WEBVTT 00:00:02.592 --> 00:00:05.247 Greetings Troublemakers... welcome to Trouble. 00:00:05.247 --> 00:00:06.883 My name is not important. 00:00:06.883 --> 00:00:09.958 In our post-Snowden, smart gadget-laden world, 00:00:09.958 --> 00:00:12.319 it’s become clear to anyone paying attention 00:00:12.319 --> 00:00:15.764 that we live in an era of unprecedented mass surveillance. 00:00:15.764 --> 00:00:17.974 It seems like every day a new story 00:00:17.974 --> 00:00:20.001 pops up on our facebook feeds about how 00:00:20.001 --> 00:00:21.543 the NSA might be spying on us 00:00:21.543 --> 00:00:23.942 through our coffee makers or TV sets. 00:00:23.942 --> 00:00:26.112 One... two... 00:00:26.112 --> 00:00:27.777 Smith? 00:00:27.777 --> 00:00:30.068 6079 Smith W? 00:00:30.838 --> 00:00:32.097 Yes, you! 00:00:32.097 --> 00:00:33.433 Bend Lower! 00:00:34.163 --> 00:00:37.732 Or how the latest advancement in AI technology means that 00:00:37.732 --> 00:00:41.062 Amazon now knows what products we're gonna buy before we do. 00:00:41.062 --> 00:00:45.204 Lindor Chocolate Deluxe gift box... would you like to buy it? 00:00:45.204 --> 00:00:45.731 Yes! 00:00:45.731 --> 00:00:49.875 And while the mind-boggling capacity of state intelligence agencies 00:00:49.875 --> 00:00:52.722 and IT corporations to monitor our behaviour, 00:00:52.722 --> 00:00:54.508 habits and communications 00:00:54.508 --> 00:00:56.945 is a perfectly reasonable cause for alarm, 00:00:56.945 --> 00:00:58.975 the more unsettling reality is that 00:00:58.975 --> 00:01:02.591 this constant flow of data collection forms only one part 00:01:02.591 --> 00:01:05.154 of a much broader surveillance apparatus 00:01:05.154 --> 00:01:07.186 ... one that still makes ample use of 00:01:07.186 --> 00:01:09.489 the same tried and tested dirty tricks 00:01:09.489 --> 00:01:12.688 that rulers have been using to keep tabs on dissent 00:01:12.688 --> 00:01:14.658 since proles first started scrawling 00:01:14.658 --> 00:01:18.668 Alpha Kappa Alpha Beta into the walls of the Parthenon. 00:01:18.668 --> 00:01:21.338 And on that note... before we jump right into it, 00:01:21.338 --> 00:01:24.222 we should point out that as we were putting this episode together 00:01:24.222 --> 00:01:26.261 we ran into some legal grey areas 00:01:26.261 --> 00:01:27.911 involving publication bans 00:01:27.911 --> 00:01:31.656 and laws against identifying undercover agents and informants. 00:01:31.656 --> 00:01:34.216 This is particularly relevant to our first segment, 00:01:34.216 --> 00:01:36.937 where we cover the multi-city organizing 00:01:36.937 --> 00:01:40.351 leading up to the 2010 G20 protests in Toronto, 00:01:40.351 --> 00:01:43.061 and the 2013 anti-fracking protests 00:01:43.061 --> 00:01:45.421 on the Mi’kmaq territory of Elsipogtog, 00:01:45.421 --> 00:01:49.090 both of which were the target of large-scale intelligence operations 00:01:49.090 --> 00:01:52.678 involving informants and/or undercover police. 00:01:52.678 --> 00:01:53.827 After mulling it over, 00:01:53.827 --> 00:01:55.703 in order to avoid putting our crew, 00:01:55.703 --> 00:01:59.193 or any of the people featured in the show in a sticky situation, 00:01:59.193 --> 00:02:02.129 we've made the call to only use footage and images 00:02:02.129 --> 00:02:06.193 of these state assets that are already freely available on the Internet 00:02:06.193 --> 00:02:08.986 ... plus a few clips from some cheesy Hollywood movies 00:02:08.986 --> 00:02:10.380 to help fill in the gaps. 00:02:10.380 --> 00:02:12.737 So, with that little disclaimer out of the way 00:02:12.737 --> 00:02:15.302 ... over the next 30 minutes, we'll share the voices of 00:02:15.302 --> 00:02:18.754 a number of individuals as they recount their first-hand experiences 00:02:18.754 --> 00:02:21.199 dealing with snitches and undercover cops, 00:02:21.199 --> 00:02:24.425 navigating the brave new world of digital surveillance 00:02:24.425 --> 00:02:26.358 ... and making a whole lotta trouble! 00:02:55.699 --> 00:02:59.078 I was involved with the Anti-Capitalist Convergence 00:02:59.078 --> 00:03:01.328 in Montreal leading up to the G20. 00:03:01.328 --> 00:03:03.367 So several months before even the summit 00:03:03.367 --> 00:03:05.870 people had started to meet and organize. 00:03:05.870 --> 00:03:09.526 And the other main element was coordinating with Toronto 00:03:09.526 --> 00:03:11.840 and other cities in Southern Ontario 00:03:11.840 --> 00:03:15.285 with the groups that were already organizing there. 00:03:15.285 --> 00:03:18.310 I was part of the Toronto Community Mobilization Network. 00:03:18.310 --> 00:03:21.684 So that was a large umbrella group that was involved 00:03:21.684 --> 00:03:24.608 in doing all of the logistics and a lot of the organizing 00:03:24.608 --> 00:03:27.696 around the G20 Summit in Toronto. 00:03:27.696 --> 00:03:29.650 I was also involved in SOAR, 00:03:29.650 --> 00:03:31.920 the Southern Ontario Anarchist Resistance. 00:03:31.920 --> 00:03:35.375 We were specifically on the project Get Off the Fence, 00:03:35.375 --> 00:03:39.762 which was the militant street march that happened in Toronto in 2010. 00:03:43.912 --> 00:03:45.193 Brenda and Khalid, 00:03:45.193 --> 00:03:49.513 their real names are Brenda Carey and Bindo Showan. 00:03:49.513 --> 00:03:51.425 But we did not know that until later. 00:03:51.425 --> 00:03:54.979 They're both members of the Ontario Provincial Police (the OPP) 00:03:54.979 --> 00:04:01.083 and they both arrived on the scene much earlier than 2010. 00:04:01.083 --> 00:04:05.290 And entered mostly through above-ground organizing, 00:04:05.290 --> 00:04:07.073 but then had a much more complicated path 00:04:07.073 --> 00:04:08.146 in order to stay in the movement 00:04:08.146 --> 00:04:10.683 and get close to people who they wanted to target. 00:04:10.683 --> 00:04:14.511 Both of those people played on sort of these political values 00:04:14.511 --> 00:04:15.682 that exist within those spaces 00:04:15.682 --> 00:04:18.090 in order to both get close to certain people, 00:04:18.090 --> 00:04:19.461 and avoid being outed. 00:04:19.461 --> 00:04:21.340 Brenda was probably the more experienced cop, 00:04:21.340 --> 00:04:24.857 and she produced this kind of narrative of victimization. 00:04:24.857 --> 00:04:27.466 And so she had this story of escaping an abusive relationship, 00:04:27.466 --> 00:04:30.271 and this also allowed her to avoid answering questions 00:04:30.271 --> 00:04:32.251 about her past, and to be very evasive. 00:04:32.251 --> 00:04:36.805 And Khalid operated because anyone that questioned 00:04:36.805 --> 00:04:40.538 his legitimacy would instantly be called out as being racist. 00:04:40.538 --> 00:04:43.951 And because of all the internalized racism in our groups, 00:04:43.951 --> 00:04:46.679 that slight-of-hand worked. 00:04:47.619 --> 00:04:49.852 And they were both really reliable. 00:04:49.852 --> 00:04:50.908 So they worked really hard, 00:04:50.908 --> 00:04:53.437 they took on tasks and they always did them on time. 00:04:53.437 --> 00:04:56.938 Brenda in particular, I remember always wanted to take minutes. 00:04:56.938 --> 00:05:00.779 And we were like “great... take minutes! We don't want to.” 00:05:00.779 --> 00:05:02.784 So that was perfect because she could take all those notes 00:05:02.784 --> 00:05:05.909 and it was not drawing any attention to her. 00:05:06.229 --> 00:05:07.895 Most of the evidence that was introduced 00:05:07.895 --> 00:05:13.221 in the conspiracy case came from whatever they were able to collect 00:05:13.221 --> 00:05:15.822 in their interactions with anarchists, 00:05:15.822 --> 00:05:18.613 with activists, over this period of time. 00:05:18.613 --> 00:05:20.220 These notes were then sifted through, 00:05:20.220 --> 00:05:22.857 and they basically just pulled out selected elements 00:05:22.857 --> 00:05:26.636 that could conceivably constitute preparation for crimes. 00:05:27.156 --> 00:05:28.936 It was actually quite shocking to see 00:05:28.936 --> 00:05:31.117 how much of the information that she recorded 00:05:31.117 --> 00:05:35.868 was personal information about who didn't really like who, 00:05:35.868 --> 00:05:39.047 and who was dating who, and who had broken up with who. 00:05:39.047 --> 00:05:42.284 And who was maybe having some problems with the way 00:05:42.284 --> 00:05:44.767 things were being organized, and all of that stuff. 00:05:44.767 --> 00:05:47.733 And it became really obvious that that stuff 00:05:47.733 --> 00:05:51.064 was very very relevant to the intelligence gathering. 00:05:51.484 --> 00:05:52.443 A night drinking... 00:05:52.443 --> 00:05:53.833 going out with your friends and drinking, 00:05:53.833 --> 00:05:55.735 would first be presented as, y'know, 00:05:55.735 --> 00:05:57.661 “we went to the club and we noted all these things 00:05:57.661 --> 00:05:58.995 people talked about.” 00:05:58.995 --> 00:06:01.765 But then it would end up looking like a very detailed meeting 00:06:01.765 --> 00:06:04.692 that had on the agenda -- people might have made a joke 00:06:04.692 --> 00:06:06.047 about fighting cops, 00:06:06.047 --> 00:06:08.099 and it would just look like they planned to fight cops. 00:06:08.099 --> 00:06:12.516 It's not clear that there was ever really an actual case against us. 00:06:12.516 --> 00:06:14.655 But without their notes there definitely 00:06:14.655 --> 00:06:17.149 would not have been a case against us. 00:06:17.149 --> 00:06:21.922 The case of the Crown rested mostly with a recording 00:06:21.922 --> 00:06:24.302 that was done on June 25th, 00:06:24.302 --> 00:06:27.921 which was the day before the main action in Toronto. 00:06:27.921 --> 00:06:29.717 And it was a large spokes-council, 00:06:29.717 --> 00:06:33.735 so a lot of affinity groups were present and represented there. 00:06:33.735 --> 00:06:37.117 And Brenda was there with a recording device. 00:06:37.117 --> 00:06:39.473 And so on the night of the 25th they went to a judge 00:06:39.473 --> 00:06:44.257 and they got warrants for the arrest of around 20 people, 00:06:44.257 --> 00:06:45.727 one of which was me. 00:06:46.517 --> 00:06:48.559 In the end there were 17 of us against whom 00:06:48.559 --> 00:06:50.669 the charges were maintained the longest, 00:06:50.669 --> 00:06:53.298 and we were charged with conspiracy to obstruct police, 00:06:53.298 --> 00:06:54.747 conspiracy to assault police 00:06:54.747 --> 00:06:55.937 and conspiracy to commit mischief 00:06:55.937 --> 00:06:57.922 ... which just means 'fuck shit up.' 00:06:57.922 --> 00:07:00.591 So I think there were at least seven police officers 00:07:00.591 --> 00:07:03.467 who had kind of medium-term infiltration roles. 00:07:03.467 --> 00:07:05.468 So there's people who infiltrated the medics group, 00:07:05.468 --> 00:07:06.726 who infiltrated the legal observers group, 00:07:06.726 --> 00:07:08.591 who were involved in different media projects. 00:07:08.591 --> 00:07:10.138 And there's probably a lot of other infiltrators 00:07:10.138 --> 00:07:11.237 we just never found out about. 00:07:11.237 --> 00:07:13.838 Like I can imagine that probably in the context of 00:07:13.838 --> 00:07:16.051 the anti-Olympics stuff happening at the same time, 00:07:16.051 --> 00:07:17.532 that there were probably a lot of infiltrations 00:07:17.532 --> 00:07:19.242 happening in Native communities. 00:07:19.242 --> 00:07:22.716 I'm Lieutenant Suzanne Patles of the Mi'Kmaq Warrior Society, 00:07:22.716 --> 00:07:24.893 and I'm from the Mi'Kmaq territory. 00:07:24.893 --> 00:07:28.459 It's evident that the Canadian Security, 00:07:28.459 --> 00:07:32.565 and Canada deems Indigenous people in general 00:07:32.565 --> 00:07:34.963 as a threat to national security. 00:07:34.963 --> 00:07:39.274 And they see development in the oil and gas industry as critical 00:07:39.274 --> 00:07:41.392 – and that's what they call it, 'critical infrastructure' – 00:07:41.392 --> 00:07:43.868 and they think that it's what Canada needs 00:07:43.868 --> 00:07:46.504 to be able to move forward as a so-called nation. 00:07:46.504 --> 00:07:48.705 So they see anybody who stands up 00:07:48.705 --> 00:07:51.708 against these developments as a threat. 00:07:51.708 --> 00:07:56.000 If they don't us veto over these infrastructure developments 00:07:56.000 --> 00:07:59.870 and if they don't listen to the Indigenous peoples' voice, 00:07:59.870 --> 00:08:01.895 the Indigenous people are going to rise up. 00:08:01.895 --> 00:08:03.779 They're going to take to the streets. 00:08:03.779 --> 00:08:05.931 They're going to take to the railroads. 00:08:05.931 --> 00:08:07.677 They're going to take to the roads. 00:08:07.677 --> 00:08:09.374 They're going to blockade. 00:08:09.374 --> 00:08:11.639 They're going to set up camps. 00:08:11.639 --> 00:08:13.969 It's kind of harder to infiltrate 00:08:13.969 --> 00:08:15.554 within the Indigenous communities 00:08:15.554 --> 00:08:18.615 because our Indigenous communities are so connected. 00:08:18.615 --> 00:08:20.433 And when we talk to one another 00:08:20.433 --> 00:08:21.937 we don't wanna know what you do. 00:08:21.937 --> 00:08:23.217 We wanna know about your family. 00:08:23.217 --> 00:08:26.117 We wanna know about where you come from... who you are. 00:08:26.117 --> 00:08:28.717 It's a built-in block where we're not going to give you 00:08:28.717 --> 00:08:30.098 all of our information. 00:08:30.098 --> 00:08:32.249 Like, we might be nice to you and say hello, 00:08:32.249 --> 00:08:34.968 and you may feel like you're a part of something, 00:08:34.968 --> 00:08:37.659 but actually you're still on the outside of it. 00:08:37.659 --> 00:08:38.659 We're warriors. 00:08:38.659 --> 00:08:40.616 We've been doing this for hundreds and hundreds of years, 00:08:40.616 --> 00:08:43.005 prior to Canada even being in existence. 00:08:43.005 --> 00:08:45.656 We had this one guy come in. 00:08:45.656 --> 00:08:48.210 And he came in on four different occasions. 00:08:48.210 --> 00:08:49.631 He came in as a journalist. 00:08:49.631 --> 00:08:51.142 He came in as militia. 00:08:51.142 --> 00:08:53.456 Then he came in bringing donations. 00:08:53.456 --> 00:08:58.164 And then he tried to approach us as being an international lawyer. 00:08:58.164 --> 00:09:01.130 So he was just bringing things in that were not wanted, 00:09:01.130 --> 00:09:03.681 and that we weren't supposed to have. 00:09:03.681 --> 00:09:05.156 That we'd never even asked for. 00:09:05.156 --> 00:09:08.975 He was trying to create a situation where our people 00:09:08.975 --> 00:09:11.782 will be criminalized for the things that he brought in. 00:09:11.782 --> 00:09:14.670 And once the men were already arrested after the raid, 00:09:14.670 --> 00:09:17.311 he was approached by several members of the Warrior Society 00:09:17.311 --> 00:09:20.358 and he was told: “We know you're an agent. 00:09:20.358 --> 00:09:22.143 You need to get out of here.” 00:09:23.993 --> 00:09:27.226 States go to incredible lengths to infiltrate resistance movements 00:09:27.226 --> 00:09:29.626 and plant undercover agents in our scenes. 00:09:29.626 --> 00:09:32.144 Such as the disgusting case of Mark Kennedy, 00:09:32.144 --> 00:09:33.686 AKA Mark Stone, 00:09:33.686 --> 00:09:36.044 who was outed in London in 2010 00:09:36.044 --> 00:09:39.535 after spending 8 years as a mole in the European anarchist 00:09:39.535 --> 00:09:41.808 and radical environmental movements 00:09:41.808 --> 00:09:44.649 - 6 of which he spent in a long-term relationship 00:09:44.649 --> 00:09:47.289 with one of the activists he was spying on. 00:09:47.289 --> 00:09:50.129 But as paranoia-inducing as these cases may be, 00:09:50.129 --> 00:09:52.656 they are exceptions to the rule. 00:09:52.656 --> 00:09:55.852 Not only are these operations incredibly expensive, 00:09:55.852 --> 00:09:57.718 but it takes a rare breed of psycho 00:09:57.718 --> 00:10:00.561 to be able to effectively maintain the sort of double-life 00:10:00.561 --> 00:10:04.216 required to carry out these long-term infiltrations. 00:10:04.216 --> 00:10:07.216 Your average cop tends to have a much harder time blending in. 00:10:07.216 --> 00:10:09.204 Black sleeves... that's gotta be hot, huh? 00:10:10.904 --> 00:10:12.659 Be a little cooler if we had some drugs... 00:10:13.229 --> 00:10:15.462 A much more common, and cost-effective method 00:10:15.462 --> 00:10:18.387 of gathering intelligence on political dissidents 00:10:18.387 --> 00:10:21.681 is through the use of informants and collaborators 00:10:21.681 --> 00:10:24.870 ... or as they're more commonly known, snitches. 00:10:26.400 --> 00:10:28.580 Brandon Darby was a Texas activist 00:10:28.580 --> 00:10:32.609 who became an FBI informant in the mid-2000s. 00:10:32.609 --> 00:10:34.605 He was somebody who had just been on the fringe 00:10:34.605 --> 00:10:36.125 of the activist scene around Austin. 00:10:36.125 --> 00:10:38.078 Not a major organizer or anything. 00:10:38.078 --> 00:10:40.318 I was doing a lot of anti-fascist work at the time. 00:10:40.318 --> 00:10:42.923 We were doing community armed defense from about 2002 00:10:42.923 --> 00:10:44.784 ... so he was very enamored with that. 00:10:44.784 --> 00:10:46.609 Brandon exhibited a lot of behaviours 00:10:46.609 --> 00:10:48.649 that were problematic from the beginning, 00:10:48.649 --> 00:10:50.761 but they're not because he was an informant. 00:10:50.761 --> 00:10:53.358 They're just because he was a fucked up person, 00:10:53.358 --> 00:10:54.704 just like many people. 00:10:54.704 --> 00:10:56.771 And political and social movements and engagements 00:10:56.771 --> 00:10:58.881 draw people who are damaged. 00:10:58.881 --> 00:11:00.093 He wanted to do something. 00:11:00.093 --> 00:11:02.176 He also wanted to work out his daddy issues. 00:11:02.176 --> 00:11:05.775 He wanted to work out his personal stuff in a public setting. 00:11:05.775 --> 00:11:07.171 My name is Brandon Darby 00:11:07.171 --> 00:11:08.998 and I work with the Common Ground collective 00:11:08.998 --> 00:11:10.378 in New Orleans, Louisiana. 00:11:10.378 --> 00:11:13.097 He didn't come to Common Ground until about mid-October, 00:11:13.097 --> 00:11:15.252 after we had done some initial rescue efforts. 00:11:15.252 --> 00:11:17.362 And Common Ground was really an established organization 00:11:17.362 --> 00:11:18.508 by the time he came in. 00:11:18.508 --> 00:11:21.675 But due to some of the things that he and I had engaged in, 00:11:21.675 --> 00:11:23.827 by taking up arms against white militias, 00:11:23.827 --> 00:11:27.035 taking up arms against the police in those early days, 00:11:27.035 --> 00:11:28.820 Malik Rahim, who was another co-founder 00:11:28.820 --> 00:11:31.351 of the Common Ground collective in New Orleans, 00:11:31.351 --> 00:11:34.176 gave him more power than he should have in the organization. 00:11:34.176 --> 00:11:36.849 And the out-of-control amount of power that he was given 00:11:36.849 --> 00:11:40.467 in these circumstances was just a toxic combination. 00:11:40.467 --> 00:11:42.180 Just really vicious. 00:11:42.180 --> 00:11:44.172 We made him leave Common Ground 00:11:44.172 --> 00:11:45.488 because he was so dysfunctional. 00:11:45.488 --> 00:11:46.546 And I was dysfunctional too, 00:11:46.546 --> 00:11:49.334 you have to understand many of us had severe post-traumatic stress. 00:11:49.334 --> 00:11:50.900 You cannot take up guns against people, 00:11:50.900 --> 00:11:52.720 you cannot see dead people everywhere 00:11:52.720 --> 00:11:55.160 and just, like, go “hey it's okay.” 00:11:55.160 --> 00:11:56.637 We're not trained soldiers. 00:11:56.637 --> 00:11:58.298 The people who lost their houses weren't trained. 00:11:58.298 --> 00:12:00.147 I mean these are hard traumas. 00:12:00.147 --> 00:12:02.460 We were able to take our privilege to leave, 00:12:02.460 --> 00:12:04.683 but he - of course he acted fucked up afterwards. 00:12:04.683 --> 00:12:05.513 But so did I 00:12:05.513 --> 00:12:08.453 .... so did many people who were there for months and months. 00:12:08.453 --> 00:12:10.889 A lot of people ask the million dollar question: 00:12:10.889 --> 00:12:14.758 when did Brandon Darby become an FBI informant? 00:12:14.758 --> 00:12:16.844 If I had to pick one particular time, 00:12:16.844 --> 00:12:19.674 I think it's some time between March and May of 2006. 00:12:19.674 --> 00:12:22.255 That's what it looks like in the FBI documents that I've 00:12:22.255 --> 00:12:24.899 already received from the Freedom of Information Act request. 00:12:24.899 --> 00:12:27.327 It looks like he starts giving information for free, 00:12:27.327 --> 00:12:29.770 and then they offered to pay him at some point. 00:12:29.770 --> 00:12:31.884 Recognize that he never did it for the money. 00:12:31.884 --> 00:12:33.098 He's a trust fund kid. 00:12:33.098 --> 00:12:34.396 Y'know, he's from a working-class background, 00:12:34.396 --> 00:12:35.760 but his grandmother came into money 00:12:35.760 --> 00:12:37.737 and he does have access to money through her. 00:12:37.737 --> 00:12:39.991 He did it for ideological reasons. 00:12:39.991 --> 00:12:41.616 And so we made him take a leave of absence. 00:12:41.616 --> 00:12:45.559 But then he finagled his way back in, in January of 2007. 00:12:45.559 --> 00:12:49.776 That means that he was actively working for the FBI at that point. 00:12:49.776 --> 00:12:51.648 But then there were some things that started to happen 00:12:51.648 --> 00:12:55.093 that really gave me pause and made me very uncomfortable. 00:12:55.093 --> 00:12:56.891 I was working with Anti-Racist Action 00:12:56.891 --> 00:13:00.029 and we were going to do some protests against this bookstore 00:13:00.029 --> 00:13:02.046 that was a libertarian or right-libertarian book store 00:13:02.046 --> 00:13:03.540 that had nativist books and stuff. 00:13:03.540 --> 00:13:05.947 They were big supporters of that shithead Alex Jones. 00:13:05.947 --> 00:13:08.147 But during that time he wanted us to 00:13:08.147 --> 00:13:09.610 burn the book store to the ground. 00:13:09.610 --> 00:13:10.635 And he kept at it. 00:13:10.635 --> 00:13:12.421 And I just told him I wasn't going to have anything to do with it 00:13:12.421 --> 00:13:14.107 because I thought it was a stupid idea. 00:13:14.107 --> 00:13:16.828 A prominent Austin-based activist named Brandon Darby 00:13:16.828 --> 00:13:19.015 has revealed he worked as an FBI informant 00:13:19.015 --> 00:13:21.923 in the 18 months leading up to the Republican Convention. 00:13:21.923 --> 00:13:25.021 While Brandon Darby has been involved in several activist groups, 00:13:25.021 --> 00:13:26.666 he's best known as a founder of 00:13:26.666 --> 00:13:28.762 the New Orleans-based group Common Ground Relief, 00:13:28.762 --> 00:13:30.884 which he helped start after Hurricane Katrina. 00:13:30.884 --> 00:13:33.864 He's expected to testify on behalf of the government 00:13:33.864 --> 00:13:36.488 later this month in the trial of two Texas activists 00:13:36.488 --> 00:13:38.233 who were arrested at the RNC 00:13:38.233 --> 00:13:41.086 on charges of making and possessing Molotov cocktails. 00:13:42.166 --> 00:13:44.978 In the lead-up to the Republican National Convention in 2008, 00:13:44.978 --> 00:13:47.087 the other thing that started to happen was he started to 00:13:47.087 --> 00:13:49.293 hound me about coming up there. 00:13:49.293 --> 00:13:51.317 And I was like “dude... I'm not interested.” 00:13:51.317 --> 00:13:53.119 So he started working with some other people, 00:13:53.119 --> 00:13:55.797 Brad Crowder and David McKay. 00:13:55.797 --> 00:13:58.346 And this is one of my biggest regrets, because 00:13:58.346 --> 00:14:01.742 Brad and David were very new and very enamored with Brandon. 00:14:01.742 --> 00:14:04.196 And so because of those two circumstances, 00:14:04.196 --> 00:14:05.973 he was able to lead them further down the road. 00:14:05.973 --> 00:14:06.960 You have to understand this, 00:14:06.960 --> 00:14:08.713 that he wrecked a bunch of people's lives 00:14:08.713 --> 00:14:11.669 through his being an informant and a provocateur, 00:14:11.669 --> 00:14:13.916 but also through just being a shitty person. 00:14:13.916 --> 00:14:16.380 Brad and David did prison time for that. 00:14:16.380 --> 00:14:17.965 Brandon tried to get me to commit a crime 00:14:17.965 --> 00:14:19.966 that I would have done forty years for. 00:14:19.966 --> 00:14:21.266 A friend of ours here in Austin, 00:14:21.266 --> 00:14:24.622 a Palestinian supporter and organizer named Riad Hamad, 00:14:24.622 --> 00:14:28.380 killed himself because of the FBI's harassment of him 00:14:28.380 --> 00:14:29.920 due to Brandon Darby. 00:14:29.920 --> 00:14:31.237 So those are the major ones, 00:14:31.237 --> 00:14:34.671 but there's tons of people that he just really damaged 00:14:34.671 --> 00:14:36.650 and injured those people for years afterwards. 00:14:37.098 --> 00:14:39.758 You may have heard of the Earth Liberation Front. 00:14:39.758 --> 00:14:41.325 The Attorney General himself says 00:14:41.325 --> 00:14:43.649 it's a domestic terrorist organization. 00:14:43.649 --> 00:14:46.828 The FBI says it is one of the most dangerous groups in the country. 00:14:46.828 --> 00:14:53.252 The Green Scare actions really started back in 1997 through 2001. 00:14:53.252 --> 00:14:57.313 They were a series of economic sabotage 00:14:57.313 --> 00:15:00.684 that used arson to target kind of a mix 00:15:00.684 --> 00:15:03.897 of private corporations as well as government targets. 00:15:03.897 --> 00:15:08.284 All the FBI agents that had been sent out in the late 90s 00:15:08.284 --> 00:15:13.851 to infiltrate and mess with Oregon, in particular, 00:15:13.851 --> 00:15:16.288 were completely unsuccessful. 00:15:16.288 --> 00:15:18.523 And then ten years later, 00:15:18.523 --> 00:15:23.778 one of the Earth Liberation Front co-conspirators, 00:15:23.778 --> 00:15:26.994 who had been a long-time heroin addict, 00:15:26.994 --> 00:15:29.925 succumbed to the addiction and his own paranoia 00:15:29.925 --> 00:15:35.240 by walking into the FBI office and basically saying, 00:15:35.240 --> 00:15:39.104 “if you pay me $150,000 and promise that I don't go to jail, 00:15:39.104 --> 00:15:41.053 I'll tell you everything I know.” 00:15:41.053 --> 00:15:43.800 And he became a snitch for them. 00:15:43.800 --> 00:15:46.376 He wore a wire all around the country 00:15:46.376 --> 00:15:50.272 attempting to entrap his co-conspirators. 00:15:50.272 --> 00:15:54.445 And it was the first crack in the case and it was a major crack. 00:15:54.445 --> 00:15:57.948 All of a sudden in December of 2005, 00:15:57.948 --> 00:16:00.522 the largest round-up of environmental 00:16:00.522 --> 00:16:02.672 and animal rights activists occurred. 00:16:02.672 --> 00:16:04.828 The government charged them with multiple counts 00:16:04.828 --> 00:16:09.513 of conspiracy and arson and possession of an incendiary device. 00:16:09.513 --> 00:16:11.043 And then slowly but surely, 00:16:11.043 --> 00:16:15.011 one after the other became snitches for the government. 00:16:15.011 --> 00:16:18.677 Joyanna Zacher, Nathan Block, Daniel McGowen, 00:16:18.677 --> 00:16:21.842 Jonathan Paul and Marius Mason 00:16:21.842 --> 00:16:26.309 never succumbed to the pressures put upon all of them. 00:16:26.309 --> 00:16:28.342 Nathan Block was 18 years old 00:16:28.342 --> 00:16:32.102 when he was involved in those acts of economic sabotage, 00:16:32.102 --> 00:16:36.802 and he was facing life plus 1,115 years in prison. 00:16:36.802 --> 00:16:38.431 And even though he was the youngest member 00:16:38.431 --> 00:16:40.336 of all the Green Scare defendants, 00:16:40.336 --> 00:16:43.675 he never even batted an eye towards the idea 00:16:43.675 --> 00:16:45.653 that he would ever cooperate with the state. 00:16:45.653 --> 00:16:47.642 Y'know, he served all of his prison time. 00:16:47.642 --> 00:16:50.491 He's out. He's back living his life. 00:16:50.491 --> 00:16:52.719 Same with Daniel McGowan, Jonathan Paul. 00:16:52.719 --> 00:16:56.386 But the bottom line is that even though these people 00:16:56.386 --> 00:17:00.756 were facing life plus 1,115 years in jail, 00:17:00.756 --> 00:17:05.210 they ended up doing between three and eight years in prison. 00:17:05.210 --> 00:17:09.515 Non-cooperating defendants basically got an additional penalty 00:17:09.515 --> 00:17:13.126 of an extra 18 months in prison compared to 00:17:13.126 --> 00:17:16.947 their similarly-situated snitch co-defendants. 00:17:16.947 --> 00:17:21.481 So the tax for being able to morally and ethically 00:17:21.481 --> 00:17:23.830 look people in the eye and say 00:17:23.830 --> 00:17:26.870 “I am not a snitch. I'm not a government informant.” 00:17:26.870 --> 00:17:30.723 That was a tax of 18 months of extra time in jail. 00:17:30.723 --> 00:17:33.776 Which all of them were more than willing to serve 00:17:33.776 --> 00:17:36.862 in order to be able to return to their communities 00:17:36.862 --> 00:17:39.536 and return to the movements that they 00:17:39.536 --> 00:17:41.450 literally risked their lives for. 00:17:43.970 --> 00:17:46.505 Nearly 70 years after it was first published, 00:17:46.505 --> 00:17:50.181 George Orwell's dystopian sci-fi novel, 1984 00:17:50.181 --> 00:17:53.649 is to this day, still held up as the gold standard for what 00:17:53.649 --> 00:17:56.869 an authoritarian police state underpinned by an all-pervasive 00:17:56.869 --> 00:17:59.495 surveillance apparatus would look like. 00:17:59.495 --> 00:18:00.665 But let's be real 00:18:00.665 --> 00:18:03.976 ... who needs Big Brother when you've got Facebook and Google? 00:18:03.976 --> 00:18:08.210 Contemporary techniques of mass data collection and analysis, 00:18:08.210 --> 00:18:10.289 combined with a society where more and more 00:18:10.289 --> 00:18:13.288 of our communications take place through heavily-controlled 00:18:13.288 --> 00:18:16.547 and completely monitored corporate infrastructure, 00:18:16.547 --> 00:18:18.981 has produced a framework for social control 00:18:18.981 --> 00:18:21.427 that would have made Orwell throw up in his mouth. 00:18:21.427 --> 00:18:24.140 The world was given a terrifying glimpse of the true potential 00:18:24.140 --> 00:18:28.595 of this unholy alliance of state and corporate power in 2011, 00:18:28.595 --> 00:18:30.880 as the Gulf States were putting the finishing touches 00:18:30.880 --> 00:18:33.454 on the Arab Spring protests in Bahrain. 00:18:33.454 --> 00:18:36.667 After a Saudi-led occupation force viciously put down 00:18:36.667 --> 00:18:38.532 the revolutionary uprising, 00:18:38.532 --> 00:18:42.299 the Bahraini royal family used facebook to launch a wide-ranging 00:18:42.299 --> 00:18:46.217 witch hunt of activists, posting pictures of pro-democracy rallies 00:18:46.217 --> 00:18:48.138 and urging pro-regime loyalists 00:18:48.138 --> 00:18:50.658 to name and tag people in the pictures, 00:18:50.658 --> 00:18:53.531 in a mass doxing campaign that resulted in waves 00:18:53.531 --> 00:18:56.228 of targeted arrests and disappearances. 00:18:56.228 --> 00:18:58.594 Yes... the future is here comrades. 00:18:58.594 --> 00:19:00.350 Angry responses only. 00:19:01.500 --> 00:19:05.504 The term signals intelligence seems to come out of 00:19:05.504 --> 00:19:08.384 earlier histories of spying in communication 00:19:08.384 --> 00:19:11.302 where it was, like, classic Cold War between the US and Russia. 00:19:11.302 --> 00:19:13.965 Telecommunications, especially hard to decipher 00:19:13.965 --> 00:19:17.016 or hidden telecommunications, was not used very widely. 00:19:17.016 --> 00:19:20.862 And with computers becoming widespread 00:19:20.862 --> 00:19:23.185 and computers being able to do the math for encryption, 00:19:23.185 --> 00:19:26.200 increasingly the ways people are organizing and communicating 00:19:26.200 --> 00:19:28.308 with each other is happening through these computerized means. 00:19:28.308 --> 00:19:32.582 So the part of their social control apparatus that is dedicated 00:19:32.582 --> 00:19:33.947 to signals intelligence, 00:19:33.947 --> 00:19:37.254 this gathering of information that's happening electronically, 00:19:37.254 --> 00:19:38.844 is just ballooning. 00:19:44.334 --> 00:19:46.079 You can think of the types of surveillance 00:19:46.079 --> 00:19:48.603 that are done by these agencies in two different forms. 00:19:48.603 --> 00:19:50.596 They do mass surveillance, 00:19:50.596 --> 00:19:52.750 which is gathering all of the data they can, 00:19:52.750 --> 00:19:54.810 storing it, trying to analyze it and look at metadata. 00:19:54.810 --> 00:19:56.981 That's for hundreds of millions or billions of people 00:19:56.981 --> 00:19:58.936 all over the world, and what their communications are. 00:19:58.936 --> 00:20:00.521 And then they also do targeted surveillance, 00:20:00.521 --> 00:20:01.580 which is really different. 00:20:01.580 --> 00:20:03.309 That's like hacking into things, 00:20:03.309 --> 00:20:06.434 or trying to find a way to compromise an encryption system 00:20:06.434 --> 00:20:09.798 so that they can then read what people think is being protected. 00:20:09.798 --> 00:20:13.535 These sorts of attacks are way more expensive. 00:20:13.535 --> 00:20:15.615 This is why mass surveillance has become really important, 00:20:15.615 --> 00:20:19.352 because they can do it really really widely for relatively lower cost. 00:20:19.352 --> 00:20:22.600 Facebook and social media in general 00:20:22.600 --> 00:20:28.336 has been a treasure trove of information 00:20:28.336 --> 00:20:30.848 for the government and for corporations. 00:20:30.848 --> 00:20:35.768 These types of platforms are a way of instantly getting snapshots 00:20:35.768 --> 00:20:38.166 of your network, who your friends are, 00:20:38.166 --> 00:20:41.137 who've you talked to, what events you're going to. 00:20:41.137 --> 00:20:45.472 And they help facilitate more targeted attacks. 00:20:45.472 --> 00:20:48.235 Facebook is probably the worst out there. 00:20:48.235 --> 00:20:50.353 Government and corporations can literally look 00:20:50.353 --> 00:20:53.685 at all your friend groups and plot out maps 00:20:53.685 --> 00:20:56.932 of how different networks are connected to each other. 00:20:56.932 --> 00:21:00.952 And they use that information for conspiracy allegations, 00:21:00.952 --> 00:21:02.942 for RICO allegations, 00:21:02.942 --> 00:21:07.983 as well as finding weak links within those networks to target. 00:21:07.983 --> 00:21:10.377 The companies are better at gathering data. 00:21:10.377 --> 00:21:14.280 They have set up whole web infrastructures pretty much 00:21:14.280 --> 00:21:16.837 dedicated to gathering as much information as possible about people. 00:21:16.837 --> 00:21:18.610 For profit. For advertising means. 00:21:18.610 --> 00:21:20.579 Google, in its terms of use, 00:21:20.579 --> 00:21:24.365 says that you have no reasonable expectation of privacy 00:21:24.365 --> 00:21:27.812 when you use any of their products, including gmail. 00:21:27.812 --> 00:21:30.036 So basically that means nothing that you do 00:21:30.036 --> 00:21:32.118 in that platform is yours, 00:21:32.118 --> 00:21:33.838 and they can do whatever they want with it. 00:21:33.838 --> 00:21:36.135 They basically say “hey... know that we're 00:21:36.135 --> 00:21:38.134 giving all of your shit to the government, 00:21:38.134 --> 00:21:41.058 and we're going to use the shit to spy on you some more too.” 00:21:41.058 --> 00:21:44.543 That's not disputed that this is the relationship. 00:21:44.543 --> 00:21:47.916 Facebook also has facial recognition software 00:21:47.916 --> 00:21:50.513 for all those photos and videos that you post. 00:21:50.513 --> 00:21:56.321 North Dakota and DAPL used that facial recognition on facebook 00:21:56.321 --> 00:22:00.183 in order to issue arrest warrants for people, 00:22:00.183 --> 00:22:03.637 and literally arrested and charged people with crimes 00:22:03.637 --> 00:22:08.271 based on video and photographs that activists posted. 00:22:08.271 --> 00:22:11.479 Protest prediction software has been developed 00:22:11.479 --> 00:22:12.969 and is currently being used 00:22:12.969 --> 00:22:15.101 primarily in Latin American countries. 00:22:15.101 --> 00:22:18.477 By monitoring facebook and other social media, 00:22:18.477 --> 00:22:24.205 this software predicts when riots or protests, 00:22:24.205 --> 00:22:28.373 or public uprisings may happen 00:22:28.373 --> 00:22:30.623 ... up to three days in advance. 00:22:30.623 --> 00:22:34.841 We have more direct confrontation right now with the state, 00:22:34.841 --> 00:22:37.369 and so we think of things in state terms: the capacity 00:22:37.369 --> 00:22:39.163 that the state has for repression, 00:22:39.163 --> 00:22:41.473 and for social control broadly. 00:22:41.473 --> 00:22:42.979 And that makes sense. 00:22:42.979 --> 00:22:47.812 But surveillance capitalism is creating whole new forms 00:22:47.812 --> 00:22:51.181 of social control that don't even depend on the state. 00:22:51.181 --> 00:22:54.572 I mean, they're still built on the foundation of the prisons 00:22:54.572 --> 00:22:55.938 and everything else that already exists. 00:22:55.938 --> 00:22:57.977 But they're doing a whole other level of thing 00:22:57.977 --> 00:23:01.485 that the state is kind of trying to use and catch up with, 00:23:01.485 --> 00:23:03.699 but isn't primarily behind 00:23:03.699 --> 00:23:06.425 and even isn't really necessarily that good at doing. 00:23:06.425 --> 00:23:08.574 One really important aspect of it is 00:23:08.574 --> 00:23:11.957 the degree to which it is marketed as voluntary. 00:23:11.957 --> 00:23:14.881 That everybody chooses to get a facebook account, 00:23:14.881 --> 00:23:17.158 and you have an option of not having a facebook account. 00:23:17.158 --> 00:23:19.195 But the way the society is being structured, 00:23:19.195 --> 00:23:22.117 there's less and less real choice involved 00:23:22.117 --> 00:23:23.702 in whether we have a facebook account, 00:23:23.702 --> 00:23:25.127 or whether we have a cell phone. 00:23:25.127 --> 00:23:28.174 Your cell phone, and especially your smart phone, 00:23:28.174 --> 00:23:30.937 is probably one of the largest vulnerabilities 00:23:30.937 --> 00:23:33.854 that you have as an activist. 00:23:33.854 --> 00:23:36.339 It's got your photographs, your contacts, 00:23:36.339 --> 00:23:38.293 your calendar, your email. 00:23:38.293 --> 00:23:40.867 Y'know, every aspect of your life 00:23:40.867 --> 00:23:43.007 can often be contained on this phone. 00:23:43.007 --> 00:23:45.968 Phones actually have two computers running in them. 00:23:45.968 --> 00:23:47.488 There's the main computer, 00:23:47.488 --> 00:23:49.586 and that can be mostly running free software. 00:23:49.586 --> 00:23:51.773 Then there's a second computer called the baseband, 00:23:51.773 --> 00:23:53.846 and it connects to the cell phone towers. 00:23:53.846 --> 00:23:56.204 That part of the phone is running software 00:23:56.204 --> 00:23:57.531 that we don't control at all. 00:23:57.531 --> 00:23:59.110 It seems, at least in some cases, 00:23:59.110 --> 00:24:02.901 that the tower has control of the phone via the baseband. 00:24:02.901 --> 00:24:07.897 And often the baseband kind of can just override the main CPU. 00:24:07.897 --> 00:24:09.935 Even if you turn off the phone, 00:24:09.935 --> 00:24:12.941 your phone can be used to locate you. 00:24:12.941 --> 00:24:16.848 It can be used as a microphone and/or a camera. 00:24:16.848 --> 00:24:20.464 And you really have no sure way of knowing 00:24:20.464 --> 00:24:23.149 whether any of those things are occurring, 00:24:23.149 --> 00:24:24.944 even if you turn off the phone. 00:24:24.944 --> 00:24:27.423 And then the tower is obviously controlled 00:24:27.423 --> 00:24:29.007 completely by the telecom companies, 00:24:29.007 --> 00:24:30.708 who are working closely with the state. 00:24:30.708 --> 00:24:34.019 Or, more directly, via stingrays, 00:24:34.019 --> 00:24:36.364 which are the things that police agencies are buying up 00:24:36.364 --> 00:24:39.600 all over the place that create a fake cell phone tower 00:24:39.600 --> 00:24:43.630 that the phones connect to, and then they get direct access. 00:24:47.698 --> 00:24:49.321 Back in the 16th century, 00:24:49.321 --> 00:24:51.641 when Sir Francis Bacon first coined the phrase 00:24:51.641 --> 00:24:52.687 “Knowledge is Power”, 00:24:52.687 --> 00:24:54.432 he was talking about how awesome 00:24:54.432 --> 00:24:56.584 he thought the Scientific Method was. 00:24:59.504 --> 00:25:03.048 But it wasn’t long before this homage to scientific empiricism 00:25:03.048 --> 00:25:04.820 was twisted and appropriated 00:25:04.820 --> 00:25:07.480 by the cheerleaders of authoritarian rule. 00:25:07.480 --> 00:25:10.413 These days, the adage is more likely to be framed 00:25:10.413 --> 00:25:12.850 and used as an ominous desk ornament 00:25:12.850 --> 00:25:16.591 by some mid-level party member of a national intelligence agency, 00:25:16.591 --> 00:25:19.692 in order to pad their ego and impress their secretary. 00:25:19.692 --> 00:25:21.840 Maybe in Latin... if they’re really edgy. 00:25:21.840 --> 00:25:23.627 The truth contained in these words, 00:25:23.627 --> 00:25:24.958 however, goes both ways. 00:25:24.958 --> 00:25:28.823 It's undoubtedly true that states and surveillance capitalist firms 00:25:28.823 --> 00:25:32.271 have unprecedented levels of knowledge at their disposal, 00:25:32.271 --> 00:25:34.693 which they use to increase their already considerable 00:25:34.693 --> 00:25:36.786 military and policing power. 00:25:36.786 --> 00:25:38.706 But it's also true that their methods 00:25:38.706 --> 00:25:40.441 for gathering intelligence depend, 00:25:40.441 --> 00:25:43.607 at least in part, on our ignorance of what they're up to, 00:25:43.607 --> 00:25:46.170 and our willingness to fall for their traps. 00:25:46.170 --> 00:25:47.716 Arming our movements with the knowledge 00:25:47.716 --> 00:25:49.787 of how our enemies gather intelligence, 00:25:49.787 --> 00:25:52.106 and adapting our tactics accordingly, 00:25:52.106 --> 00:25:54.914 is an important component of building our own power. 00:25:54.914 --> 00:25:57.881 Power that grows as we more effectively challenge 00:25:57.881 --> 00:25:59.869 their systems of social control. 00:26:00.029 --> 00:26:04.394 Don't overestimate the state's capacity, or the cops' capacity. 00:26:04.394 --> 00:26:07.547 Don't underestimate it, but don't overestimate it. 00:26:07.547 --> 00:26:10.569 They know some things, but they don't know shit. 00:26:10.569 --> 00:26:14.069 Their intelligence gathering, unless you are absolutely the target, 00:26:14.069 --> 00:26:15.191 is not very good. 00:26:15.191 --> 00:26:17.724 Each bureaucracy is doing its own intelligence gathering, 00:26:17.724 --> 00:26:19.953 has its own chain of command, and then intelligence tends to stay 00:26:19.953 --> 00:26:22.798 in each of those bureaucracies and become trapped in like a silo. 00:26:22.798 --> 00:26:27.350 As much as states and empires try to be, like, 00:26:27.350 --> 00:26:29.658 “we're all powerful.... we can stop whatever we want”, 00:26:29.658 --> 00:26:32.314 they very obviously cannot stop encryption. 00:26:32.314 --> 00:26:33.571 And that's something to build on. 00:26:33.571 --> 00:26:37.583 Digital encryption is basically a way of using computers 00:26:37.583 --> 00:26:38.964 to hide information. 00:26:38.964 --> 00:26:41.504 One of the most basic kinds of encryption is 00:26:41.504 --> 00:26:44.575 you have data stored somewhere... you encrypt it in that place. 00:26:44.575 --> 00:26:46.726 Local disk encryption can be done 00:26:46.726 --> 00:26:49.853 using a program called Veracrypt. 00:26:49.853 --> 00:26:51.115 It gets more complicated obviously, 00:26:51.115 --> 00:26:52.903 when there's multiple people involved, 00:26:52.903 --> 00:26:55.399 like when you're doing encrypted communication. 00:26:55.399 --> 00:26:58.217 For email the best way that I've found 00:26:58.217 --> 00:27:02.601 is using Thunderbird and an add-on called Enigmail. 00:27:02.601 --> 00:27:05.753 If you have a smart phone you can do everything 00:27:05.753 --> 00:27:07.525 in a program called Signal. 00:27:07.525 --> 00:27:13.741 You need to use tools that you understand, based on the risk threat. 00:27:13.741 --> 00:27:15.639 So I can drive around a car 00:27:15.639 --> 00:27:19.133 and I don't understand exactly how that car works, 00:27:19.133 --> 00:27:21.741 but I need a basic understanding of that tool set. 00:27:21.741 --> 00:27:24.342 However if I'm using that car in such a way 00:27:24.342 --> 00:27:26.044 where if the car breaks down, 00:27:26.044 --> 00:27:29.631 me and the people I love get thrown in jail for a decade or more, 00:27:29.631 --> 00:27:32.550 then I better have a really good fucking understanding 00:27:32.550 --> 00:27:34.511 of exactly how that car works. 00:27:34.511 --> 00:27:37.440 We have to support infrastructures that are based more 00:27:37.440 --> 00:27:40.975 in the social relations that we want to be reflected in our world. 00:27:40.975 --> 00:27:42.098 It's not just about surveillance. 00:27:42.098 --> 00:27:44.055 It's ultimately about social control, 00:27:44.055 --> 00:27:46.383 which is a more active process 00:27:46.383 --> 00:27:48.336 than just knowing what people are saying. 00:27:48.336 --> 00:27:49.998 Facebook is controlling people. 00:27:49.998 --> 00:27:53.714 When we say their business model is based on advertising, 00:27:53.714 --> 00:27:56.817 really what that's saying is get enough information about people 00:27:56.817 --> 00:27:59.172 to be able to control their behaviour. 00:27:59.172 --> 00:28:01.277 And it can be like a literally person-by-person 00:28:01.277 --> 00:28:03.122 individualized version of the world, 00:28:03.122 --> 00:28:04.460 to try to influence how they're going to act 00:28:04.460 --> 00:28:05.412 and what they're going to say. 00:28:05.412 --> 00:28:07.373 We decided that these would be the social norms now, 00:28:07.373 --> 00:28:08.894 and we just went for it. 00:28:08.894 --> 00:28:12.109 Security culture, at its core, 00:28:12.109 --> 00:28:15.355 involves knowledge and understanding. 00:28:15.355 --> 00:28:20.928 Developing personal relationships, face-to-face relationships, 00:28:20.928 --> 00:28:25.118 affinity groups, trusting friendships and comradery 00:28:25.118 --> 00:28:30.058 is probably the most effective form of security culture that we have. 00:28:30.058 --> 00:28:33.610 Things like Brandon Darby create media sensation for us 00:28:33.610 --> 00:28:35.472 because they are so rare. 00:28:35.472 --> 00:28:38.159 Because it costs so much in resources for them 00:28:38.159 --> 00:28:40.358 to actually do infiltration, 00:28:40.358 --> 00:28:42.670 for them to actually do the heavy surveillance. 00:28:42.670 --> 00:28:45.111 Whenever Brenda and Khalid were “on a play”, 00:28:45.111 --> 00:28:47.601 and that's what they call when they're at work, 00:28:47.601 --> 00:28:49.250 it's not just them that's being paid, 00:28:49.250 --> 00:28:52.139 but it's also their two handlers who are sitting in a car. 00:28:52.139 --> 00:28:56.544 It's also all of the people who are, y'know, typing out their notes, 00:28:56.544 --> 00:28:58.207 and who are holding the debriefs, 00:28:58.207 --> 00:29:00.705 and who are doing all of the bureaucratic work. 00:29:00.705 --> 00:29:03.421 So it's a really expensive operation. 00:29:03.421 --> 00:29:05.698 So there's absolutely no way that they could afford 00:29:05.698 --> 00:29:09.017 to do that unless they had a big event to use as an excuse. 00:29:09.017 --> 00:29:11.217 What we didn't factor in was that 00:29:11.217 --> 00:29:15.525 there was a billion dollar security budget for the G20. 00:29:15.525 --> 00:29:17.272 I mean there's a lot of explanations we could give 00:29:17.272 --> 00:29:19.829 for our kind of unpreparedness towards that, 00:29:19.829 --> 00:29:21.351 and one is that we don't necessarily take ourselves 00:29:21.351 --> 00:29:23.565 super seriously as threats. 00:29:23.565 --> 00:29:25.641 And that we might have this rhetoric of wanting to 00:29:25.641 --> 00:29:26.800 produce radical transformation 00:29:26.800 --> 00:29:28.203 and destroy all forms of authority. 00:29:28.203 --> 00:29:30.470 But that we don't necessarily take ourselves 00:29:30.470 --> 00:29:32.584 as seriously as that intention merits. 00:29:32.584 --> 00:29:35.986 One of the main goals of surveillance and infiltration 00:29:35.986 --> 00:29:38.850 is to disrupt the organizing that we're doing. 00:29:38.850 --> 00:29:41.456 The police are always going to be kind of testing you 00:29:41.456 --> 00:29:42.962 and sending in informants and seeing if they can get 00:29:42.962 --> 00:29:44.089 different kinds of information, 00:29:44.089 --> 00:29:46.207 because of what of your ideas are and because of your decision 00:29:46.207 --> 00:29:48.238 to situate yourself as an enemy of this society. 00:29:48.238 --> 00:29:50.758 It is the modus operandi of the state 00:29:50.758 --> 00:29:54.247 to use informants, infiltrators, and forms of disruption 00:29:54.247 --> 00:29:57.027 to keep political and social engagements 00:29:57.027 --> 00:29:58.227 and movements from happening. 00:29:58.227 --> 00:29:59.467 Sometimes folks will try to say that 00:29:59.467 --> 00:30:00.395 when you have a cop in your group 00:30:00.395 --> 00:30:02.011 it doesn't matter if you're not doing anything illegal. 00:30:02.011 --> 00:30:04.280 And in this situation, we totally were doing illegal things. 00:30:04.280 --> 00:30:06.522 Like, I was doing exactly what they accused me of doing. 00:30:06.522 --> 00:30:08.761 But even if the police aren't trying to build up charges, 00:30:08.761 --> 00:30:11.515 their goal is to maintain this sort of permanent level of disruption. 00:30:11.515 --> 00:30:14.400 There's only one golden rule when it comes to talking to cops, 00:30:14.400 --> 00:30:15.987 is “don't fucking talk to cops.” 00:30:15.987 --> 00:30:18.991 If you suspect someone of being a snitch or a cop, 00:30:18.991 --> 00:30:20.687 don't come out to your movement 00:30:20.687 --> 00:30:24.390 or to the public before you are absolutely sure. 00:30:24.390 --> 00:30:26.297 You don't have to snitch-jacket someone 00:30:26.297 --> 00:30:31.340 in order to protect yourself and to further your strategic, 00:30:31.340 --> 00:30:33.710 effective organizing efforts. 00:30:33.710 --> 00:30:37.265 I think if we had a way to talk to each other 00:30:37.265 --> 00:30:40.032 about these things in a way that wasn't gossipy 00:30:40.032 --> 00:30:41.977 and didn't start rumours, 00:30:41.977 --> 00:30:44.299 we would have caught on a lot earlier 00:30:44.299 --> 00:30:46.524 that a lot of people had concerns about Khalid. 00:30:46.524 --> 00:30:49.119 Having some level of practice in which you get to know each other 00:30:49.119 --> 00:30:50.908 and kind of check each others' back stories a little bit 00:30:50.908 --> 00:30:52.907 can be a way of just building trust 00:30:52.907 --> 00:30:54.940 and of demonstrating a kind of seriousness and commitment. 00:30:54.940 --> 00:30:59.846 We need to build explicit parameters for what we're vouching. 00:30:59.846 --> 00:31:01.477 So we could be vouching 00:31:01.477 --> 00:31:04.237 “is this person who they say that they are?” 00:31:04.237 --> 00:31:08.262 And then we need to set a criteria for how we know. 00:31:08.262 --> 00:31:11.393 And you need to make all these uncomfortable conversations 00:31:11.393 --> 00:31:13.304 about vouching explicit. 00:31:13.304 --> 00:31:15.046 Being intentional about checking each others' stories, 00:31:15.046 --> 00:31:17.030 so that it's not just something you do to people you don't trust, 00:31:17.030 --> 00:31:19.077 but something you do to people you want to trust more. 00:31:19.077 --> 00:31:21.669 If we don't build trust with each other, 00:31:21.669 --> 00:31:23.125 fear becomes the winner. 00:31:23.125 --> 00:31:25.245 And you cannot make revolution, 00:31:25.245 --> 00:31:27.241 you cannot create liberatory spaces, 00:31:27.241 --> 00:31:30.850 you cannot create liberatory openings based solely on fear. 00:31:30.850 --> 00:31:33.007 We must stand on the edge of our potential 00:31:33.007 --> 00:31:34.922 and see what's on the other side. 00:31:34.922 --> 00:31:37.023 And be willing to take those risks. 00:31:37.023 --> 00:31:39.223 But we must do that pragmatically. 00:31:39.223 --> 00:31:41.977 If we understand the role that intelligence plays, 00:31:41.977 --> 00:31:44.757 it can maybe allow us to try to be a little more opaque ourselves, 00:31:44.757 --> 00:31:46.573 to be a little bit less easily surveilled. 00:31:46.573 --> 00:31:50.208 But also to be a bit more resistant to the inevitable repression, 00:31:50.208 --> 00:31:52.237 and be a little bit less scared of it when it does fall. 00:31:52.237 --> 00:31:53.900 Because ultimately we can't prevent repression 00:31:53.900 --> 00:31:55.484 ... I don't think it's useful to try to. 00:31:55.484 --> 00:31:58.776 I think it's useful to ask ourselves how can we achieve our goals, 00:31:58.776 --> 00:32:01.173 and how can we be prepared for the consequences. 00:32:03.532 --> 00:32:05.809 As states and corporations scramble to develop 00:32:05.809 --> 00:32:09.409 increasingly sophisticated ways to monitor and control dissent, 00:32:09.409 --> 00:32:11.408 in a desperate attempt to predict threats 00:32:11.408 --> 00:32:13.515 that might challenge their continued dominance, 00:32:13.515 --> 00:32:16.377 it is critical that our resistance movements develop 00:32:16.377 --> 00:32:18.797 strategies and effective techniques that allow for 00:32:18.797 --> 00:32:21.638 the decentralized spread of self-organization, 00:32:21.638 --> 00:32:24.687 and methods of communication that thwart their attempts 00:32:24.687 --> 00:32:26.773 to stay one step ahead of us. 00:32:26.773 --> 00:32:28.540 So at this point, we’d like to remind you 00:32:28.540 --> 00:32:31.107 that Trouble is intended to be watched in groups, 00:32:31.107 --> 00:32:34.071 and to be used as a resource to promote discussion 00:32:34.071 --> 00:32:35.692 and collective organizing. 00:32:35.692 --> 00:32:38.180 Feel like anarchists and other activists in your town 00:32:38.180 --> 00:32:40.028 could use a primer on security culture? 00:32:40.028 --> 00:32:42.651 Please consider getting together with some comrades, 00:32:42.651 --> 00:32:45.412 screening this film and discussing what steps people can take 00:32:45.412 --> 00:32:48.985 to help protect your communities from infiltration and surveillance. 00:32:48.985 --> 00:32:51.376 Interested in running regular screenings of Trouble 00:32:51.376 --> 00:32:53.657 at your campus, infoshop, community center, 00:32:53.657 --> 00:32:55.487 or even just at your home with friends? 00:32:55.487 --> 00:32:57.033 Become a Trouble-Maker! 00:32:57.033 --> 00:32:58.743 For 10 bucks a month, we’ll hook you up 00:32:58.743 --> 00:33:00.362 with an advanced copy of the show, 00:33:00.362 --> 00:33:03.082 and a screening kit featuring additional resources 00:33:03.082 --> 00:33:06.016 and some questions you can use to get a discussion going. 00:33:06.016 --> 00:33:08.859 If you can’t afford to support us financially, no worries! 00:33:08.859 --> 00:33:11.943 You can stream and/or download all our content for free 00:33:11.943 --> 00:33:15.474 off our website: sub.media/trouble. 00:33:15.474 --> 00:33:18.356 If you’ve got any suggestions for show topics, 00:33:18.356 --> 00:33:19.692 or just wanna get in touch, 00:33:19.692 --> 00:33:23.713 drop us a line at trouble@sub.media 00:33:23.713 --> 00:33:25.373 We’re excited to see that people have been 00:33:25.373 --> 00:33:27.737 supporting our work by becoming troublemakers, 00:33:27.737 --> 00:33:30.817 and wanna send a shout-out to Justin, Ram Philly, 00:33:30.817 --> 00:33:36.025 Alex, SIU, Douglas, Jay, Adam, Joe, Scott, Michael, 00:33:36.025 --> 00:33:39.236 Matt, Filip, Stephen, Zach and David. 00:33:39.236 --> 00:33:41.350 We also wanna send a big shout out 00:33:41.350 --> 00:33:45.206 to new Troublemaker chapters in Toronto & Washington DC. 00:33:45.206 --> 00:33:47.121 This episode would not have been possible 00:33:47.121 --> 00:33:50.778 without the generous support of Ryan, Matthew, Rodrigue and Amelie. 00:33:50.778 --> 00:33:53.692 Now get out there, and make some trouble!