1 00:00:02,592 --> 00:00:05,247 Greetings Troublemakers... welcome to Trouble. 2 00:00:05,247 --> 00:00:06,883 My name is not important. 3 00:00:06,883 --> 00:00:09,958 In our post-Snowden, smart gadget-laden world, 4 00:00:09,958 --> 00:00:12,319 it’s become clear to anyone paying attention 5 00:00:12,319 --> 00:00:15,764 that we live in an era of unprecedented mass surveillance. 6 00:00:15,764 --> 00:00:17,974 It seems like every day a new story 7 00:00:17,974 --> 00:00:20,001 pops up on our facebook feeds about how 8 00:00:20,001 --> 00:00:21,543 the NSA might be spying on us 9 00:00:21,543 --> 00:00:23,942 through our coffee makers or TV sets. 10 00:00:23,942 --> 00:00:26,112 One... two... 11 00:00:26,112 --> 00:00:27,777 Smith? 12 00:00:27,777 --> 00:00:30,068 6079 Smith W? 13 00:00:30,838 --> 00:00:32,097 Yes, you! 14 00:00:32,097 --> 00:00:33,433 Bend Lower! 15 00:00:34,163 --> 00:00:37,732 Or how the latest advancement in AI technology means that 16 00:00:37,732 --> 00:00:41,062 Amazon now knows what products we're gonna buy before we do. 17 00:00:41,062 --> 00:00:45,204 Lindor Chocolate Deluxe gift box... would you like to buy it? 18 00:00:45,204 --> 00:00:45,731 Yes! 19 00:00:45,731 --> 00:00:49,875 And while the mind-boggling capacity of state intelligence agencies 20 00:00:49,875 --> 00:00:52,722 and IT corporations to monitor our behaviour, 21 00:00:52,722 --> 00:00:54,508 habits and communications 22 00:00:54,508 --> 00:00:56,945 is a perfectly reasonable cause for alarm, 23 00:00:56,945 --> 00:00:58,975 the more unsettling reality is that 24 00:00:58,975 --> 00:01:02,591 this constant flow of data collection forms only one part 25 00:01:02,591 --> 00:01:05,154 of a much broader surveillance apparatus 26 00:01:05,154 --> 00:01:07,186 ... one that still makes ample use of 27 00:01:07,186 --> 00:01:09,489 the same tried and tested dirty tricks 28 00:01:09,489 --> 00:01:12,688 that rulers have been using to keep tabs on dissent 29 00:01:12,688 --> 00:01:14,658 since proles first started scrawling 30 00:01:14,658 --> 00:01:18,668 Alpha Kappa Alpha Beta into the walls of the Parthenon. 31 00:01:18,668 --> 00:01:21,338 And on that note... before we jump right into it, 32 00:01:21,338 --> 00:01:24,222 we should point out that as we were putting this episode together 33 00:01:24,222 --> 00:01:26,261 we ran into some legal grey areas 34 00:01:26,261 --> 00:01:27,911 involving publication bans 35 00:01:27,911 --> 00:01:31,656 and laws against identifying undercover agents and informants. 36 00:01:31,656 --> 00:01:34,216 This is particularly relevant to our first segment, 37 00:01:34,216 --> 00:01:36,937 where we cover the multi-city organizing 38 00:01:36,937 --> 00:01:40,351 leading up to the 2010 G20 protests in Toronto, 39 00:01:40,351 --> 00:01:43,061 and the 2013 anti-fracking protests 40 00:01:43,061 --> 00:01:45,421 on the Mi’kmaq territory of Elsipogtog, 41 00:01:45,421 --> 00:01:49,090 both of which were the target of large-scale intelligence operations 42 00:01:49,090 --> 00:01:52,678 involving informants and/or undercover police. 43 00:01:52,678 --> 00:01:53,827 After mulling it over, 44 00:01:53,827 --> 00:01:55,703 in order to avoid putting our crew, 45 00:01:55,703 --> 00:01:59,193 or any of the people featured in the show in a sticky situation, 46 00:01:59,193 --> 00:02:02,129 we've made the call to only use footage and images 47 00:02:02,129 --> 00:02:06,193 of these state assets that are already freely available on the Internet 48 00:02:06,193 --> 00:02:08,986 ... plus a few clips from some cheesy Hollywood movies 49 00:02:08,986 --> 00:02:10,380 to help fill in the gaps. 50 00:02:10,380 --> 00:02:12,737 So, with that little disclaimer out of the way 51 00:02:12,737 --> 00:02:15,302 ... over the next 30 minutes, we'll share the voices of 52 00:02:15,302 --> 00:02:18,754 a number of individuals as they recount their first-hand experiences 53 00:02:18,754 --> 00:02:21,199 dealing with snitches and undercover cops, 54 00:02:21,199 --> 00:02:24,425 navigating the brave new world of digital surveillance 55 00:02:24,425 --> 00:02:26,358 ... and making a whole lotta trouble! 56 00:02:55,699 --> 00:02:59,078 I was involved with the Anti-Capitalist Convergence 57 00:02:59,078 --> 00:03:01,328 in Montreal leading up to the G20. 58 00:03:01,328 --> 00:03:03,367 So several months before even the summit 59 00:03:03,367 --> 00:03:05,870 people had started to meet and organize. 60 00:03:05,870 --> 00:03:09,526 And the other main element was coordinating with Toronto 61 00:03:09,526 --> 00:03:11,840 and other cities in Southern Ontario 62 00:03:11,840 --> 00:03:15,285 with the groups that were already organizing there. 63 00:03:15,285 --> 00:03:18,310 I was part of the Toronto Community Mobilization Network. 64 00:03:18,310 --> 00:03:21,684 So that was a large umbrella group that was involved 65 00:03:21,684 --> 00:03:24,608 in doing all of the logistics and a lot of the organizing 66 00:03:24,608 --> 00:03:27,696 around the G20 Summit in Toronto. 67 00:03:27,696 --> 00:03:29,650 I was also involved in SOAR, 68 00:03:29,650 --> 00:03:31,920 the Southern Ontario Anarchist Resistance. 69 00:03:31,920 --> 00:03:35,375 We were specifically on the project Get Off the Fence, 70 00:03:35,375 --> 00:03:39,762 which was the militant street march that happened in Toronto in 2010. 71 00:03:43,912 --> 00:03:45,193 Brenda and Khalid, 72 00:03:45,193 --> 00:03:49,513 their real names are Brenda Carey and Bindo Showan. 73 00:03:49,513 --> 00:03:51,425 But we did not know that until later. 74 00:03:51,425 --> 00:03:54,979 They're both members of the Ontario Provincial Police (the OPP) 75 00:03:54,979 --> 00:04:01,083 and they both arrived on the scene much earlier than 2010. 76 00:04:01,083 --> 00:04:05,290 And entered mostly through above-ground organizing, 77 00:04:05,290 --> 00:04:07,073 but then had a much more complicated path 78 00:04:07,073 --> 00:04:08,146 in order to stay in the movement 79 00:04:08,146 --> 00:04:10,683 and get close to people who they wanted to target. 80 00:04:10,683 --> 00:04:14,511 Both of those people played on sort of these political values 81 00:04:14,511 --> 00:04:15,682 that exist within those spaces 82 00:04:15,682 --> 00:04:18,090 in order to both get close to certain people, 83 00:04:18,090 --> 00:04:19,461 and avoid being outed. 84 00:04:19,461 --> 00:04:21,340 Brenda was probably the more experienced cop, 85 00:04:21,340 --> 00:04:24,857 and she produced this kind of narrative of victimization. 86 00:04:24,857 --> 00:04:27,466 And so she had this story of escaping an abusive relationship, 87 00:04:27,466 --> 00:04:30,271 and this also allowed her to avoid answering questions 88 00:04:30,271 --> 00:04:32,251 about her past, and to be very evasive. 89 00:04:32,251 --> 00:04:36,805 And Khalid operated because anyone that questioned 90 00:04:36,805 --> 00:04:40,538 his legitimacy would instantly be called out as being racist. 91 00:04:40,538 --> 00:04:43,951 And because of all the internalized racism in our groups, 92 00:04:43,951 --> 00:04:46,679 that slight-of-hand worked. 93 00:04:47,619 --> 00:04:49,852 And they were both really reliable. 94 00:04:49,852 --> 00:04:50,908 So they worked really hard, 95 00:04:50,908 --> 00:04:53,437 they took on tasks and they always did them on time. 96 00:04:53,437 --> 00:04:56,938 Brenda in particular, I remember always wanted to take minutes. 97 00:04:56,938 --> 00:05:00,779 And we were like “great... take minutes! We don't want to.” 98 00:05:00,779 --> 00:05:02,784 So that was perfect because she could take all those notes 99 00:05:02,784 --> 00:05:05,909 and it was not drawing any attention to her. 100 00:05:06,229 --> 00:05:07,895 Most of the evidence that was introduced 101 00:05:07,895 --> 00:05:13,221 in the conspiracy case came from whatever they were able to collect 102 00:05:13,221 --> 00:05:15,822 in their interactions with anarchists, 103 00:05:15,822 --> 00:05:18,613 with activists, over this period of time. 104 00:05:18,613 --> 00:05:20,220 These notes were then sifted through, 105 00:05:20,220 --> 00:05:22,857 and they basically just pulled out selected elements 106 00:05:22,857 --> 00:05:26,636 that could conceivably constitute preparation for crimes. 107 00:05:27,156 --> 00:05:28,936 It was actually quite shocking to see 108 00:05:28,936 --> 00:05:31,117 how much of the information that she recorded 109 00:05:31,117 --> 00:05:35,868 was personal information about who didn't really like who, 110 00:05:35,868 --> 00:05:39,047 and who was dating who, and who had broken up with who. 111 00:05:39,047 --> 00:05:42,284 And who was maybe having some problems with the way 112 00:05:42,284 --> 00:05:44,767 things were being organized, and all of that stuff. 113 00:05:44,767 --> 00:05:47,733 And it became really obvious that that stuff 114 00:05:47,733 --> 00:05:51,064 was very very relevant to the intelligence gathering. 115 00:05:51,484 --> 00:05:52,443 A night drinking... 116 00:05:52,443 --> 00:05:53,833 going out with your friends and drinking, 117 00:05:53,833 --> 00:05:55,735 would first be presented as, y'know, 118 00:05:55,735 --> 00:05:57,661 “we went to the club and we noted all these things 119 00:05:57,661 --> 00:05:58,995 people talked about.” 120 00:05:58,995 --> 00:06:01,765 But then it would end up looking like a very detailed meeting 121 00:06:01,765 --> 00:06:04,692 that had on the agenda -- people might have made a joke 122 00:06:04,692 --> 00:06:06,047 about fighting cops, 123 00:06:06,047 --> 00:06:08,099 and it would just look like they planned to fight cops. 124 00:06:08,099 --> 00:06:12,516 It's not clear that there was ever really an actual case against us. 125 00:06:12,516 --> 00:06:14,655 But without their notes there definitely 126 00:06:14,655 --> 00:06:17,149 would not have been a case against us. 127 00:06:17,149 --> 00:06:21,922 The case of the Crown rested mostly with a recording 128 00:06:21,922 --> 00:06:24,302 that was done on June 25th, 129 00:06:24,302 --> 00:06:27,921 which was the day before the main action in Toronto. 130 00:06:27,921 --> 00:06:29,717 And it was a large spokes-council, 131 00:06:29,717 --> 00:06:33,735 so a lot of affinity groups were present and represented there. 132 00:06:33,735 --> 00:06:37,117 And Brenda was there with a recording device. 133 00:06:37,117 --> 00:06:39,473 And so on the night of the 25th they went to a judge 134 00:06:39,473 --> 00:06:44,257 and they got warrants for the arrest of around 20 people, 135 00:06:44,257 --> 00:06:45,727 one of which was me. 136 00:06:46,517 --> 00:06:48,559 In the end there were 17 of us against whom 137 00:06:48,559 --> 00:06:50,669 the charges were maintained the longest, 138 00:06:50,669 --> 00:06:53,298 and we were charged with conspiracy to obstruct police, 139 00:06:53,298 --> 00:06:54,747 conspiracy to assault police 140 00:06:54,747 --> 00:06:55,937 and conspiracy to commit mischief 141 00:06:55,937 --> 00:06:57,922 ... which just means 'fuck shit up.' 142 00:06:57,922 --> 00:07:00,591 So I think there were at least seven police officers 143 00:07:00,591 --> 00:07:03,467 who had kind of medium-term infiltration roles. 144 00:07:03,467 --> 00:07:05,468 So there's people who infiltrated the medics group, 145 00:07:05,468 --> 00:07:06,726 who infiltrated the legal observers group, 146 00:07:06,726 --> 00:07:08,591 who were involved in different media projects. 147 00:07:08,591 --> 00:07:10,138 And there's probably a lot of other infiltrators 148 00:07:10,138 --> 00:07:11,237 we just never found out about. 149 00:07:11,237 --> 00:07:13,838 Like I can imagine that probably in the context of 150 00:07:13,838 --> 00:07:16,051 the anti-Olympics stuff happening at the same time, 151 00:07:16,051 --> 00:07:17,532 that there were probably a lot of infiltrations 152 00:07:17,532 --> 00:07:19,242 happening in Native communities. 153 00:07:19,242 --> 00:07:22,716 I'm Lieutenant Suzanne Patles of the Mi'Kmaq Warrior Society, 154 00:07:22,716 --> 00:07:24,893 and I'm from the Mi'Kmaq territory. 155 00:07:24,893 --> 00:07:28,459 It's evident that the Canadian Security, 156 00:07:28,459 --> 00:07:32,565 and Canada deems Indigenous people in general 157 00:07:32,565 --> 00:07:34,963 as a threat to national security. 158 00:07:34,963 --> 00:07:39,274 And they see development in the oil and gas industry as critical 159 00:07:39,274 --> 00:07:41,392 – and that's what they call it, 'critical infrastructure' – 160 00:07:41,392 --> 00:07:43,868 and they think that it's what Canada needs 161 00:07:43,868 --> 00:07:46,504 to be able to move forward as a so-called nation. 162 00:07:46,504 --> 00:07:48,705 So they see anybody who stands up 163 00:07:48,705 --> 00:07:51,708 against these developments as a threat. 164 00:07:51,708 --> 00:07:56,000 If they don't us veto over these infrastructure developments 165 00:07:56,000 --> 00:07:59,870 and if they don't listen to the Indigenous peoples' voice, 166 00:07:59,870 --> 00:08:01,895 the Indigenous people are going to rise up. 167 00:08:01,895 --> 00:08:03,779 They're going to take to the streets. 168 00:08:03,779 --> 00:08:05,931 They're going to take to the railroads. 169 00:08:05,931 --> 00:08:07,677 They're going to take to the roads. 170 00:08:07,677 --> 00:08:09,374 They're going to blockade. 171 00:08:09,374 --> 00:08:11,639 They're going to set up camps. 172 00:08:11,639 --> 00:08:13,969 It's kind of harder to infiltrate 173 00:08:13,969 --> 00:08:15,554 within the Indigenous communities 174 00:08:15,554 --> 00:08:18,615 because our Indigenous communities are so connected. 175 00:08:18,615 --> 00:08:20,433 And when we talk to one another 176 00:08:20,433 --> 00:08:21,937 we don't wanna know what you do. 177 00:08:21,937 --> 00:08:23,217 We wanna know about your family. 178 00:08:23,217 --> 00:08:26,117 We wanna know about where you come from... who you are. 179 00:08:26,117 --> 00:08:28,717 It's a built-in block where we're not going to give you 180 00:08:28,717 --> 00:08:30,098 all of our information. 181 00:08:30,098 --> 00:08:32,249 Like, we might be nice to you and say hello, 182 00:08:32,249 --> 00:08:34,968 and you may feel like you're a part of something, 183 00:08:34,968 --> 00:08:37,659 but actually you're still on the outside of it. 184 00:08:37,659 --> 00:08:38,659 We're warriors. 185 00:08:38,659 --> 00:08:40,616 We've been doing this for hundreds and hundreds of years, 186 00:08:40,616 --> 00:08:43,005 prior to Canada even being in existence. 187 00:08:43,005 --> 00:08:45,656 We had this one guy come in. 188 00:08:45,656 --> 00:08:48,210 And he came in on four different occasions. 189 00:08:48,210 --> 00:08:49,631 He came in as a journalist. 190 00:08:49,631 --> 00:08:51,142 He came in as militia. 191 00:08:51,142 --> 00:08:53,456 Then he came in bringing donations. 192 00:08:53,456 --> 00:08:58,164 And then he tried to approach us as being an international lawyer. 193 00:08:58,164 --> 00:09:01,130 So he was just bringing things in that were not wanted, 194 00:09:01,130 --> 00:09:03,681 and that we weren't supposed to have. 195 00:09:03,681 --> 00:09:05,156 That we'd never even asked for. 196 00:09:05,156 --> 00:09:08,975 He was trying to create a situation where our people 197 00:09:08,975 --> 00:09:11,782 will be criminalized for the things that he brought in. 198 00:09:11,782 --> 00:09:14,670 And once the men were already arrested after the raid, 199 00:09:14,670 --> 00:09:17,311 he was approached by several members of the Warrior Society 200 00:09:17,311 --> 00:09:20,358 and he was told: “We know you're an agent. 201 00:09:20,358 --> 00:09:22,143 You need to get out of here.” 202 00:09:23,993 --> 00:09:27,226 States go to incredible lengths to infiltrate resistance movements 203 00:09:27,226 --> 00:09:29,626 and plant undercover agents in our scenes. 204 00:09:29,626 --> 00:09:32,144 Such as the disgusting case of Mark Kennedy, 205 00:09:32,144 --> 00:09:33,686 AKA Mark Stone, 206 00:09:33,686 --> 00:09:36,044 who was outed in London in 2010 207 00:09:36,044 --> 00:09:39,535 after spending 8 years as a mole in the European anarchist 208 00:09:39,535 --> 00:09:41,808 and radical environmental movements 209 00:09:41,808 --> 00:09:44,649 - 6 of which he spent in a long-term relationship 210 00:09:44,649 --> 00:09:47,289 with one of the activists he was spying on. 211 00:09:47,289 --> 00:09:50,129 But as paranoia-inducing as these cases may be, 212 00:09:50,129 --> 00:09:52,656 they are exceptions to the rule. 213 00:09:52,656 --> 00:09:55,852 Not only are these operations incredibly expensive, 214 00:09:55,852 --> 00:09:57,718 but it takes a rare breed of psycho 215 00:09:57,718 --> 00:10:00,561 to be able to effectively maintain the sort of double-life 216 00:10:00,561 --> 00:10:04,216 required to carry out these long-term infiltrations. 217 00:10:04,216 --> 00:10:07,216 Your average cop tends to have a much harder time blending in. 218 00:10:07,216 --> 00:10:09,204 Black sleeves... that's gotta be hot, huh? 219 00:10:10,904 --> 00:10:12,659 Be a little cooler if we had some drugs... 220 00:10:13,229 --> 00:10:15,462 A much more common, and cost-effective method 221 00:10:15,462 --> 00:10:18,387 of gathering intelligence on political dissidents 222 00:10:18,387 --> 00:10:21,681 is through the use of informants and collaborators 223 00:10:21,681 --> 00:10:24,870 ... or as they're more commonly known, snitches. 224 00:10:26,400 --> 00:10:28,580 Brandon Darby was a Texas activist 225 00:10:28,580 --> 00:10:32,609 who became an FBI informant in the mid-2000s. 226 00:10:32,609 --> 00:10:34,605 He was somebody who had just been on the fringe 227 00:10:34,605 --> 00:10:36,125 of the activist scene around Austin. 228 00:10:36,125 --> 00:10:38,078 Not a major organizer or anything. 229 00:10:38,078 --> 00:10:40,318 I was doing a lot of anti-fascist work at the time. 230 00:10:40,318 --> 00:10:42,923 We were doing community armed defense from about 2002 231 00:10:42,923 --> 00:10:44,784 ... so he was very enamored with that. 232 00:10:44,784 --> 00:10:46,609 Brandon exhibited a lot of behaviours 233 00:10:46,609 --> 00:10:48,649 that were problematic from the beginning, 234 00:10:48,649 --> 00:10:50,761 but they're not because he was an informant. 235 00:10:50,761 --> 00:10:53,358 They're just because he was a fucked up person, 236 00:10:53,358 --> 00:10:54,704 just like many people. 237 00:10:54,704 --> 00:10:56,771 And political and social movements and engagements 238 00:10:56,771 --> 00:10:58,881 draw people who are damaged. 239 00:10:58,881 --> 00:11:00,093 He wanted to do something. 240 00:11:00,093 --> 00:11:02,176 He also wanted to work out his daddy issues. 241 00:11:02,176 --> 00:11:05,775 He wanted to work out his personal stuff in a public setting. 242 00:11:05,775 --> 00:11:07,171 My name is Brandon Darby 243 00:11:07,171 --> 00:11:08,998 and I work with the Common Ground collective 244 00:11:08,998 --> 00:11:10,378 in New Orleans, Louisiana. 245 00:11:10,378 --> 00:11:13,097 He didn't come to Common Ground until about mid-October, 246 00:11:13,097 --> 00:11:15,252 after we had done some initial rescue efforts. 247 00:11:15,252 --> 00:11:17,362 And Common Ground was really an established organization 248 00:11:17,362 --> 00:11:18,508 by the time he came in. 249 00:11:18,508 --> 00:11:21,675 But due to some of the things that he and I had engaged in, 250 00:11:21,675 --> 00:11:23,827 by taking up arms against white militias, 251 00:11:23,827 --> 00:11:27,035 taking up arms against the police in those early days, 252 00:11:27,035 --> 00:11:28,820 Malik Rahim, who was another co-founder 253 00:11:28,820 --> 00:11:31,351 of the Common Ground collective in New Orleans, 254 00:11:31,351 --> 00:11:34,176 gave him more power than he should have in the organization. 255 00:11:34,176 --> 00:11:36,849 And the out-of-control amount of power that he was given 256 00:11:36,849 --> 00:11:40,467 in these circumstances was just a toxic combination. 257 00:11:40,467 --> 00:11:42,180 Just really vicious. 258 00:11:42,180 --> 00:11:44,172 We made him leave Common Ground 259 00:11:44,172 --> 00:11:45,488 because he was so dysfunctional. 260 00:11:45,488 --> 00:11:46,546 And I was dysfunctional too, 261 00:11:46,546 --> 00:11:49,334 you have to understand many of us had severe post-traumatic stress. 262 00:11:49,334 --> 00:11:50,900 You cannot take up guns against people, 263 00:11:50,900 --> 00:11:52,720 you cannot see dead people everywhere 264 00:11:52,720 --> 00:11:55,160 and just, like, go “hey it's okay.” 265 00:11:55,160 --> 00:11:56,637 We're not trained soldiers. 266 00:11:56,637 --> 00:11:58,298 The people who lost their houses weren't trained. 267 00:11:58,298 --> 00:12:00,147 I mean these are hard traumas. 268 00:12:00,147 --> 00:12:02,460 We were able to take our privilege to leave, 269 00:12:02,460 --> 00:12:04,683 but he - of course he acted fucked up afterwards. 270 00:12:04,683 --> 00:12:05,513 But so did I 271 00:12:05,513 --> 00:12:08,453 .... so did many people who were there for months and months. 272 00:12:08,453 --> 00:12:10,889 A lot of people ask the million dollar question: 273 00:12:10,889 --> 00:12:14,758 when did Brandon Darby become an FBI informant? 274 00:12:14,758 --> 00:12:16,844 If I had to pick one particular time, 275 00:12:16,844 --> 00:12:19,674 I think it's some time between March and May of 2006. 276 00:12:19,674 --> 00:12:22,255 That's what it looks like in the FBI documents that I've 277 00:12:22,255 --> 00:12:24,899 already received from the Freedom of Information Act request. 278 00:12:24,899 --> 00:12:27,327 It looks like he starts giving information for free, 279 00:12:27,327 --> 00:12:29,770 and then they offered to pay him at some point. 280 00:12:29,770 --> 00:12:31,884 Recognize that he never did it for the money. 281 00:12:31,884 --> 00:12:33,098 He's a trust fund kid. 282 00:12:33,098 --> 00:12:34,396 Y'know, he's from a working-class background, 283 00:12:34,396 --> 00:12:35,760 but his grandmother came into money 284 00:12:35,760 --> 00:12:37,737 and he does have access to money through her. 285 00:12:37,737 --> 00:12:39,991 He did it for ideological reasons. 286 00:12:39,991 --> 00:12:41,616 And so we made him take a leave of absence. 287 00:12:41,616 --> 00:12:45,559 But then he finagled his way back in, in January of 2007. 288 00:12:45,559 --> 00:12:49,776 That means that he was actively working for the FBI at that point. 289 00:12:49,776 --> 00:12:51,648 But then there were some things that started to happen 290 00:12:51,648 --> 00:12:55,093 that really gave me pause and made me very uncomfortable. 291 00:12:55,093 --> 00:12:56,891 I was working with Anti-Racist Action 292 00:12:56,891 --> 00:13:00,029 and we were going to do some protests against this bookstore 293 00:13:00,029 --> 00:13:02,046 that was a libertarian or right-libertarian book store 294 00:13:02,046 --> 00:13:03,540 that had nativist books and stuff. 295 00:13:03,540 --> 00:13:05,947 They were big supporters of that shithead Alex Jones. 296 00:13:05,947 --> 00:13:08,147 But during that time he wanted us to 297 00:13:08,147 --> 00:13:09,610 burn the book store to the ground. 298 00:13:09,610 --> 00:13:10,635 And he kept at it. 299 00:13:10,635 --> 00:13:12,421 And I just told him I wasn't going to have anything to do with it 300 00:13:12,421 --> 00:13:14,107 because I thought it was a stupid idea. 301 00:13:14,107 --> 00:13:16,828 A prominent Austin-based activist named Brandon Darby 302 00:13:16,828 --> 00:13:19,015 has revealed he worked as an FBI informant 303 00:13:19,015 --> 00:13:21,923 in the 18 months leading up to the Republican Convention. 304 00:13:21,923 --> 00:13:25,021 While Brandon Darby has been involved in several activist groups, 305 00:13:25,021 --> 00:13:26,666 he's best known as a founder of 306 00:13:26,666 --> 00:13:28,762 the New Orleans-based group Common Ground Relief, 307 00:13:28,762 --> 00:13:30,884 which he helped start after Hurricane Katrina. 308 00:13:30,884 --> 00:13:33,864 He's expected to testify on behalf of the government 309 00:13:33,864 --> 00:13:36,488 later this month in the trial of two Texas activists 310 00:13:36,488 --> 00:13:38,233 who were arrested at the RNC 311 00:13:38,233 --> 00:13:41,086 on charges of making and possessing Molotov cocktails. 312 00:13:42,166 --> 00:13:44,978 In the lead-up to the Republican National Convention in 2008, 313 00:13:44,978 --> 00:13:47,087 the other thing that started to happen was he started to 314 00:13:47,087 --> 00:13:49,293 hound me about coming up there. 315 00:13:49,293 --> 00:13:51,317 And I was like “dude... I'm not interested.” 316 00:13:51,317 --> 00:13:53,119 So he started working with some other people, 317 00:13:53,119 --> 00:13:55,797 Brad Crowder and David McKay. 318 00:13:55,797 --> 00:13:58,346 And this is one of my biggest regrets, because 319 00:13:58,346 --> 00:14:01,742 Brad and David were very new and very enamored with Brandon. 320 00:14:01,742 --> 00:14:04,196 And so because of those two circumstances, 321 00:14:04,196 --> 00:14:05,973 he was able to lead them further down the road. 322 00:14:05,973 --> 00:14:06,960 You have to understand this, 323 00:14:06,960 --> 00:14:08,713 that he wrecked a bunch of people's lives 324 00:14:08,713 --> 00:14:11,669 through his being an informant and a provocateur, 325 00:14:11,669 --> 00:14:13,916 but also through just being a shitty person. 326 00:14:13,916 --> 00:14:16,380 Brad and David did prison time for that. 327 00:14:16,380 --> 00:14:17,965 Brandon tried to get me to commit a crime 328 00:14:17,965 --> 00:14:19,966 that I would have done forty years for. 329 00:14:19,966 --> 00:14:21,266 A friend of ours here in Austin, 330 00:14:21,266 --> 00:14:24,622 a Palestinian supporter and organizer named Riad Hamad, 331 00:14:24,622 --> 00:14:28,380 killed himself because of the FBI's harassment of him 332 00:14:28,380 --> 00:14:29,920 due to Brandon Darby. 333 00:14:29,920 --> 00:14:31,237 So those are the major ones, 334 00:14:31,237 --> 00:14:34,671 but there's tons of people that he just really damaged 335 00:14:34,671 --> 00:14:36,650 and injured those people for years afterwards. 336 00:14:37,098 --> 00:14:39,758 You may have heard of the Earth Liberation Front. 337 00:14:39,758 --> 00:14:41,325 The Attorney General himself says 338 00:14:41,325 --> 00:14:43,649 it's a domestic terrorist organization. 339 00:14:43,649 --> 00:14:46,828 The FBI says it is one of the most dangerous groups in the country. 340 00:14:46,828 --> 00:14:53,252 The Green Scare actions really started back in 1997 through 2001. 341 00:14:53,252 --> 00:14:57,313 They were a series of economic sabotage 342 00:14:57,313 --> 00:15:00,684 that used arson to target kind of a mix 343 00:15:00,684 --> 00:15:03,897 of private corporations as well as government targets. 344 00:15:03,897 --> 00:15:08,284 All the FBI agents that had been sent out in the late 90s 345 00:15:08,284 --> 00:15:13,851 to infiltrate and mess with Oregon, in particular, 346 00:15:13,851 --> 00:15:16,288 were completely unsuccessful. 347 00:15:16,288 --> 00:15:18,523 And then ten years later, 348 00:15:18,523 --> 00:15:23,778 one of the Earth Liberation Front co-conspirators, 349 00:15:23,778 --> 00:15:26,994 who had been a long-time heroin addict, 350 00:15:26,994 --> 00:15:29,925 succumbed to the addiction and his own paranoia 351 00:15:29,925 --> 00:15:35,240 by walking into the FBI office and basically saying, 352 00:15:35,240 --> 00:15:39,104 “if you pay me $150,000 and promise that I don't go to jail, 353 00:15:39,104 --> 00:15:41,053 I'll tell you everything I know.” 354 00:15:41,053 --> 00:15:43,800 And he became a snitch for them. 355 00:15:43,800 --> 00:15:46,376 He wore a wire all around the country 356 00:15:46,376 --> 00:15:50,272 attempting to entrap his co-conspirators. 357 00:15:50,272 --> 00:15:54,445 And it was the first crack in the case and it was a major crack. 358 00:15:54,445 --> 00:15:57,948 All of a sudden in December of 2005, 359 00:15:57,948 --> 00:16:00,522 the largest round-up of environmental 360 00:16:00,522 --> 00:16:02,672 and animal rights activists occurred. 361 00:16:02,672 --> 00:16:04,828 The government charged them with multiple counts 362 00:16:04,828 --> 00:16:09,513 of conspiracy and arson and possession of an incendiary device. 363 00:16:09,513 --> 00:16:11,043 And then slowly but surely, 364 00:16:11,043 --> 00:16:15,011 one after the other became snitches for the government. 365 00:16:15,011 --> 00:16:18,677 Joyanna Zacher, Nathan Block, Daniel McGowen, 366 00:16:18,677 --> 00:16:21,842 Jonathan Paul and Marius Mason 367 00:16:21,842 --> 00:16:26,309 never succumbed to the pressures put upon all of them. 368 00:16:26,309 --> 00:16:28,342 Nathan Block was 18 years old 369 00:16:28,342 --> 00:16:32,102 when he was involved in those acts of economic sabotage, 370 00:16:32,102 --> 00:16:36,802 and he was facing life plus 1,115 years in prison. 371 00:16:36,802 --> 00:16:38,431 And even though he was the youngest member 372 00:16:38,431 --> 00:16:40,336 of all the Green Scare defendants, 373 00:16:40,336 --> 00:16:43,675 he never even batted an eye towards the idea 374 00:16:43,675 --> 00:16:45,653 that he would ever cooperate with the state. 375 00:16:45,653 --> 00:16:47,642 Y'know, he served all of his prison time. 376 00:16:47,642 --> 00:16:50,491 He's out. He's back living his life. 377 00:16:50,491 --> 00:16:52,719 Same with Daniel McGowan, Jonathan Paul. 378 00:16:52,719 --> 00:16:56,386 But the bottom line is that even though these people 379 00:16:56,386 --> 00:17:00,756 were facing life plus 1,115 years in jail, 380 00:17:00,756 --> 00:17:05,210 they ended up doing between three and eight years in prison. 381 00:17:05,210 --> 00:17:09,515 Non-cooperating defendants basically got an additional penalty 382 00:17:09,515 --> 00:17:13,126 of an extra 18 months in prison compared to 383 00:17:13,126 --> 00:17:16,947 their similarly-situated snitch co-defendants. 384 00:17:16,947 --> 00:17:21,481 So the tax for being able to morally and ethically 385 00:17:21,481 --> 00:17:23,830 look people in the eye and say 386 00:17:23,830 --> 00:17:26,870 “I am not a snitch. I'm not a government informant.” 387 00:17:26,870 --> 00:17:30,723 That was a tax of 18 months of extra time in jail. 388 00:17:30,723 --> 00:17:33,776 Which all of them were more than willing to serve 389 00:17:33,776 --> 00:17:36,862 in order to be able to return to their communities 390 00:17:36,862 --> 00:17:39,536 and return to the movements that they 391 00:17:39,536 --> 00:17:41,450 literally risked their lives for. 392 00:17:43,970 --> 00:17:46,505 Nearly 70 years after it was first published, 393 00:17:46,505 --> 00:17:50,181 George Orwell's dystopian sci-fi novel, 1984 394 00:17:50,181 --> 00:17:53,649 is to this day, still held up as the gold standard for what 395 00:17:53,649 --> 00:17:56,869 an authoritarian police state underpinned by an all-pervasive 396 00:17:56,869 --> 00:17:59,495 surveillance apparatus would look like. 397 00:17:59,495 --> 00:18:00,665 But let's be real 398 00:18:00,665 --> 00:18:03,976 ... who needs Big Brother when you've got Facebook and Google? 399 00:18:03,976 --> 00:18:08,210 Contemporary techniques of mass data collection and analysis, 400 00:18:08,210 --> 00:18:10,289 combined with a society where more and more 401 00:18:10,289 --> 00:18:13,288 of our communications take place through heavily-controlled 402 00:18:13,288 --> 00:18:16,547 and completely monitored corporate infrastructure, 403 00:18:16,547 --> 00:18:18,981 has produced a framework for social control 404 00:18:18,981 --> 00:18:21,427 that would have made Orwell throw up in his mouth. 405 00:18:21,427 --> 00:18:24,140 The world was given a terrifying glimpse of the true potential 406 00:18:24,140 --> 00:18:28,595 of this unholy alliance of state and corporate power in 2011, 407 00:18:28,595 --> 00:18:30,880 as the Gulf States were putting the finishing touches 408 00:18:30,880 --> 00:18:33,454 on the Arab Spring protests in Bahrain. 409 00:18:33,454 --> 00:18:36,667 After a Saudi-led occupation force viciously put down 410 00:18:36,667 --> 00:18:38,532 the revolutionary uprising, 411 00:18:38,532 --> 00:18:42,299 the Bahraini royal family used facebook to launch a wide-ranging 412 00:18:42,299 --> 00:18:46,217 witch hunt of activists, posting pictures of pro-democracy rallies 413 00:18:46,217 --> 00:18:48,138 and urging pro-regime loyalists 414 00:18:48,138 --> 00:18:50,658 to name and tag people in the pictures, 415 00:18:50,658 --> 00:18:53,531 in a mass doxing campaign that resulted in waves 416 00:18:53,531 --> 00:18:56,228 of targeted arrests and disappearances. 417 00:18:56,228 --> 00:18:58,594 Yes... the future is here comrades. 418 00:18:58,594 --> 00:19:00,350 Angry responses only. 419 00:19:01,500 --> 00:19:05,504 The term signals intelligence seems to come out of 420 00:19:05,504 --> 00:19:08,384 earlier histories of spying in communication 421 00:19:08,384 --> 00:19:11,302 where it was, like, classic Cold War between the US and Russia. 422 00:19:11,302 --> 00:19:13,965 Telecommunications, especially hard to decipher 423 00:19:13,965 --> 00:19:17,016 or hidden telecommunications, was not used very widely. 424 00:19:17,016 --> 00:19:20,862 And with computers becoming widespread 425 00:19:20,862 --> 00:19:23,185 and computers being able to do the math for encryption, 426 00:19:23,185 --> 00:19:26,200 increasingly the ways people are organizing and communicating 427 00:19:26,200 --> 00:19:28,308 with each other is happening through these computerized means. 428 00:19:28,308 --> 00:19:32,582 So the part of their social control apparatus that is dedicated 429 00:19:32,582 --> 00:19:33,947 to signals intelligence, 430 00:19:33,947 --> 00:19:37,254 this gathering of information that's happening electronically, 431 00:19:37,254 --> 00:19:38,844 is just ballooning. 432 00:19:44,334 --> 00:19:46,079 You can think of the types of surveillance 433 00:19:46,079 --> 00:19:48,603 that are done by these agencies in two different forms. 434 00:19:48,603 --> 00:19:50,596 They do mass surveillance, 435 00:19:50,596 --> 00:19:52,750 which is gathering all of the data they can, 436 00:19:52,750 --> 00:19:54,810 storing it, trying to analyze it and look at metadata. 437 00:19:54,810 --> 00:19:56,981 That's for hundreds of millions or billions of people 438 00:19:56,981 --> 00:19:58,936 all over the world, and what their communications are. 439 00:19:58,936 --> 00:20:00,521 And then they also do targeted surveillance, 440 00:20:00,521 --> 00:20:01,580 which is really different. 441 00:20:01,580 --> 00:20:03,309 That's like hacking into things, 442 00:20:03,309 --> 00:20:06,434 or trying to find a way to compromise an encryption system 443 00:20:06,434 --> 00:20:09,798 so that they can then read what people think is being protected. 444 00:20:09,798 --> 00:20:13,535 These sorts of attacks are way more expensive. 445 00:20:13,535 --> 00:20:15,615 This is why mass surveillance has become really important, 446 00:20:15,615 --> 00:20:19,352 because they can do it really really widely for relatively lower cost. 447 00:20:19,352 --> 00:20:22,600 Facebook and social media in general 448 00:20:22,600 --> 00:20:28,336 has been a treasure trove of information 449 00:20:28,336 --> 00:20:30,848 for the government and for corporations. 450 00:20:30,848 --> 00:20:35,768 These types of platforms are a way of instantly getting snapshots 451 00:20:35,768 --> 00:20:38,166 of your network, who your friends are, 452 00:20:38,166 --> 00:20:41,137 who've you talked to, what events you're going to. 453 00:20:41,137 --> 00:20:45,472 And they help facilitate more targeted attacks. 454 00:20:45,472 --> 00:20:48,235 Facebook is probably the worst out there. 455 00:20:48,235 --> 00:20:50,353 Government and corporations can literally look 456 00:20:50,353 --> 00:20:53,685 at all your friend groups and plot out maps 457 00:20:53,685 --> 00:20:56,932 of how different networks are connected to each other. 458 00:20:56,932 --> 00:21:00,952 And they use that information for conspiracy allegations, 459 00:21:00,952 --> 00:21:02,942 for RICO allegations, 460 00:21:02,942 --> 00:21:07,983 as well as finding weak links within those networks to target. 461 00:21:07,983 --> 00:21:10,377 The companies are better at gathering data. 462 00:21:10,377 --> 00:21:14,280 They have set up whole web infrastructures pretty much 463 00:21:14,280 --> 00:21:16,837 dedicated to gathering as much information as possible about people. 464 00:21:16,837 --> 00:21:18,610 For profit. For advertising means. 465 00:21:18,610 --> 00:21:20,579 Google, in its terms of use, 466 00:21:20,579 --> 00:21:24,365 says that you have no reasonable expectation of privacy 467 00:21:24,365 --> 00:21:27,812 when you use any of their products, including gmail. 468 00:21:27,812 --> 00:21:30,036 So basically that means nothing that you do 469 00:21:30,036 --> 00:21:32,118 in that platform is yours, 470 00:21:32,118 --> 00:21:33,838 and they can do whatever they want with it. 471 00:21:33,838 --> 00:21:36,135 They basically say “hey... know that we're 472 00:21:36,135 --> 00:21:38,134 giving all of your shit to the government, 473 00:21:38,134 --> 00:21:41,058 and we're going to use the shit to spy on you some more too.” 474 00:21:41,058 --> 00:21:44,543 That's not disputed that this is the relationship. 475 00:21:44,543 --> 00:21:47,916 Facebook also has facial recognition software 476 00:21:47,916 --> 00:21:50,513 for all those photos and videos that you post. 477 00:21:50,513 --> 00:21:56,321 North Dakota and DAPL used that facial recognition on facebook 478 00:21:56,321 --> 00:22:00,183 in order to issue arrest warrants for people, 479 00:22:00,183 --> 00:22:03,637 and literally arrested and charged people with crimes 480 00:22:03,637 --> 00:22:08,271 based on video and photographs that activists posted. 481 00:22:08,271 --> 00:22:11,479 Protest prediction software has been developed 482 00:22:11,479 --> 00:22:12,969 and is currently being used 483 00:22:12,969 --> 00:22:15,101 primarily in Latin American countries. 484 00:22:15,101 --> 00:22:18,477 By monitoring facebook and other social media, 485 00:22:18,477 --> 00:22:24,205 this software predicts when riots or protests, 486 00:22:24,205 --> 00:22:28,373 or public uprisings may happen 487 00:22:28,373 --> 00:22:30,623 ... up to three days in advance. 488 00:22:30,623 --> 00:22:34,841 We have more direct confrontation right now with the state, 489 00:22:34,841 --> 00:22:37,369 and so we think of things in state terms: the capacity 490 00:22:37,369 --> 00:22:39,163 that the state has for repression, 491 00:22:39,163 --> 00:22:41,473 and for social control broadly. 492 00:22:41,473 --> 00:22:42,979 And that makes sense. 493 00:22:42,979 --> 00:22:47,812 But surveillance capitalism is creating whole new forms 494 00:22:47,812 --> 00:22:51,181 of social control that don't even depend on the state. 495 00:22:51,181 --> 00:22:54,572 I mean, they're still built on the foundation of the prisons 496 00:22:54,572 --> 00:22:55,938 and everything else that already exists. 497 00:22:55,938 --> 00:22:57,977 But they're doing a whole other level of thing 498 00:22:57,977 --> 00:23:01,485 that the state is kind of trying to use and catch up with, 499 00:23:01,485 --> 00:23:03,699 but isn't primarily behind 500 00:23:03,699 --> 00:23:06,425 and even isn't really necessarily that good at doing. 501 00:23:06,425 --> 00:23:08,574 One really important aspect of it is 502 00:23:08,574 --> 00:23:11,957 the degree to which it is marketed as voluntary. 503 00:23:11,957 --> 00:23:14,881 That everybody chooses to get a facebook account, 504 00:23:14,881 --> 00:23:17,158 and you have an option of not having a facebook account. 505 00:23:17,158 --> 00:23:19,195 But the way the society is being structured, 506 00:23:19,195 --> 00:23:22,117 there's less and less real choice involved 507 00:23:22,117 --> 00:23:23,702 in whether we have a facebook account, 508 00:23:23,702 --> 00:23:25,127 or whether we have a cell phone. 509 00:23:25,127 --> 00:23:28,174 Your cell phone, and especially your smart phone, 510 00:23:28,174 --> 00:23:30,937 is probably one of the largest vulnerabilities 511 00:23:30,937 --> 00:23:33,854 that you have as an activist. 512 00:23:33,854 --> 00:23:36,339 It's got your photographs, your contacts, 513 00:23:36,339 --> 00:23:38,293 your calendar, your email. 514 00:23:38,293 --> 00:23:40,867 Y'know, every aspect of your life 515 00:23:40,867 --> 00:23:43,007 can often be contained on this phone. 516 00:23:43,007 --> 00:23:45,968 Phones actually have two computers running in them. 517 00:23:45,968 --> 00:23:47,488 There's the main computer, 518 00:23:47,488 --> 00:23:49,586 and that can be mostly running free software. 519 00:23:49,586 --> 00:23:51,773 Then there's a second computer called the baseband, 520 00:23:51,773 --> 00:23:53,846 and it connects to the cell phone towers. 521 00:23:53,846 --> 00:23:56,204 That part of the phone is running software 522 00:23:56,204 --> 00:23:57,531 that we don't control at all. 523 00:23:57,531 --> 00:23:59,110 It seems, at least in some cases, 524 00:23:59,110 --> 00:24:02,901 that the tower has control of the phone via the baseband. 525 00:24:02,901 --> 00:24:07,897 And often the baseband kind of can just override the main CPU. 526 00:24:07,897 --> 00:24:09,935 Even if you turn off the phone, 527 00:24:09,935 --> 00:24:12,941 your phone can be used to locate you. 528 00:24:12,941 --> 00:24:16,848 It can be used as a microphone and/or a camera. 529 00:24:16,848 --> 00:24:20,464 And you really have no sure way of knowing 530 00:24:20,464 --> 00:24:23,149 whether any of those things are occurring, 531 00:24:23,149 --> 00:24:24,944 even if you turn off the phone. 532 00:24:24,944 --> 00:24:27,423 And then the tower is obviously controlled 533 00:24:27,423 --> 00:24:29,007 completely by the telecom companies, 534 00:24:29,007 --> 00:24:30,708 who are working closely with the state. 535 00:24:30,708 --> 00:24:34,019 Or, more directly, via stingrays, 536 00:24:34,019 --> 00:24:36,364 which are the things that police agencies are buying up 537 00:24:36,364 --> 00:24:39,600 all over the place that create a fake cell phone tower 538 00:24:39,600 --> 00:24:43,630 that the phones connect to, and then they get direct access. 539 00:24:47,698 --> 00:24:49,321 Back in the 16th century, 540 00:24:49,321 --> 00:24:51,641 when Sir Francis Bacon first coined the phrase 541 00:24:51,641 --> 00:24:52,687 “Knowledge is Power”, 542 00:24:52,687 --> 00:24:54,432 he was talking about how awesome 543 00:24:54,432 --> 00:24:56,584 he thought the Scientific Method was. 544 00:24:59,504 --> 00:25:03,048 But it wasn’t long before this homage to scientific empiricism 545 00:25:03,048 --> 00:25:04,820 was twisted and appropriated 546 00:25:04,820 --> 00:25:07,480 by the cheerleaders of authoritarian rule. 547 00:25:07,480 --> 00:25:10,413 These days, the adage is more likely to be framed 548 00:25:10,413 --> 00:25:12,850 and used as an ominous desk ornament 549 00:25:12,850 --> 00:25:16,591 by some mid-level party member of a national intelligence agency, 550 00:25:16,591 --> 00:25:19,692 in order to pad their ego and impress their secretary. 551 00:25:19,692 --> 00:25:21,840 Maybe in Latin... if they’re really edgy. 552 00:25:21,840 --> 00:25:23,627 The truth contained in these words, 553 00:25:23,627 --> 00:25:24,958 however, goes both ways. 554 00:25:24,958 --> 00:25:28,823 It's undoubtedly true that states and surveillance capitalist firms 555 00:25:28,823 --> 00:25:32,271 have unprecedented levels of knowledge at their disposal, 556 00:25:32,271 --> 00:25:34,693 which they use to increase their already considerable 557 00:25:34,693 --> 00:25:36,786 military and policing power. 558 00:25:36,786 --> 00:25:38,706 But it's also true that their methods 559 00:25:38,706 --> 00:25:40,441 for gathering intelligence depend, 560 00:25:40,441 --> 00:25:43,607 at least in part, on our ignorance of what they're up to, 561 00:25:43,607 --> 00:25:46,170 and our willingness to fall for their traps. 562 00:25:46,170 --> 00:25:47,716 Arming our movements with the knowledge 563 00:25:47,716 --> 00:25:49,787 of how our enemies gather intelligence, 564 00:25:49,787 --> 00:25:52,106 and adapting our tactics accordingly, 565 00:25:52,106 --> 00:25:54,914 is an important component of building our own power. 566 00:25:54,914 --> 00:25:57,881 Power that grows as we more effectively challenge 567 00:25:57,881 --> 00:25:59,869 their systems of social control. 568 00:26:00,029 --> 00:26:04,394 Don't overestimate the state's capacity, or the cops' capacity. 569 00:26:04,394 --> 00:26:07,547 Don't underestimate it, but don't overestimate it. 570 00:26:07,547 --> 00:26:10,569 They know some things, but they don't know shit. 571 00:26:10,569 --> 00:26:14,069 Their intelligence gathering, unless you are absolutely the target, 572 00:26:14,069 --> 00:26:15,191 is not very good. 573 00:26:15,191 --> 00:26:17,724 Each bureaucracy is doing its own intelligence gathering, 574 00:26:17,724 --> 00:26:19,953 has its own chain of command, and then intelligence tends to stay 575 00:26:19,953 --> 00:26:22,798 in each of those bureaucracies and become trapped in like a silo. 576 00:26:22,798 --> 00:26:27,350 As much as states and empires try to be, like, 577 00:26:27,350 --> 00:26:29,658 “we're all powerful.... we can stop whatever we want”, 578 00:26:29,658 --> 00:26:32,314 they very obviously cannot stop encryption. 579 00:26:32,314 --> 00:26:33,571 And that's something to build on. 580 00:26:33,571 --> 00:26:37,583 Digital encryption is basically a way of using computers 581 00:26:37,583 --> 00:26:38,964 to hide information. 582 00:26:38,964 --> 00:26:41,504 One of the most basic kinds of encryption is 583 00:26:41,504 --> 00:26:44,575 you have data stored somewhere... you encrypt it in that place. 584 00:26:44,575 --> 00:26:46,726 Local disk encryption can be done 585 00:26:46,726 --> 00:26:49,853 using a program called Veracrypt. 586 00:26:49,853 --> 00:26:51,115 It gets more complicated obviously, 587 00:26:51,115 --> 00:26:52,903 when there's multiple people involved, 588 00:26:52,903 --> 00:26:55,399 like when you're doing encrypted communication. 589 00:26:55,399 --> 00:26:58,217 For email the best way that I've found 590 00:26:58,217 --> 00:27:02,601 is using Thunderbird and an add-on called Enigmail. 591 00:27:02,601 --> 00:27:05,753 If you have a smart phone you can do everything 592 00:27:05,753 --> 00:27:07,525 in a program called Signal. 593 00:27:07,525 --> 00:27:13,741 You need to use tools that you understand, based on the risk threat. 594 00:27:13,741 --> 00:27:15,639 So I can drive around a car 595 00:27:15,639 --> 00:27:19,133 and I don't understand exactly how that car works, 596 00:27:19,133 --> 00:27:21,741 but I need a basic understanding of that tool set. 597 00:27:21,741 --> 00:27:24,342 However if I'm using that car in such a way 598 00:27:24,342 --> 00:27:26,044 where if the car breaks down, 599 00:27:26,044 --> 00:27:29,631 me and the people I love get thrown in jail for a decade or more, 600 00:27:29,631 --> 00:27:32,550 then I better have a really good fucking understanding 601 00:27:32,550 --> 00:27:34,511 of exactly how that car works. 602 00:27:34,511 --> 00:27:37,440 We have to support infrastructures that are based more 603 00:27:37,440 --> 00:27:40,975 in the social relations that we want to be reflected in our world. 604 00:27:40,975 --> 00:27:42,098 It's not just about surveillance. 605 00:27:42,098 --> 00:27:44,055 It's ultimately about social control, 606 00:27:44,055 --> 00:27:46,383 which is a more active process 607 00:27:46,383 --> 00:27:48,336 than just knowing what people are saying. 608 00:27:48,336 --> 00:27:49,998 Facebook is controlling people. 609 00:27:49,998 --> 00:27:53,714 When we say their business model is based on advertising, 610 00:27:53,714 --> 00:27:56,817 really what that's saying is get enough information about people 611 00:27:56,817 --> 00:27:59,172 to be able to control their behaviour. 612 00:27:59,172 --> 00:28:01,277 And it can be like a literally person-by-person 613 00:28:01,277 --> 00:28:03,122 individualized version of the world, 614 00:28:03,122 --> 00:28:04,460 to try to influence how they're going to act 615 00:28:04,460 --> 00:28:05,412 and what they're going to say. 616 00:28:05,412 --> 00:28:07,373 We decided that these would be the social norms now, 617 00:28:07,373 --> 00:28:08,894 and we just went for it. 618 00:28:08,894 --> 00:28:12,109 Security culture, at its core, 619 00:28:12,109 --> 00:28:15,355 involves knowledge and understanding. 620 00:28:15,355 --> 00:28:20,928 Developing personal relationships, face-to-face relationships, 621 00:28:20,928 --> 00:28:25,118 affinity groups, trusting friendships and comradery 622 00:28:25,118 --> 00:28:30,058 is probably the most effective form of security culture that we have. 623 00:28:30,058 --> 00:28:33,610 Things like Brandon Darby create media sensation for us 624 00:28:33,610 --> 00:28:35,472 because they are so rare. 625 00:28:35,472 --> 00:28:38,159 Because it costs so much in resources for them 626 00:28:38,159 --> 00:28:40,358 to actually do infiltration, 627 00:28:40,358 --> 00:28:42,670 for them to actually do the heavy surveillance. 628 00:28:42,670 --> 00:28:45,111 Whenever Brenda and Khalid were “on a play”, 629 00:28:45,111 --> 00:28:47,601 and that's what they call when they're at work, 630 00:28:47,601 --> 00:28:49,250 it's not just them that's being paid, 631 00:28:49,250 --> 00:28:52,139 but it's also their two handlers who are sitting in a car. 632 00:28:52,139 --> 00:28:56,544 It's also all of the people who are, y'know, typing out their notes, 633 00:28:56,544 --> 00:28:58,207 and who are holding the debriefs, 634 00:28:58,207 --> 00:29:00,705 and who are doing all of the bureaucratic work. 635 00:29:00,705 --> 00:29:03,421 So it's a really expensive operation. 636 00:29:03,421 --> 00:29:05,698 So there's absolutely no way that they could afford 637 00:29:05,698 --> 00:29:09,017 to do that unless they had a big event to use as an excuse. 638 00:29:09,017 --> 00:29:11,217 What we didn't factor in was that 639 00:29:11,217 --> 00:29:15,525 there was a billion dollar security budget for the G20. 640 00:29:15,525 --> 00:29:17,272 I mean there's a lot of explanations we could give 641 00:29:17,272 --> 00:29:19,829 for our kind of unpreparedness towards that, 642 00:29:19,829 --> 00:29:21,351 and one is that we don't necessarily take ourselves 643 00:29:21,351 --> 00:29:23,565 super seriously as threats. 644 00:29:23,565 --> 00:29:25,641 And that we might have this rhetoric of wanting to 645 00:29:25,641 --> 00:29:26,800 produce radical transformation 646 00:29:26,800 --> 00:29:28,203 and destroy all forms of authority. 647 00:29:28,203 --> 00:29:30,470 But that we don't necessarily take ourselves 648 00:29:30,470 --> 00:29:32,584 as seriously as that intention merits. 649 00:29:32,584 --> 00:29:35,986 One of the main goals of surveillance and infiltration 650 00:29:35,986 --> 00:29:38,850 is to disrupt the organizing that we're doing. 651 00:29:38,850 --> 00:29:41,456 The police are always going to be kind of testing you 652 00:29:41,456 --> 00:29:42,962 and sending in informants and seeing if they can get 653 00:29:42,962 --> 00:29:44,089 different kinds of information, 654 00:29:44,089 --> 00:29:46,207 because of what of your ideas are and because of your decision 655 00:29:46,207 --> 00:29:48,238 to situate yourself as an enemy of this society. 656 00:29:48,238 --> 00:29:50,758 It is the modus operandi of the state 657 00:29:50,758 --> 00:29:54,247 to use informants, infiltrators, and forms of disruption 658 00:29:54,247 --> 00:29:57,027 to keep political and social engagements 659 00:29:57,027 --> 00:29:58,227 and movements from happening. 660 00:29:58,227 --> 00:29:59,467 Sometimes folks will try to say that 661 00:29:59,467 --> 00:30:00,395 when you have a cop in your group 662 00:30:00,395 --> 00:30:02,011 it doesn't matter if you're not doing anything illegal. 663 00:30:02,011 --> 00:30:04,280 And in this situation, we totally were doing illegal things. 664 00:30:04,280 --> 00:30:06,522 Like, I was doing exactly what they accused me of doing. 665 00:30:06,522 --> 00:30:08,761 But even if the police aren't trying to build up charges, 666 00:30:08,761 --> 00:30:11,515 their goal is to maintain this sort of permanent level of disruption. 667 00:30:11,515 --> 00:30:14,400 There's only one golden rule when it comes to talking to cops, 668 00:30:14,400 --> 00:30:15,987 is “don't fucking talk to cops.” 669 00:30:15,987 --> 00:30:18,991 If you suspect someone of being a snitch or a cop, 670 00:30:18,991 --> 00:30:20,687 don't come out to your movement 671 00:30:20,687 --> 00:30:24,390 or to the public before you are absolutely sure. 672 00:30:24,390 --> 00:30:26,297 You don't have to snitch-jacket someone 673 00:30:26,297 --> 00:30:31,340 in order to protect yourself and to further your strategic, 674 00:30:31,340 --> 00:30:33,710 effective organizing efforts. 675 00:30:33,710 --> 00:30:37,265 I think if we had a way to talk to each other 676 00:30:37,265 --> 00:30:40,032 about these things in a way that wasn't gossipy 677 00:30:40,032 --> 00:30:41,977 and didn't start rumours, 678 00:30:41,977 --> 00:30:44,299 we would have caught on a lot earlier 679 00:30:44,299 --> 00:30:46,524 that a lot of people had concerns about Khalid. 680 00:30:46,524 --> 00:30:49,119 Having some level of practice in which you get to know each other 681 00:30:49,119 --> 00:30:50,908 and kind of check each others' back stories a little bit 682 00:30:50,908 --> 00:30:52,907 can be a way of just building trust 683 00:30:52,907 --> 00:30:54,940 and of demonstrating a kind of seriousness and commitment. 684 00:30:54,940 --> 00:30:59,846 We need to build explicit parameters for what we're vouching. 685 00:30:59,846 --> 00:31:01,477 So we could be vouching 686 00:31:01,477 --> 00:31:04,237 “is this person who they say that they are?” 687 00:31:04,237 --> 00:31:08,262 And then we need to set a criteria for how we know. 688 00:31:08,262 --> 00:31:11,393 And you need to make all these uncomfortable conversations 689 00:31:11,393 --> 00:31:13,304 about vouching explicit. 690 00:31:13,304 --> 00:31:15,046 Being intentional about checking each others' stories, 691 00:31:15,046 --> 00:31:17,030 so that it's not just something you do to people you don't trust, 692 00:31:17,030 --> 00:31:19,077 but something you do to people you want to trust more. 693 00:31:19,077 --> 00:31:21,669 If we don't build trust with each other, 694 00:31:21,669 --> 00:31:23,125 fear becomes the winner. 695 00:31:23,125 --> 00:31:25,245 And you cannot make revolution, 696 00:31:25,245 --> 00:31:27,241 you cannot create liberatory spaces, 697 00:31:27,241 --> 00:31:30,850 you cannot create liberatory openings based solely on fear. 698 00:31:30,850 --> 00:31:33,007 We must stand on the edge of our potential 699 00:31:33,007 --> 00:31:34,922 and see what's on the other side. 700 00:31:34,922 --> 00:31:37,023 And be willing to take those risks. 701 00:31:37,023 --> 00:31:39,223 But we must do that pragmatically. 702 00:31:39,223 --> 00:31:41,977 If we understand the role that intelligence plays, 703 00:31:41,977 --> 00:31:44,757 it can maybe allow us to try to be a little more opaque ourselves, 704 00:31:44,757 --> 00:31:46,573 to be a little bit less easily surveilled. 705 00:31:46,573 --> 00:31:50,208 But also to be a bit more resistant to the inevitable repression, 706 00:31:50,208 --> 00:31:52,237 and be a little bit less scared of it when it does fall. 707 00:31:52,237 --> 00:31:53,900 Because ultimately we can't prevent repression 708 00:31:53,900 --> 00:31:55,484 ... I don't think it's useful to try to. 709 00:31:55,484 --> 00:31:58,776 I think it's useful to ask ourselves how can we achieve our goals, 710 00:31:58,776 --> 00:32:01,173 and how can we be prepared for the consequences. 711 00:32:03,532 --> 00:32:05,809 As states and corporations scramble to develop 712 00:32:05,809 --> 00:32:09,409 increasingly sophisticated ways to monitor and control dissent, 713 00:32:09,409 --> 00:32:11,408 in a desperate attempt to predict threats 714 00:32:11,408 --> 00:32:13,515 that might challenge their continued dominance, 715 00:32:13,515 --> 00:32:16,377 it is critical that our resistance movements develop 716 00:32:16,377 --> 00:32:18,797 strategies and effective techniques that allow for 717 00:32:18,797 --> 00:32:21,638 the decentralized spread of self-organization, 718 00:32:21,638 --> 00:32:24,687 and methods of communication that thwart their attempts 719 00:32:24,687 --> 00:32:26,773 to stay one step ahead of us. 720 00:32:26,773 --> 00:32:28,540 So at this point, we’d like to remind you 721 00:32:28,540 --> 00:32:31,107 that Trouble is intended to be watched in groups, 722 00:32:31,107 --> 00:32:34,071 and to be used as a resource to promote discussion 723 00:32:34,071 --> 00:32:35,692 and collective organizing. 724 00:32:35,692 --> 00:32:38,180 Feel like anarchists and other activists in your town 725 00:32:38,180 --> 00:32:40,028 could use a primer on security culture? 726 00:32:40,028 --> 00:32:42,651 Please consider getting together with some comrades, 727 00:32:42,651 --> 00:32:45,412 screening this film and discussing what steps people can take 728 00:32:45,412 --> 00:32:48,985 to help protect your communities from infiltration and surveillance. 729 00:32:48,985 --> 00:32:51,376 Interested in running regular screenings of Trouble 730 00:32:51,376 --> 00:32:53,657 at your campus, infoshop, community center, 731 00:32:53,657 --> 00:32:55,487 or even just at your home with friends? 732 00:32:55,487 --> 00:32:57,033 Become a Trouble-Maker! 733 00:32:57,033 --> 00:32:58,743 For 10 bucks a month, we’ll hook you up 734 00:32:58,743 --> 00:33:00,362 with an advanced copy of the show, 735 00:33:00,362 --> 00:33:03,082 and a screening kit featuring additional resources 736 00:33:03,082 --> 00:33:06,016 and some questions you can use to get a discussion going. 737 00:33:06,016 --> 00:33:08,859 If you can’t afford to support us financially, no worries! 738 00:33:08,859 --> 00:33:11,943 You can stream and/or download all our content for free 739 00:33:11,943 --> 00:33:15,474 off our website: sub.media/trouble. 740 00:33:15,474 --> 00:33:18,356 If you’ve got any suggestions for show topics, 741 00:33:18,356 --> 00:33:19,692 or just wanna get in touch, 742 00:33:19,692 --> 00:33:23,713 drop us a line at trouble@sub.media 743 00:33:23,713 --> 00:33:25,373 We’re excited to see that people have been 744 00:33:25,373 --> 00:33:27,737 supporting our work by becoming troublemakers, 745 00:33:27,737 --> 00:33:30,817 and wanna send a shout-out to Justin, Ram Philly, 746 00:33:30,817 --> 00:33:36,025 Alex, SIU, Douglas, Jay, Adam, Joe, Scott, Michael, 747 00:33:36,025 --> 00:33:39,236 Matt, Filip, Stephen, Zach and David. 748 00:33:39,236 --> 00:33:41,350 We also wanna send a big shout out 749 00:33:41,350 --> 00:33:45,206 to new Troublemaker chapters in Toronto & Washington DC. 750 00:33:45,206 --> 00:33:47,121 This episode would not have been possible 751 00:33:47,121 --> 00:33:50,778 without the generous support of Ryan, Matthew, Rodrigue and Amelie. 752 00:33:50,778 --> 00:33:53,692 Now get out there, and make some trouble!