment.
Also doesn't matter if you don't get caught. HN allows anonymous account creation.
Know what is and isn't legal protest and keep a sharp eye on anybody offering a hookup to explosives / rocket launchers, etc.
( probably a three letter agency plant )
Take playbooks from large criminal organizations. Protesting may not be criminal, but it is increasingly being treated as such.
Organized crime deals with this stuff constantly. Meet in person. Vet everyone. Being willing to keep lips tight and risk imprisonment.
Posting all over BlueSky is just snitching on yourself. It doesn’t matter if protesting is a cornerstone of our democracy when those in charge don’t care. As the water heats up, protestors will need to reassess how they view their own actions.
The primary downside is that operating like this sucks. It’s inconvenient at best. It requires modifying your own behavior.
How does organised crime recruit new members if it can't advertise?
I think if all protesters really just protested (and nobody tried smashing ICE cars tail lights, physically blocking their vehicles, and damaging officers' hearing), that would go a long way helping prevent this. So the measure protesters can take is to discipline their ranks.
So, if you go read through all the FBI reports about Black Lives Matters you find references to OMGs. Apparently a lot of various organizations like Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs will use large events like protests as cover.
There's also counter-protesters which will attempt to agitate (they might argue the protesters agitated them) and cause problems.
So, largely protesters cannot be disciplined because not everybody there is actually in agreement as to why they're there.
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That said. It's a public roadway. The proper punishment for driving poorly is a police citation not a bullet.
How will you stop a federal agent from showing up and and smashing some cars to generate bad will? You know protests are open for anyone to join, yeah?
ranks?
Especially since it isn't spying.