This week, we’re featuring four segments.

First up, you’ll hear a chat with organizers of the 2024 Heart of the Valley Anticapitalist Bookfair which ran its first iteration in Corvallis, Oregon from January 19-21st.  A zine of their experiences will appear on that blog soon. [ -> 00:24:18 ]

• HOTV Bookfair Transcript
• PDF (Unimposed)
• Zine (Imposed PDF)

Then, you’ll hear a brief segment updating listeners on the conspiracy case against six anarchists and antifascists in Russia known as the Tyumen case (for where it initiated). The six anarchists, some of whom barely knew each other, were tortured into confessions of conspiracy to further anarchist ideology and damage the Russian war machine. [ 00:24:34 – 00:32:53 ]

• Transcription
• PDF (Unimposed)
• Zine (Imposed)

Following this, we spoke with Aster, a European anarchist involved in the counter-surveillance and anti-repression project known as the No Trace Project which works to share information about known methods and cases of state surveillance. The project does this in order to improve and expand our collective knowledge, tools and abilities at evading state crackdowns as we organize and act. This interview was conducted via encrypted messages and Aster’s portion is being read by an unrelated volunteer. [ 00:35:47 – 01:05:18 ]

• Transcript in English
• Transcription en Français
• PDF (Unimposed)
• Zine (Imposed)

If you plan to visit their site, we suggest at least running a VPN (riseup.net has a free one) and using an anonymized browser. One method is to download the tor browser (find your device/operating system at ssd.eff.org for some tips) and visit the NoTrace Project tor address. Their website can also be found at https://NoTrace.How

Finally, you’ll hear Sean Swain’s reading of names of people killed by cops in the USA during October of 2023. [ 01:09:50 ]

Tyumen Links

• Tyumen Case Support Crew’s Russian-language Telegram: https://t.me/tumenskoedelo
• Articles on the case and individuals on Avtonom: https://avtonom.org/en/taxonomy/term/1761
• Music by some of the imprisoned men appear in a compilation to fundraise for their legal funds: https://blackploshad.bandcamp.com/album/music-of-antifascist-prisoners-tortured-by-the-police-tyumen-case

. … . ..

Featured Tracks:

• День дизертира ( Deserter’s Day) by Rasputin
• Меланхолия (Melancholy) by Rocker Balboa

. … . ..

Heart of the Valley Bookfair

TFSR: So we’re joined by some of the organizers from the 2024 Heart of the Valley Anti-Capitalist Bookfair, thank you so much for joining us. Would you mind sharing your names—any names, doesn’t have to be your name, just a name—gender pronouns, or other info that you’d like to help out the audience with?

A: Howdy, I’m A, and I use she/her pronouns.

B: I am B, and I use she/they pronouns.

A: Thank you so much for having us. Long time, first time, etc…

TFSR: Ah, shucks. Thank you. Appreciate that. Yeah, could you tell us a bit about Corvallis, things like its size, its layout, economy, location, just sort of set the stage for the listeners?

A: Yeah, so I would say the Corvallis is not totally dissimilar from Asheville. We are a pretty small, rural community located in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. We have a population of about 60,000 people. Corvallis is kind of located on a little bit off the I-5 corridor. So if you think about where Portland and Eugene are, we’re more or less right between them. So we are sort of surrounded by simultaneously like some of the biggest, most left-wing cities in America, as well as like a lot of a very, very, rural right wing, kind of timber and farm communities. Corvallis is a college town. We have Oregon State University here, and that kind of has made it so that Corvallis is, I guess, pretty liberal, left-wing, but not entirely. Yeah, it’s definitely a smaller place. But it has lots of elements of left-wing and alternative culture that have been present in maybe lesser capacities than like Portland and Eugene but have been present for a very long time. Do you have anything you want to add to that?

B: I guess specifics on how the the city iss chopped up. It’s kind of like trisected. There’s a Southtown and downtown and a Northtown with suburbs in between all that. And you can kind of see economic disparities between all that, like a lot of the richer people live in the north, and then, you know, working class homies are in the south. That’s kind of typical with a lot of cities, but I guess it’s kind of important to mention.

TFSR: Cool. How much sway does the university play in the city? I’m sure it’s, like, kind of oversized, right?

A: Oh yeah, massively. The college kind of runs the town, you know, and does all kinds of fucked up shit to its workers and the city at large. There’s I believe three unions at the university actively fighting, and many of us like the workers there live on poverty wages. So that’s kind of a big struggle that is coming up the pipeline for a lot of those of us who are organizing out here.

TFSR: And is it—university aside, or including—but is it a pretty diverse place? Is it pretty white? I know that a lot of towns and cities in the northwest either have, like, large Native populations there, or have a lot of folks from East Asia who have settled in the area, or from Latin America. How would you [describe it]?

B: Yeah, it’s pretty aggressively white. I’d say a lot of the diversity comes from the school and folks coming from where they’re at wherever they’re from, but other than that, you might find some pockets of, I don’t know… I know some Guatemalan families that stay here. I know some families from China here. But it’s majority white.

TFSR: Cool, thank you. Context. So I’d love to hear a thumbnail sketch of what was offered at the book fair this January, like who attended and what sort of things happened?

A: Yeah, so the book fair was sick. We took a lot of inspiration from ACAB book fair in Asheville. That was kind of our primary model. And we organized it not so much as one book fair event, but as a sort of three day long festival across a bunch of different venues. So we had, I think, six different venues, over a dozen events. We had three different parties. We had multiple shows, we had workshops, we had book talks… Yeah, all kinds of different stuff. It was super, super cool. And I think was like a really, really positive thing for our area.

TFSR: Yeah, that’s really exciting. And I’m sure that Asheville organizers will be really stoked to hear that. Well, you’ve kind of talked about how the city has, and surrounding communities have, some sort of like radical temperament to them, and have for a while. There is an existent radical community in the area, and being between those two other cities that have a long-standing politically left flavor, I guess, is not disconnected. Yeah, but I wonder what goals you had for the book fair in terms of relating to ongoing organizing, or spaces, or community in the area and sort of maybe even cementing ties between those three cities.

A: I think that that was a huge goal. And just finding a physical space where a lot of people from a lot of different tendencies and backgrounds could be together and interact and forge friendships and working relationships. I think that was huge. One thing that’s really awesome about Corvallis, I think, is because we are sort of a smaller population, we aren’t really subject to a lot of the really nasty sectarianism and drama that pervades the scenes in Portland and Eugene and other places in the state. So you know, it was kind of a nice, neutral ground where I think a lot of different people who have different backgrounds and tendencies could get to interface with each other. And also get to know our local organizing, because I think a lot of what we do locally is very cut off from statewide networks, because so many organizers from urban centers really only focus on urban centers and don’t really ever look to rural places for inspiration or collaboration.

TFSR: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That’s kind of similar to what… I mean, there’s definitely competitions for space or, you know, feels that come up in Asheville around alphabet soup leftist organizations, like PSL, taking a lot of space and doing it badly. But even just kind of off the cuff, there’s no, among anti-authoritarians, no strong organization that is… there’s no Black Rose chapter here. Actually I don’t think there’s an IWW chapter here at the moment. And I’ve seen over the like the last decade and a half or so of living here, that as opposed to growing up in the outer reaches of the Bay Area, you would see whatever leftist organizations, peace and justice centers, Marxist political parties, whatever, all sort of taking space, and that takes a lot of your your head and it kind of divides the lines in the community. So it’s nice if in a smaller place where people have less capacity, they they’re kind of forced to get along with each other a little bit better and work through disagreements, right?

B: Yeah, I think that’s pretty accurate.

TFSR: So I know you all have a zine coming out about the first book fair, which seems pretty informative, from what I’ve seen of it. Not to hash out all the details that folks can later read on their own, but what are some of the takeaway lessons that you had from this first one? Things that worked well, or things that you’d do different?

B: Really good communication with your venues, because if you want to have events again, you might want to maintain very frequent relationships. Even if you’re not doing book fairs every year, you’re going to be doing different types of events. And this can work in kind of both ways where it can open up really awesome relationships with places that you might have never been before. But it can also be a point of criticism for how you’re communicating during the book fair for how it might go after.

A: Yeah, I think another kind of takeaway that we received critique on—because after our book fair, we put out a survey and we kind of asked our community like, “Hey, we think we did this really cool thing, but tell us how we fucked up, how can we do better next time.” And another thing that people talked a lot about was the different sort of speakers and stuff that we had, because we had a bunch of workshops that we just kind of, we put we put an application out into the universe that was like, “Hey, radical people who want to put on a workshop, you can do it.” And we accepted more or less every workshop application we had gotten. And pretty much all of those workshops were run by white people. And also it should be said that for some of them people who attended felt they were just kind of boring or not relevant or did not really represent the politics that they were wanting to learn about, especially. That’s something we got criticism on from new people to the left who were like, “I’m trying to get involved, and I’m stuck in a very weird, intense theoretical discussion that I have no understanding of.” So I think we’re really going to try to do more curation of like content in the future and less kind of laissez-faire whoever applies gets to gets to do something.

TFSR: So to touch on those two, chronologically, I guess… With the reaching out to the venues, is that because venues will end up forgetting that they told you that you’ve got a date saved and then give it away or because of capacity questions or the nature of the event? What sort of miscommunication was experienced there.

B: I think it was a lot of the places that we frequent and have events at before the book fair we already had a pretty great relationship with. So while it was happening, it was, at least for some places that we were at, expected to be doing a similar sized event, and there was a misunderstanding of scale, I think. So now, when we bring, I don’t know, 100+ people into these places where we’re doing like maybe 20-50 on a weekend or something, it’s like, whoa, this is like a different ball game here. So I guess being more clear about your group’s scale. Also getting contracts, if you have a place in mind for making your book fair happen, just so there’s some guarantees and some some lines drawn, just making sure you don’t cross any boundaries with with where you’re booking.

A: Yeah, we also just didn’t like lots of little, tiny things that got messed up, just like miscommunication about where to put XYZ thing away. Are we are we using your printer too much, stuff like that. And ultimately, if we want to do something that is like an institution in our community, we have to work to foster those relationships, I think. A lot of those little tiny details and courtesies that we would be engaged in otherwise get kind of lost when you’re hosting this giant thing and there’s a couple hundred people in a room that you have to facilitate all the things for, so I think that just kind of slips away.

TFSR: Yeah, that makes that makes a lot of sense. Did you have a sense of how many people were going to show up beforehand? I can’t imagine how you would have really. It’s not like everyone’s going to RSVP. Although you did have like a housing signup, right?

B: That is true. Yeah, I think everybody had a different answer for how many people we thought were going to show up. A and I thought it was going to be higher, or at least slightly higher than the turnout we ended up having. But most people said that the scale was going to be lower than the folks that ended up showing up.

A: I mean, we definitely knew that it was going to be really quite big, just because of the sheer amount of engagement we were getting on social media and just the amount of different people that we knew would be in attendance because they were going to be tabling or doing workshops or whatever else. But yeah, it did kind of take us by surprise. We also, in the response forms that we received, kind of got a criticism that some of the spaces were really, really tightly packed. We did a film screening, and it was standing room only, and people had to, like, sit on each other’s labs, and were literally falling out of the room that we had it in. And then similarly with workshops. And we really need to be thoughtful of how many people will actually show up to this and we definitely are probably going to invest in bigger venues and spaces next year when we do it.

TFSR: Yeah, and and considering the time of the year when this occurred, when the weather wouldn’t be that happy for people to be opening the doors and just kind of standing outside. That makes a lot of sense. With the presenter curation stuff, did you, or do you have any plans—assuming that you’re going to have a next one—for taking a survey from people of what kinds of things they’d like to see, either just out into the universe or among the tablers? Like people that are going to be invested in being there? Do you have any thoughts on that?

B: I think that would be a great approach for before we put out our “who wants to do a workshop” call, because I feel like we started with asking folks what they could do instead of what they wanted to do, or asking our “audience” what they would want to see out of a workshop. And in that regard, we were able to vet a lot of our workshops a little bit better, because we were like, oh, we know that these people do this thing, and they’re down to do workshop on self-defense. We understood that people have their specialties—of folks we knew personally—and that was just an easier process. But I think next year, it would behoove us to put out a call of, like, what are some things folks saw last year for the workshops that they want to see again, and then what are some new things that people might be interested in, and maybe even adding some examples too. Yeah, I think that that’d be a great idea.

TFSR: Yeah, so I mean, do you do you have plans for subsequent book fair? Is it too soon to talk? I mean, this only just happened a month and a half ago-ish.

B: It’s potentially a little too soon to talk. But I think we had some really awesome bones from this one that we’re going to apply to the next one. And with just applying the bits and critiques and experiences that we have.

A: I think we’re definitely going to do a next one. I think the current plan is to shoot for fall of 2025, because the weather was so gnarly for our thing that we don’t want to do it exactly a year later. So our thought is kind of do it during fall and maybe provide a bunch of the new students who are coming back with an awesome nexus point to plug in with a bunch of local organizing and see what cool radical stuff is happening in Corvallis.

B: I also want to add context that, actually the week of the book fair, we had an ice storm here and it completely froze over the city, which canceled a lot of folks’ plans, but it was still awesome turnout, considering.

TFSR: Yeah, that’s great. With the Asheville Book Fair last year, being that it happened in the high heat of August, in the south, in a rain forest—it was not freezing temperatures, and it was not COVID peaks or anything like that—but it was hot as shit. So the windows were open, and it also ended up raining super hard throughout it, to the point that people inside a venue sometimes could not really be heard by the audiences. If you listen to any of the recordings that are up on the website for the radio show, you can hear like, when Modibo Kadalie is speaking, it’s just pounding rain. You can hear cars passing by and splashing water because the windows are open because it’s so hot. It was ridiculous. I guess you can’t really control that sort of stuff. But yeah, that makes a lot of sense to try to move it to a time of year when you’re not going to have to deal with ice storms for sure. Do you have any social media or web presence where we can point listeners to check out a list of what was happening during the book fair or your announcements and stuff or where the zine is going to come out? Are there any places online where this year’s event are documented?

A: Yeah, our website is hotvbookfair.noblogs.org, and that’s where you’ll see our full plenary of events. We will also put the zine there when we publish it. All of the social media went through a group in town that we do event planning stuff through called Fuchsia, so it’s on Instagram @fuchsia.corv.

TFSR: Yeah. I keep harping on the zine, but it was something that I was hoping the Asheville folks would put together as a documentation of the process just so someone could pick it up and take it back to Athens, Georgia or Greensboro or Knoxville and say we want to have a radical or anarchist book fair maybe we don’t want to be starting from scratch, and then be able to look at the zine and say to yourself, “Let’s make a list of the resources that we’ve already got. What venues do we have connections with? What bands are around here?” It seems like a really useful. I don’t know if it’s designed for perpetuity for Corvallis, or if it’s a little starter for other communities, or what folks are thinking about that.

A: That’s definitely like kind of the goal that we had. I think that we were really successful in the organizing that we did, and I feel like we brought a lot of things to this space that other book fairs could have really used to be better, things that I would have liked to see in other book fairs that I’ve been to. I would hope that folks do sort of see that and maybe consider implementing stuff into their own projects, because I want more radical spaces to be happening across the PNW and wherever, and if we can help that happen that would be sick.

B: Yeah, based on where the zine is at right now it’s pretty replicable in a lot of places, and we acknowledge that it’s not going to look the same as the one we have here, and that’s completely okay. And it should be like that. More radical spaces, let’s see it happen.

A: Yeah, the final thing that I will say to your listeners is we didn’t really have any experience at all doing any event of this scale really ever. And if you want to see this thing happen in your town, you can put together something really cool by getting together a couple of your friends and really throwing some effort at something. It’s not that hard to do. You can make really sick stuff out of thin air. So I really recommend y’all try to do it if you can.

TFSR: Yeah, and the people that put on these events are often accessible. The Victoria Book Fair was going on for at least a few years. I don’t know if it still is. But starting in 2020, they were doing a huge amount of content online, and a lot of that audio is now available in From Embers podcast feed. There’s a lot of different ways to do it, and depending on the size of what you’ve got available and what you want to see, it could definitely look a lot of ways, which is great.

Well, A and B, thank you so much for having this conversation and for the event, and hopefully, I’ll be able to make it out next time it happens. It’d be fun.

A: Thank you so much for having us.

B: Thanks for having us. Better see you there.

. … . ..

Tyumen Case

TFSR: Would you please introduce yourselves with any names, gender pronouns or affiliations as make sense for this conversation?

Tyumen Cause Support Crew: Unfortunately, as a rule, we do not name names. I think it would be more correct to say that this is an interview with a member of the Tyumen cause support group.

TFSR: Will you introduce us to the so-called Tyumen case? What was alleged by the state to have happened?

TCSC: In short, in August 2022, two friends from Tyumen were detained by patrol officers on the outskirts of the forest, suspecting them of distributing drugs. But instead of drugs, they were found to have a homemade explosive of 300 grams in size. Both were immediately taken to the Department for Combating Extremism and over the next two days, four more young guys were detained: two from Yekaterinburg and two from Surgut. The date of detention indicated in the resolution appears as a day later than the actual detention. During this period of time, all the guys were tortured into giving confessions. Based on the imaginary date of detention, the investigator conducted an interrogation, during which all the guys admitted that they were members of the terrorist community, not forgetting to also indicate the involvement of the others. That is, according to the state, immediately after the arrest (in fact, the next day), our comrades laid out all the ins-and-outs by admitting to the crime and doing all the work for the Special Services, which sounds ridiculous in itself.

During the year and a half that investigative actions have been ongoing, psychological pressure has not ceased to be exerted on our comrades. Confrontations are held in the same building where the torture took place (the building of the Department for Combating Extremism). Under pressure from the investigation, one of the defendants (Kirill Brik) entered into a pre-trial agreement and testified against the other guys.

Now the defendants and their defenders have moved to the stage of familiarization with the materials of the criminal case.

TFSR: Who are the people who are accused? Can you name them, tell us a bit about each them and why it’s believed the state targeted them?

TCSC: All the detainees, being ideological anarchists and anti-fascists, opposed street neo-Nazism in their cities, and also did not hide their negative attitude towards military actions by Russia. According to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, each participant must have a specific role, but first things first.

Danil Chertykov is the frontman in an underground band called Rocker Balboa in one of the songs he sings “Go through your conscience with a machine gun at the ready, it has long been known that war is not a place for miracles, close your eyes to the truth, get used to someone’s screams, hide behind a sense of duty and throw away humanity”, in another song “Russia, America, China, Ukraine are just pieces of a huge world, a world that does not want war, although different countries, but the same people.” Danil is also a veterinarian, and therefore the investigation assigned him the role of a physician in an imaginary community.

Nikita Oleynik and Roman Paklin jointly opened a free anarchist library in the city of Surgut. And Oleynik is also a fairly well-known figure in the anarchist milieu of Surgut. According to investigators, Nikita Oleinik is a community organizer.

Yura Neznamov was engaged in 3D modeling, and we assume that he was detained because of his acquaintance with Nikita Oleynik. According to investigators, Yura was involved in financial issues in the community.

Deniz Aydin is also a musician, he played in the hardcore band Siberian Brigade and the black metal band Rasputin.

Kirill Brik was also interested in music and created a solo extreme project called m6th in the style of digital grindcore and ambient noise.

Deniz and Kirill were detained with explosives, the investigation called them pyrotechnics.

TFSR: Where did the cases take place? Are these hotbeds of dissident activity?

TCSC: The case itself is being conducted in the city of Tyumen, as I said earlier, the rest of the defendants were detained in the cities of Surgut and Yekaterinburg. It is difficult to say regarding hotbeds of dissident activity, since events related to war, as a rule, do not occur only in one region. Russia is a large country, gripped by the struggle for survival; outbreaks flare up and go out here and there.

TFSR: Are the defendants connected? (being political radicals involved in subcultural music, starting anarchist libraries etc?)

TCSC: All the accused are familiar because they are members of the same subcultural movement and have previously crossed paths at various festivals and concerts. Some of the defendants are better acquainted with each other than others. For example, Roman Paklin and Nikita Oleynik have been close friends for many years. And Danil Chertykov saw Deniz Aydin and Kirill Brik only once in his life and this meeting was very short. I have already reported on the library and musical activities earlier.

TFSR: Can you talk about the torture experienced by the defendants and the lasting effects people suffer?

TCSC: Electric shock, strangulation, bullying, psychological violence, and threats of sexualized violence were used. Nick and Roma were tortured first in an airplane hangar outside the city, then they were brought to the Anti-Extremism Unit and tortured again. The rest were tortured only in the Department for Combating Anti-Extremism. Danil, during the torture, heard Yura’s screams coming from the next office. When asked “what is this” he received the answer “be grateful that you are not lying in your blood, urine and shit right now.” Danil was threatened with reprisals against his partner Alena. After receiving electric shocks, Yura was forced to shout that he loved Putin. Yura also reported in a lawyer’s interview that he was threatened that he would be taken to the border with Ukraine and shot, and Deniz reported that he was threatened that his partner Diana would suffer because of his incorrect testimony. Roman Paklin had serious complications after torture, his eyesight was severely damaged and his hand almost gave out; in response to his requests for treatment, the management of the pre-trial detention center only provided him with painkillers. Currently, Roma is undergoing treatment in the Lebedev psychiatric hospital in the Tyumen region.

TFSR: Could you say that this Tyumen case falls into a pattern with other cases such as the Network or Penza cases of 6 years ago?

TCSC: Of course, the style of conducting a case is absolutely identical in all such cases. The main evidence is always confessions that were given under torture, as well as the unreasonably long process of collecting case materials.

TFSR: Is it alleged that these arrests and charges relate to the war in Ukraine somehow?

TCSC: As far as we know, the investigation indirectly mentions in the charges that the guys were planning to blow up military registration and enlistment offices and railway lines supplying military equipment to the front. However, the indictment does not mention that this is the only and main goal of the guys, but only as an example of the planned activity. The main motivation of the detainees, according to investigators, is directly anarchist ideology. One thing is certain – the screws are being tightened and the most free-thinking groups of the population, such as anarchists, always suffer from this.

TFSR: What do the security services gain from these cases and what do movements lose?

TCSC: Movements are losing cohesion and self-confidence, and the state is consolidating control over the regions. Intelligence agencies, in turn, receive promotions and improve detection statistics.

TFSR: How can people in the international audience provide solidarity for these folks? Is fundraising still going on, can they receive letters, or would international solidarity actions be appreciated? Something else?

TCSC: Fundraising is still relevant, because there are substantial trials ahead, and an impressive amount will be needed to pay for the work of lawyers – about a million rubles. The guys are very happy to receive letters and try to answer them as best they can. We try to cover all events taking place in support of our comrades in our telegram channel. This is very important, because any publicity helps us tell as many people as possible about what is happening.

About information about cases, if we mean the Tyumen case, then we run a telegram channel, as well as an Instagram. If the question concerns other political affairs in Russia, then in our telegram channel we have prepared a folder with the most high-profile cases and people who found themselves in a situation similar to our comrades.

. … . ..

No Trace Project Transcription

TFSR: Would you introduce yourself, a psuedonym and pronoun we can use maybe, what part of the world you’re based in and maybe how you got interested in the technical side of activism?

Aster: You can call me Aster, my preferred pronoun is the singular they. I’m from Europe and I’ve been involved with the No Trace Project since its beginning about three years ago.

If by “technical side” you mean collecting texts and managing a website, I think I’ve always liked this kind of work. It’s calm and ordered work. I think in another life I could have been a librarian.

If by “technical side” you mean working on the topics of surveillance and security: I think it first started some years ago, when I felt frustrated about how comrades around me approached these topics.

I felt that they were spending a lot of time thinking about how to fight cops in the streets, the ones you encounter during demonstrations and riots, and not enough time thinking about how to fight the cops in the offices. And the cops in the offices are the investigators, the intelligence analysts, the ones that are often responsible for sending our comrades to jail for long sentences and disrupting our networks. So, I felt like there was a need to spend more time countering this aspect of repression, the surveillance, the investigations.

Also, I felt like many traditional leftist organizations were working on the issue of mass surveillance, of the “wrongful” surveillance of law-abiding citizens. The revelations made by Snowden in 2013 of the mass surveillance practices of the NSA of course helped to put the focus on that. But I felt like not enough people were working on the issue of targeted surveillance, on what the State does when they target specific people. A number of comrades around the world had of course developed thoughts on this, but I felt that these thoughts were scattered around the Internet and hard to find. So that’s how the No Trace Project started: as a central place to gather zines and articles made by comrades on targeted surveillance, to make them more accessible.

TFSR: Thanks so much for speaking with us. Would you talk about the No Trace Project and how it developed? Did it develop out of any particular surveillance coming to light that you’d want to mention?

Aster: I don’t think it developed out of any specific thing, but I was certainly influenced by surveillance happening around me. Some close friends were facing intense police surveillance and harassment and we didn’t, in my opinion, deal with it appropriately, which led to a lot of disruption in our network, and people getting burned out. A distant friend was arrested after their DNA was found on an intact incendiary device. I was particularly frustrated about DNA in general because so many anarchists worldwide were getting arrested, and are still getting arrested, because of DNA traces. And a number of those arrests look like they could be prevented if people were better informed.

So, anyway, the No Trace Project started in 2021 as a website that collected resources, zines, articles, about surveillance. The website design was really bad at the time, it’s a bit better now. We were collecting stuff but not writing our own content.
Later, we started to feel inspired to write our own content, and we decided to tackle the issue of *threat modeling*. Threat modeling is a formal exercise where you identify the threats you face in a specific context and what you can do about them. So for example, in the context of an action, you identify the techniques that the police could use against you, and how you can protect from those techniques. The result of the exercise, the list of threats, is your *threat model*.
In some anarchist circles, there’s this recurring situation where someone asks what security measures they should take in such or such context, for example if they can take their phone to a demo, or what email provider they should use, and people answer “it depends on your threat model”. But how does one determine what is their threat model? What surveillance techniques are available to the police, and in which contexts? And how can we protect against them? In 2023 we added a new section to our website, the “Threat Library”, to try to answer those questions. It’s a work-in-progress, we’re adding content regularly, feel free to check it out.
Later in 2023 we got in touch with another project called “Ears and Eyes”, a big database of hidden surveillance devices used against anarchists: bugs, hidden cameras, GPS trackers on vehicles. We agreed that it would be good to move their project to our website, so we did that.
And I think that’s all for the current developments.

TFSR: What are some of the shorter and longer term goals of the project?

Aster: In terms of shorter goals I would say to keep our website updated, by adding new resources, new content to our Threat Library, new cases to Ears and Eyes. We have several original publications that should be released soon, including an original zine on physical surveillance, and an English translation of a French zine on DNA. Our Threat Library currently lists about twenty repressive operations that have targeted anarchists around the world and I’d like to add more, to reach maybe forty or fifty operations. We’re also working on various translations with the help of external translators, I’m hoping to have our Threat Library translated to French in the next few months, and probably to Brazilian Portuguese at some point. Maybe German too.
In terms of longer goals, I guess we aim to become a good resource about surveillance and security for anarchists worldwide. I’m not yet sure what this will entail, we’re discovering that as we go on. A sort of vision I have is to encourage the creation of small, decentralized groups working on issues related to surveillance and security and then sharing their work with the larger anarchist movement. A bit like affinity groups of action, but for technical research. Like, imagine a group in one country researching cheap ways to hack or take down police drones, or good protocols against DNA traces, or an analysis of thermal imaging used by police helicopters, and then sharing their research publicly so it can be used or expanded by other groups in other countries. Ideally, I’d like our project to encourage that.

TFSR: We’ve tried our hand in this project years ago to try to talk through some technological surveillance issues and ways people were talking about evading them based on a US model, like having easy access to unregistered sim cards and setting up psuedonymous phones, an attempt to normalize comfort around recognizing the methods we understood the state to employ. Technical knowledge and skills are an area that many people don’t think they have a proclivity for and so becomes specialized, but I think of it more as a series of muscles that you strengthen through use as opposed to something innate and inborn. Is there an element of NoTrace.How of hoping to reach a wider audience who may be on the cusp of increasing their skillsets or is it mostly just directed at those technical research affinity groups?

Aster: Ah yes, that’s a good question. I think in terms of *content*, we want to focus on sort of higher-end security practices, that are relevant to people who risk being targeted by the State, people who risk years or decades in prison. But we do want to encourage everyone to follow these security practices, or at least some of them, and we do want to make them as accessible as possible. We want to encourage everyone to have good security because, even if someone isn’t doing anything too risky, maybe their friend does, or their friend’s friend. Individual security reinforces collective security. And, just to be clear, this is not just about tech security, the majority of our content isn’t about technology. And while some non-technology security practices require developing a specific skill set, for example detecting if you’re being followed by cops, some other just require good communication skills, for example the need-to-know principle, which simply states that sensitive information should only be shared when it is necessary to do so, and to the extent necessary.
So then there’s the question of how to make our project accessible to a variety of people, how to make it a good place to learn. We try to write our original content in a clear way that doesn’t assume too much prior knowledge from our readers. All of our original content is available as printable zines so it can be read and shared away from computers. And, of course, we want to do translations, a lot of translations.
One thing I haven’t talked about yet, that is somewhat related to this topic, is another reason I got involved with the No Trace Project: I wanted to codify knowledge that is often transmitted only informally in anarchist circles. At least in the circles where I was active, many security practices were not codified, were not shared in meetings or written down in zines. For example, it took me years to understand the dangers of DNA because it wasn’t a topic that was discussed openly. Security practices were transmitted informally, sure, but that’s not welcoming of newer or more isolated comrades who may not be part of the informal discussions. I’d like our project to be welcoming of those comrades too.

TFSR: Yeah, that seems like an important point, the codification as you put it, or at least the bringing of those practices to more peoples awareness.

It also seems like there is an opportunity here for spreading the word of instances of movement surveillance and interference, anti-repression organizing and possibly mapping state and para-state strategies and methods so as to build more resilient resistance. Can you talk about this as well as possible repression or shifts in adversarial methodology you all might expect in response to the public exposure of these surveillance methods and tools. Like, could someone face charges for releasing information about this state spying? [please feel free to call out this logic in your response]

Aster: Indeed, I’d like our project to help spread the word about specific instances of repression. About instances of repression, many anarchist groups are focused on solidarity and prisoner support, and while I believe this focus is extremely important, I feel like sometimes the more factual, technical aspects of repression are neglected. So in relation to instances of repression, I’d like our project to focus on, like: “What happened? What happened for these comrades to end up in jail, or for this promising movement to disappear? If they are able to tell us, can we learn from their experiences?” And I guess that showing comrades that we take their experiences seriously and that we are dedicated to learn from them can also be a form of solidarity.
About, will the State adapt because we reveal their strategies? I think at a local level, they can adapt. For example if you notice cops following you in the streets, it’s generally in your advantage to not show them that you noticed them, otherwise they will adapt and be more discreet. But at a global level, I don’t think the State adapts well, and when they adapt I think it’s more likely to be because of new technological developments, for example. At a global level, I think it’s always in our advantage to reveal their strategies.
To the question of if someone could get charges for revealing the State strategies? Yes, certainly, people have been charged for that in the past. As always, whether a person will be charged with something has a lot to do with the political motivation of the State to charge them, which can be hard to predict. And of course, we can try to stay anonymous when we reveal State strategies, to make repression less likely.

TFSR: A lot of these examples of physical surveillance come from Europe, where you mentioned that you are from. I feel like this is the stuff we saw in the USA 15 years ago but doesn’t feel as common these days.

I know the EU has much stricter privacy laws than the USA when it comes to what data tech companies can track. I wonder if this type of physical surveillance is more common in the EU because it’s more necessary. In the US cops can just go to Meta/AT&T/etc. Also, with the rise of Amazon Ring we’re putting the cameras up for them (despite that Amazon recently stated they’ll require warrants for law enforcement access to camera footage). Could you talk about how these material circumstances (operating in the EU versus in Russia or the USA or UK) effect the approach one might take?

Aster: Before answering, I want to acknowledge that at the No Trace Project, our experience is mostly with Western Europe and North America. I’m from Western Europe, and some of our members are from North America. I want to learn more about other parts of the world but I don’t feel confident to speak about them yet.
So, I think that the reasoning you suggest about physical surveillance being less common in the U.S. is flawed; I’ll try to explain why I think that. Just to be clear on the terms, what I mean by “physical surveillance” is the direct observation of a target. This means that a surveillance team is on the ground to watch or follow someone, for example a suspect in a criminal case. A surveillance team is typically composed of at least five officers, and several vehicles. For law enforcement and intelligence agencies, physical surveillance is a resource-intensive and personnel-intensive surveillance method. Because these agencies have limited resources and personnel, this means that physical surveillance isn’t their preferred method: if they can obtain the results they want without using it, they won’t use it. Physical surveillance is used when two factors combine: first, the crime being investigated is a sufficient threat to the State, for example an arson; and second, the suspects being investigated need to be monitored but cannot be monitored by more accessible surveillance methods such as phone monitoring. In some cases investigators try to monitor a suspect’s phone, or their social media, and so on, and when this doesn’t provide the results they want, they resort to physical surveillance. In other cases, investigators know from the start that they won’t be able to monitor a suspect’s phone or social media, for example because the suspect is an anarchist known to have good security, and from the start they resort to physical surveillance.
And the thing is, all of this applies both to Europe and to the U.S. So, why does physical surveillance feel more common in Europe than in the U.S. in recent years? I believe it is simply because in recent years, anarchist attacks viewed by the State as more threatening, such as arson attacks, have been more common in Europe, which has led to a higher number of severe repressive operations, and severe repressive operations are more likely to feature physical surveillance. Roughly, I’d say that there has been a drop in “high-profile” anarchist attacks in the U.S. between the end of the Green Scare in the 2000s and the 2020 uprising. This has led to fewer severe repressive operations, and thus to fewer cases of physical surveillance. Interestingly, our Threat Library references two repressive operations from the U.S. that involved physical surveillance, one is from 2000 and one from 2023, but of course this could be a sampling bias.
So, in short: physical surveillance is probably used in the U.S. too, in particular in places where arson attacks have recently been claimed by anarchists. U.S. anarchists could anticipate the use of physical surveillance by developing an appropriate skill set. To help with that, we’ve recently translated to English a comprehensive German zine on the topic called “Measures Against Surveillance”, which can be found on our website.
A second issue you mention is the impact of E.U. privacy laws on police investigations. I believe this impact is minimal; E.U. privacy laws mostly apply to private companies and not to law enforcement. Police in Europe can and do routinely request data from social medias, email providers, Internet Service Providers, and so on.
But then, the question remains: what are the differences in State repressive techniques between countries, and how can we take these differences into account? This is a good question, and I don’t have a comprehensive answer for it, but I can try to discuss a few examples. As you said, doorbell cameras such as Amazon Ring are particularly widespread in the U.S., which increases the need to dress anonymously when traversing residential neighborhoods during an action. Compared to Western Europe, I think the U.S. justice system more frequently offers immunity or reduced sentences in exchange for snitching, which should probably be taken into account, but how, I don’t know. The practice of hiding microphones and cameras in apartments and GPS trackers on cars seems more widespread in Italy. The use of torture in police custody is more routine in Belarus and Russia. I suspect that the United Kingdom employs more long-term infiltrators than other European countries, but this is hard to quantify.

TFSR: You make good points.

Considering the tools and technology widely available, the question of where do the devices displayed at notrace.how come from bubbles up in my mind. Have comrades been able to determine the sources of the surveillance tools used against them, if they’re coming from personal / social enemies, bosses or mafia, political enemies like authoritarians or fascists, or state actors?

Aster: Ah, yes, you’re talking about our Ears and Eyes project, that lists cases of hidden surveillance devices such as microphones and cameras in apartments, or GPS trackers on cars. We currently list more than a hundred devices, with vast disparities between countries, for example we have 50 cases from Italy but only 5 from the U.S. To answer your question, in most cases, no, comrades are not able to conclusively determine who installed a device. This is because most of the time, when a device is discovered, the spies don’t try to retrieve it, or even acknowledge it, and of course their name isn’t written on it.
This being said, I believe that the vast majority of the devices we list have been installed by State actors. To determine this, we can use two clues. The first clue is the context. If a device is found by people who are likely to be under investigation and don’t have many personal or social enemies, the device was probably installed by law enforcement. The second clue is the device itself: its components, and how it is assembled. Non-State actors tend to use store-bought devices. State actors tend to use either devices supplied by specialized companies that often only market them to law enforcement, or devices that they manually assemble themselves.

TFSR: Similar to the question of sources of the technology, because the tools, tech and knowledge is more ubiquitous it would seem that NoTrace.How offers a lot of opportunities for counter-surveillance through reverse engineering those devices. Can you speak about this?

Aster: Well, on our side, generally all we have access to is a brief description of a device components, and sometimes pictures, which is not enough for reverse-engineering. This is because we only document what people publish online. But for the comrades who discover a surveillance device, I agree that there’s a good opportunity for reverse-engineering, and I would encourage comrades who find a device to try to disassemble it, understand it, and publish their findings online, if they can do so safely. For example, if a device has an SD card, analyzing its contents, including by attempting to restore deleted files, could give clues to when the device was installed and how it operated. If a device has a SIM card, analyzing its contents with a SIM card reader could give clues to the identity of the spies. Recently, the SD card of a bug found in an anarchist library in France was analyzed, which revealed a few details about the device.

TFSR: Yeah, that example is really interesting. Listeners can find information on this by searching for the Libertad anarchist library in Paris. I saw a post about it on anarchistnews.org some time ago that pulled from Ears and Eyes.

It strikes me that people have to be paying a lot of attention to their surroundings when they’ll notice that there’s a small camera pointed at them from the skylight of a nearby building or the back window of a van parked for too long on their street. This says nothing of finding a microphone installed inside of their photocopy machine leaching tiny bits of electricity such as in the case of the Libertad library in Paris. How do people find these and what does it mean to have an intimate knowledge of your surroundings to pick out what is out of place? Are there techniques or tools that are suggested for this sort of exploration?

Aster: About how people find these devices, sometimes it’s just by chance, for example in the case of the Libertad library in Paris, the comrades were simply dismantling the photocopy machine for repairs when they found the bug. And sometimes, people specifically search for surveillance devices and find some.
In my opinion, if you suspect that a place or vehicle might be bugged and you want to search for surveillance devices, the first thing you should do is a manual, visual search. For this, you need to know where devices are typically hidden, our website can help with that.

• In the case of a building, devices are often hidden next to a power source, so they can be connected to it instead of needing a battery. You can take a screwdriver and other tools and dismantle power outlets, multi-socket adapters, ceiling lights, any electrical appliances, and look for anything that shouldn’t be there. You can also look inside furniture, basically anywhere a device could fit. This is a long process, it can take several hours for a single room.
• In the case of a vehicle, devices are either hidden outside the vehicle, typically under it, or inside the vehicle. You can start by taking a look under the vehicle, inside wheels, on rear bumpers, behind ventilation grids, looking for anything that shouldn’t be there. Then you can take appropriate tools and dismantle the interior, the ceiling, the dashboard, the seat heads, and so on. Devices can also be hidden in motorbikes or bicycles, for example inside or under the seats.
• In the case of a camera installed at a window of a nearby building, you might be able to detect it through binoculars, but of course it’s a bit tricky.
• In the case of a camera installed in a surveillance vehicle in the street, this is where having an intimate knowledge of your surroundings, as you said, can be useful. I’ll briefly explain a specific technique to detect a surveillance vehicle with a camera pointed at your home. This technique only works if you live in a place where there aren’t too many different vehicles that park, so it works in some residential areas in cities and in most rural areas. Basically, each time you exit or enter your home you take note of all the vehicles parked in the street that have a line of sight to your home. You take note of their model, color, and license plate, you remember the information or you write it down, as you prefer, but if possible you try to do this without looking suspicious. After some time doing that, you will be familiar with the “baseline” of vehicles that park in your street, which will be the vehicles of people who live nearby or their guests. Once you’re familiar with the baseline, you can spot vehicles that are not part of this baseline and scrutinize them carefully to check if they are surveillance vehicles.

Specialized detection devices also exist, for example radio frequency detectors to detect devices transmitting data on radio frequencies, or camera lens detectors. I don’t have experience with these detection devices so I don’t feel confident to talk about them, but I think they can be a valuable option that should be researched.
Also, one thing that should be remembered is that, when searching for bugs, you cannot rule out false negatives. If you don’t find a bug, maybe there is one that you missed. And even if you do find a bug, maybe there are others that you missed. I think the point of searching for bugs should be to prevent the State from gathering information about us, and not to consider a space to be free from surveillance devices. For example, I think that sensitive, incriminating conversations should not take place even in buildings that have been searched for bugs, and should always take place outdoors and without electronic devices.
One last thing I want to note is that another option to counter this threat is to try to prevent the installation of surveillance devices in the first place. To install a device in a building or vehicle, the State needs to access this building or vehicle. In the case of buildings, they typically make a covert entry when the occupants are not there, either by picking the lock or asking the building owner for the keys: this can be countered by making sure there’s always someone in the building, or by installing our own video surveillance system to monitor the building when we’re not there. In the case of vehicles, they typically install devices on vehicles parked on public streets: this could be countered by never parking on public streets, but of course this isn’t always possible.

TFSR: In closing, I’ve seen activists over the years talking about engaging in conflict and the repercussions they could experience from it in individual terms, ignoring the social impact of state crackdowns and the network effect of counter-insurgency. Would you mind saying a bit about counter-surveillance and security culture as community defense?

Aster: For sure, repression can disrupt networks, in both material dimensions, for example by sending people to jail, and psychological dimensions, for example by spreading fear and distrust. We’ve already talked about the material dimensions in the rest of this discussion. I can talk about two things that I think we can do to address the psychological dimensions.
The first thing is to find the right balance in how we mentally approach State repression. Specifically, I think we should avoid thinking both that we are *powerless in face of repression* and thinking that *repression will never strike*. We are not powerless because we can organize, we can take measures against surveillance, we can avoid repression, we have agency. But it’s equally wrong to think that repression will never strike, because we can’t be sure of that, even if we take a lot of precautions there’s always chance and things we can’t predict. I think that if we manage to find this balance, then if a comrade gets caught or if we get caught ourselves we will know that we did our best to prevent that from happening, but we also won’t be taken by surprise.
The second thing is that we *can* prepare for repression. We can discuss with our friends about our fears of getting caught. We can make sure that the people who get arrested have lawyers. We can support our prisoners and make sure we include them in our struggles. If we prepare for repression, we’ll be less taken by surprise if it strikes.

TFSR: Aster, thanks so much for the time you took for this conversation and for the work that y’all are doing. Solidarity and appreciation to you!

Aster: Thanks for the interview! It was a good opportunity for me to reflect on our work, it was really helpful.

. … . ..

No Trace Transcription Français

TFSR: Est-ce que tu voudrais te présenter, par exemple avec un pseudonyme et un pronom, et dire dans quelle partie du monde tu vis et peut-être comment tu t’es intéressé·e aux aspects techniques de l’activisme ?

Aster: Tu peux m’appeler Aster, mon pronom préféré est “iel”. Je vis en Europe et je participe au No Trace Project depuis ses débuts, il y a environ trois ans.

Si par “aspects techniques” tu veux dire rassembler des textes et gérer un site web, je crois que j’ai toujours aimé ce genre de travail. C’est un travail tranquille et ordonné. Je pense que dans une autre vie j’aurais pu être bibliothécaire.

Si par “aspects techniques” tu veux dire travailler sur les questions de surveillance et de sécurité : je crois que ça a commencé il y a quelques années, quand je me suis senti frustré·e par la manière dont les camarades autour de moi abordaient ces sujets. Je trouvais qu’iels passaient beaucoup de temps à réfléchir à comment combattre les flics dans la rue, ceux qu’on rencontre dans les manifestations et les émeutes, et pas assez de temps à réfléchir à comment combattre les flics dans les bureaux. Et les flics dans les bureaux c’est les enquêteurs, les analystes, c’est souvent à cause d’eux que nos camarades sont condamnés à de longues peines de prison et que nos réseaux sont perturbés. Du coup, je me suis dit qu’il y avait besoin de passer plus de temps à contrer cet aspect de la répression, la surveillance, les enquêtes.

Et aussi, je trouvais que beaucoup d’organisations traditionnelles de gauche travaillaient sur la question de la surveillance de masse, de la surveillance “illégitime” des bons citoyens qui respectent la loi. Les révélations faites par Snowden en 2013 sur la surveillance de masse de la NSA [NdT : National Security Agency, une agence de renseignements des États-Unis] ont bien sûr aidé à mettre ça en lumière. Mais je trouvais qu’il n’y avait pas assez de gens qui travaillaient sur la question de la surveillance ciblée, sur ce que fait l’État quand il cible des personnes spécifiques. Un certain nombre de camarades à travers le monde avaient écrit des choses à ce sujet, mais je trouvais que ces écrits étaient disséminés à travers Internet et difficiles à trouver. Donc c’est comme ça que le No Trace Project a commencé : comme un endroit où centraliser les brochures et articles écrits par des camarades à propos de surveillance ciblée, pour les rendre plus accessibles.

TFSR: Merci beaucoup de faire cette interview avec nous. Est-ce que tu voudrais parler du No Trace Project et de comment il s’est développé ? Est-ce qu’il s’est développé suite à la découverte d’un cas de surveillance particulier que tu voudrais évoquer ?

Aster: Je ne crois pas qu’il se soit développé à cause d’une chose en particulier, mais j’étais certainement influencé·e par la surveillance qui avait lieu autour de moi. Des ami·e·s proches faisaient face à une surveillance et un harcèlement policier intenses et, à mon avis, on n’a pas géré ça correctement, ce qui a mené a beaucoup de perturbations dans notre réseau, et à des burn out. Un·e ami·e distant·e a été arrêté·e après que son ADN a été retrouvé sur un dispositif incendiaire intact. J’étais particulièrement frustré·e à propos de l’ADN en général parce que beaucoup d’anarchistes à travers le monde se faisaient arrêter, et se font toujours arrêter, à causes de traces ADN. Et il semble qu’un certain nombre de ces arrestations pourraient être évitées si les gens étaient mieux informés.

Bref, du coup, le No Trace Project a commencé en 2021 comme un site web qui rassemblait des ressources, brochures, articles, à propos de surveillance. Le design du site était vraiment nul à l’époque, c’est un peu mieux maintenant. On rassemblait des choses mais on n’écrivait pas nous-même du contenu.

Plus tard, on a trouvé l’inspiration d’écrire nous-même du contenu, et on a décidé de s’attaquer à la question de la *modélisation de menaces*. La modélisation de menaces c’est un exercice formel où tu identifies les menaces auxquelles tu fais face dans un contexte donné et ce que tu peux faire pour t’en protéger. Donc par exemple, dans le contexte d’une action, tu identifies les techniques que la police pourrait utiliser contre toi, et comment tu peux te protéger face à ces techniques. Le résultat de l’exercice, la liste de menaces, c’est ton “modèle de menace”.

Dans certains milieux anarchistes, il y a une situation récurrente où quelqu’un demande quelles mesures de sécurité iel devrait prendre dans tel ou tel contexte, par exemple s’iel peut prendre son téléphone à une manif, ou quel fournisseur d’emails iel devrait utiliser, et les gens répondent “ça dépend de ton modèle de menace”. Mais comment savoir quel est notre modèle de menace ? Quelles techniques de surveillance est-ce que la police utilise, et dans quels contextes ? Et comment est-ce qu’on peut s’en protéger ? En 2023 on a ajouté une nouvelle section à notre site web, la “Threat Library” [NdT : “Bibliothèque de menaces”], pour essayer de répondre à ces questions. C’est un travail en cours, on ajoute régulièrement du contenu, n’hésitez pas à aller voir.

Plus tard en 2023 on est rentré en contact avec un autre project appelé “Ears and Eyes” [NdT : “Des oreilles et des yeux”], une grosse base de données de dispositifs de surveillance cachés utilisés contre des anarchistes : micros espions, caméras cachés, balises GPS sur des véhicules. On s’est mis d’accord sur l’idée de transférer leur projet vers notre site web, donc on a fait ça.

Et je pense que c’est tout pour ce qui est des développements actuels du projet.

TFSR: Quels sont les objectifs du projet, à court et à long terme ?

Aster: Pour ce qui est des objectifs à court terme je dirais de garder notre site à jour, en ajoutant de nouvelles ressources, du contenu à notre Threat Library, de nouveaux cas à Ears and Eyes. On a plusieurs publications originales qui devraient paraître prochainement, dont une brochure sur la surveillance physique, et une traduction anglaise d’une brochure en français sur l’ADN. Notre Threat Library liste actuellement environ vingt opérations répressives qui ont ciblé des anarchistes à travers le monde et j’aimerais en ajouter plus, pour atteindre peut-être quarante ou cinquante opérations. On travaille aussi sur différentes traductions avec l’aide de traducteur·ice·s externes, j’espère que notre Threat Library sera traduite en français d’ici quelques mois, et sans doute en brésilien portuguais à un moment. Peut-être en allemand aussi.

Pour ce qui est des objectifs à long terme, j’imagine qu’on essaie de devenir une bonne ressource sur les questions de surveillance et de sécurité pour les anarchistes à travers le monde. Je ne sais pas encore ce que ça va impliquer, on découvre ça au fur et à mesure. Une sorte de vision que j’ai c’est d’encourager la création de petits groupes décentralisés qui travailleraient sur des sujets liés à la surveillance et à la sécurité, et partageraient ensuite leur travail avec le reste du mouvement anarchiste. Un peu comme les groupes affinitaires d’action, mais pour des recherches techniques. Par exemple, on peut imaginer un groupe dans un pays qui recherche des moyens peu coûteux de pirater ou d’abattre les drones de la police, ou des protocoles efficaces contre les traces ADN, ou une analyse de l’imagerie thermique utilisée par les hélicoptères de la police, et qui partage ensuite ses recherches publiquement pour qu’elles puissent être utilisées ou complétées par d’autres groupes dans d’autres pays. Idéalement, j’aimerais que notre projet encourage ça.

TFSR: Dans le cadre de notre project on a tenté, il y a quelques années, d’aborder certaines questions de surveillance technologique et les moyens de s’y soustraire dans le contexte des États-Unis, comme faciliter l’accès à des cartes SIM anonymes et la création de téléphones sous pseudonymes, on essayait de normaliser le fait d’identifier les méthodes employées par l’État. Les connaissances et compétences techniques sont un domaine pour lequel de nombreuses personnes ne pensent pas avoir de prédisposition, et ça devient donc un domaine spécialisé, mais je le vois plus comme un ensemble de muscles que l’on renforce en les utilisant que comme quelque chose d’inné. Est-ce que notrace.how espère aussi toucher un public plus large qui chercherait à accroître ses compétences, ou est-ce qu’il s’adresse principalement à ces groupes affinitaires qui feraient des recherches techniques ?

Aster: Ah oui, c’est une bonne question. Je pense qu’en terme de *contenu*, on veut en quelque sorte se concentrer sur des pratiques de sécurité sophistiquées, qui sont pertinentes pour des personnes qui risquent d’être ciblées par l’État, qui risquent des années ou des décennies de prison. Mais on veut encourager tout le monde à adopter ces pratiques de sécurité, ou au moins certaines d’entre elles, et on veut les rendre aussi accessibles que possible. On veut encourager tout le monde à adopter de bonnes pratiques de sécurité parce que, même si quelqu’un ne fait rien de trop risqué, peut-être que son ami·e fait des choses risquées, ou l’ami·e de son ami·e. La sécurité individuelle renforce la sécurité collective. Et, pour être clair, il ne s’agit pas que de sécurité dans le domaine de la technologie, la majorité de notre contenu ne concerne pas la technologie. Et si certaines pratiques de sécurité non technologiques nécessitent le développement de compétences spécifiques, par exemple pour détecter si on est suivi par des flics, d’autres requièrent juste de bonnes compétences en matière de communication, par exemple le principe du need-to-know [NdT : “besoin de savoir”], qui stipule simplement que les informations sensibles ne doivent être partagées que lorsqu’il est nécessaire de le faire, et dans la mesure du nécessaire.

Donc ensuite il y a la question de comment rendre notre projet accessible à plein de personnes différentes, comment en faire un bon lieu d’apprentissage. On essaie d’écrire notre contenu original d’une manière claire, en partant du principe que nos lecteurs n’ont pas forcément trop de connaissances préalables. Tout notre contenu original est disponible sous la forme de brochures imprimables pour être lu et partagé loin des ordinateurs. Et, bien sûr, on veut faire des traductions, plein de traductions.

Une chose dont je n’ai pas encore parlé, qui est plus ou moins en lien avec ce sujet, c’est une autre raison pour laquelle je me suis impliqué·e dans le No Trace Project : je voulais codifier des connaissances qui ne sont souvent transmises que de manière informelle dans les milieux anarchistes. En tout cas dans les milieux où j’étais actif·ve, de nombreuses pratiques de sécurité n’étaient pas codifiées, n’était pas partagées en réunion ou consignées dans des brochures. Par exemple, ça m’a pris des années pour comprendre les dangers de l’ADN parce que ce n’était pas un sujet qui était discuté ouvertement. Les pratiques de sécurité étaient transmises de manière informelle, certes, mais ça n’est pas accueillant pour les nouveaux camarades ou les camarades plus isolé·e·s qui ne participent pas aux discussions informelles. J’aimerais que notre project soit également accueillant pour ces camarades.

TFSR: Oui, ça semble être un point important, la codification comme tu dis, ou en tout cas le fait de sensibiliser plus de personnes à ces pratiques. Il semble aussi y avoir une opportunité de faire connaître des cas de surveillance et d’interférence dans nos mouvements, de luttes contre la répression, et éventuellement de cartographier les méthodes et stratégies étatiques et para-étatiques, afin de construire une résistance plus résiliente. Est-ce que tu peux parler de ça et aussi de si vous vous attendez à de la répression ou des changements dans les méthodes de l’adversaire en réponse à la révélation au grand jour de ces méthodes et outils de surveillance. Par exemple, est-ce que quelqu’un pourrait être inculpé pour avoir révélé des informations sur cet espionnage d’État ?

Aster : En effet, j’aimerais que notre projet aide à faire connaître des cas particuliers de répression. À propos de cas de répression, beaucoup de groupes anarchistes se concentrent sur la solidarité et le soutien aux prisonnier·e·s, et même si je pense que ce sont des préoccupations très importantes, je trouve que parfois les aspects plus factuels, techniques de la répression sont négligés. Donc par rapport aux cas de répression, j’aimerais que notre projet se concentre sur : “Qu’est-ce qui s’est passé ? Qu’est-ce qui s’est passé pour que ces camarades finissent en prison, ou pour que ce mouvement prometteur disparaisse ? S’iels peuvent nous les raconter, est-ce qu’on peut apprendre de leurs expériences ?” Et j’imagine que montrer à ces camarades qu’on prend leurs expériences au sérieux et qu’on est déterminé à apprendre de celles-ci peut aussi être une forme de solidarité.

À propos de, est-ce que l’État va s’adapter parce qu’on révèle ses stratégies ? Je pense qu’au niveau local, il peut s’adapter. Par exemple si on remarque que des flics nous suivent dans la rue, c’est généralement à notre avantage de ne pas leur montrer qu’on les a remarqués, autrement ils vont s’adapter et se faire plus discrets. Mais au niveau global, je ne pense pas que l’État s’adapte bien, et quand il s’adapte je pense que c’est plutôt dû à des évolutions technologiques, par exemple. Au niveau global, je pense que c’est toujours dans notre intérêt de révéler leur stratégies.

À propos de est-ce que quelqu’un pourrait être inculpé pour avoir révélé les stratégies de l’État ? Oui, certainement, des gens ont été inculpés pour ça par le passé. Comme toujours, le fait qu’une personne soit inculpée de quelque chose dépend beaucoup de la volonté politique de l’État à l’inculper, ce qui peut être difficile à prédire. Et bien sûr, on peut tenter de rester anonymes en révélant les stratégies de l’État, pour diminuer le risque de répression.

TFSR: Beaucoup de ces exemples de surveillance physique viennent d’Europe, où tu as dit que tu vivais. J’ai l’impression qu’on voyait ce genre de trucs aux États-Unis il y a 15 ans mais que c’est moins fréquent aujourd’hui. Je sais que l’UE a des lois sur la protection de la vie privée beaucoup plus strictes que les États-Unis en ce qui concerne les données que les entreprises de la tech peuvent collecter. Je me demande si ce genre de surveillance physique est plus fréquente dans l’UE parce qu’elle est plus nécessaire. Aux États-Unis les flics peuvent juste aller voir Meta/AT&T/etc [NdT : Meta est la multinationale américaine qui possède le réseau social Facebook, AT&T est l’un des plus gros fournisseurs de téléphonie mobile aux États-Unis]. Et aussi, avec l’essor d’Amazon Ring [NdT : une branche d’Amazon qui commercialise des sonnettes et caméras connectées] on installe les caméras pour eux (même si Amazon a récemment déclaré qu’elle exigerait des mandats pour que les forces de l’ordre accèdent aux images des caméras). Est-ce que tu pourrais parler de comment ces circonstances matérielles (selon si on est dans l’UE ou en Russie ou aux États-Unis ou au Royaume-Uni) influencent l’approche que l’on peut adopter ?

Aster: Avant de répondre, je tiens à préciser qu’au No Trace Project, notre expérience concerne principalement l’Europe occidentale et l’Amérique du Nord. Je viens d’Europe occidentale, et certains de nos membres sont d’Amérique du Nord. Je veux en apprendre plus sur d’autres parties du monde mais je ne me sens pas à l’aise d’en parler pour l’instant.

Alors, je pense que le raisonnement que tu suggères pour expliquer que la surveillance physique est moins fréquente aux États-Unis est erroné ; je vais essayer d’expliquer pourquoi je pense ça. Juste pour clarifier les termes, ce que j’entends par “surveillance physique” c’est l’observation directe d’une cible. Ça veut dire qu’une équipe de surveillance est sur le terrain pour observer ou suivre quelqu’un, par exemple un suspect dans une affaire criminelle. Une équipe de surveillance est typiquement composée d’au moins cinq agents et de plusieurs véhicules. Pour les agences de maintien de l’ordre et de renseignement, la surveillance physique est une méthode de surveillance qui nécessite beaucoup de ressources et de personnel. Comme ces agences ont des ressources et un personnel limités, ça fait que la surveillance physique n’est pas leur méthode préférée : si elles peuvent obtenir les résultats qu’elles veulent sans employer cette méthode, elles ne vont pas l’utiliser. La surveillance physique est employée quand deux facteurs sont réunis : premièrement, le crime sur lequel porte l’enquête constitue une menace suffisante pour l’État, par exemple un incendie criminel ; deuxièmement, les suspects sur lesquels porte l’enquête doivent être surveillés, mais ne peuvent pas l’être par des méthodes de surveillance plus accessibles, comme la surveillance téléphonique. Dans certains cas, les enquêteurs essaient de surveiller le téléphone d’un suspect, ses réseaux sociaux, etc., et quand ça ne donne pas les résultats escomptés, ils se tournent vers la surveillance physique. Dans d’autres cas, les enquêteurs savent dès le départ qu’ils ne pourront pas surveiller le téléphone ou les réseaux sociaux d’un suspect, par exemple parce qu’il s’agit d’un·e anarchiste connu·e pour avoir de bonnes pratiques de sécurité, et ils se tournent dès le départ vers la surveillance physique.

Et le truc c’est que, tout ça s’applique aussi bien à l’Europe qu’aux États-Unis. Alors, pourquoi est-ce que la surveillance physique semble plus fréquente en Europe qu’aux États-Unis ces dernières années ? Je pense que c’est simplement parce que ces dernières années, les attaques anarchistes considérées par l’État comme plus menaçantes, telles que les incendies criminels, ont été plus fréquentes en Europe, ce qui a conduit à un plus grand nombre d’opérations répressives intenses, et les opérations répressives intenses sont plus susceptibles de comporter de la surveillance physique. En gros, je dirais qu’il y a eu une baisse des attaques anarchistes “à fort impact” aux États-Unis entre la fin de la “Green Scare” [NdT : une vague de répression contre les activistes environnementaux aux États-Unis à la fin des années 90 et dans les années 2000] dans les années 2000 et le soulèvement de 2020 [NdT : consécutif au meurtre de George Floyd le 25 mai 2020]. Ça a conduit à moins d’opérations répressives intenses, et donc à moins de cas de surveillance physique. Il est intéressant de noter que notre Threat Library répertorie deux opérations répressives menées aux États-Unis et impliquant de la surveillance physique, l’une datant de 2000 et l’autre de 2023, mais il peut évidemment s’agir d’un biais de sélection.

Donc, en résumé : la surveillance physique est probablement utilisée aux États-Unis aussi, en particulier là où des incendies criminels ont été récemment revendiqués par des anarchistes. Les anarchistes des États-Unis pourraient anticiper l’utilisation de la surveillance physique en développant des compétences appropriées. Dans ce but, on a récemment traduit en anglais une brochure allemande assez complète sur le sujet, intitulée “Measures Against Surveillance”, qui est disponible sur notre site web.

Une deuxième problématique que tu évoques c’est l’impact des lois européennes sur la protection de la vie privée sur les enquêtes policières. Je pense que cet impact est minime ; les lois européennes sur la protection de la vie privée s’appliquent principalement aux entreprises privées et non aux forces de l’ordre. En Europe, la police peut demander et demande régulièrement des données aux réseaux sociaux, aux fournisseurs de boîtes mail, aux fournisseurs d’accès à Internet, etc.

Mais alors, la question demeure : quelles sont les différences entre les techniques de répression de l’État d’un pays à l’autre, et comment est-ce qu’on peut prendre en compte ces différences ? C’est une bonne question, et je n’ai pas de réponse exhaustive, mais je peux essayer d’évoquer quelques exemples. Comme tu l’as dit, les sonnettes connectées comme celles d’Amazon Ring sont particulièrement répandues aux États-Unis, ce qui accroît la nécessité de s’habiller de manière anonyme quand on traverse des quartiers résidentiels pendant une action. Par rapport à l’Europe occidentale, je crois que le système judiciaire des États-Unis offre plus fréquemment l’immunité ou des peines réduites aux balances, ce qui devrait probablement être pris en compte, mais comment, je ne sais pas. La pratique consistant à cacher des micros et des caméras dans des logements et des balises GPS sous des voitures semble plus répandue en Italie. Le recours à la torture en garde à vue est plus courant en Biélorussie et en Russie. Je soupçonne le Royaume-Uni d’employer plus d’infiltrés de longue durée que les autres pays européens, mais c’est difficile à quantifier.

TFSR: Tu soulèves de bons points. Compte tenu des outils et de la technologie disponibles, je me demande d’où viennent les dispositifs affichés sur notrace.how. Est-ce que des camarades ont pu déterminer la provenance des outils de surveillance utilisés contre eux, s’ils proviennent d’ennemis personnels / sociaux, de patrons ou de la mafia, d’ennemis politiques autoritaires ou fascistes, ou d’acteurs étatiques ?

Aster: Ah, oui, tu parles de notre projet Ears and Eyes, qui répertorie des cas de dispositifs de surveillance cachés comme des micros et des caméras dans des logements, ou des balises GPS sous des voitures. On répertorie actuellement plus d’une centaine de dispositifs, avec de grandes disparités entre les pays. Par exemple, on a 50 cas en Italie, mais seulement 5 aux États-Unis. Pour répondre à ta question, dans la plupart des cas, non, les camarades ne peuvent pas déterminer de manière concluante qui a installé un dispositif. C’est parce que la plupart du temps, quand un dispositif est découvert, les espions n’essaient pas de le récupérer, n’assument pas la responsabilité de son installation, et bien sûr, leur nom n’est pas écrit dessus.

Ceci étant dit, je pense que la grande majorité des dispositifs qu’on répertorie ont été installés par des acteurs étatiques. On peut s’appuyer sur deux indices pour déterminer ça. Le premier indice c’est le contexte. Si un dispositif est trouvé par des personnes susceptibles de faire l’objet d’une enquête et qui n’ont pas beaucoup d’ennemis personnels ou sociaux, le dispositif a probablement été installé par les forces de l’ordre. Le deuxième indice est le dispositif lui-même : ses composants et la manière dont il est assemblé. Les acteurs non étatiques ont tendance à utiliser des dispositifs achetés dans le commerce. Les acteurs étatiques ont tendance à utiliser soit des dispositifs fournis par des entreprises spécialisées qui ne les commercialisent souvent qu’auprès des forces de l’ordre, soit des dispositifs qu’ils assemblent eux-mêmes manuellement.

TFSR: Comme pour la question de l’origine des dispositifs, étant donné que les outils, la technologie et les connaissances correspondants sont très répandus, il semblerait que notrace.how offre beaucoup d’opportunités de contre-surveillance via la rétro-ingénierie des dispositifs. Est-ce que tu peux parler de ça ?

Aster: Eh bien, de notre côté, on a généralement seulement accès à une brève description des composants du dispositif, et parfois à des photos, ce qui n’est pas suffisant pour de la rétro-ingénierie. C’est parce qu’on ne fait que documenter ce que les gens publient en ligne. Mais pour les camarades qui découvrent un dispositif de surveillance, je suis d’accord qu’il y a une bonne opportunité de rétro-ingénierie, et je voudrais encourager les camarades qui découvrent un dispositif à essayer de le démonter, le comprendre, et publier leurs résultats en ligne, s’iels peuvent le faire en toute sécurité. Par exemple, si un dispositif a une carte SD, l’analyse de son contenu, y compris des fichiers supprimés, peut aider à savoir quand le dispositif a été installé et comment il fonctionnait. Si un dispositif a une carte SIM, l’analyse de son contenu avec un lecteur de cartes SIM peut aider à découvrir l’identité des espions. Récemment, la carte SD d’un micro retrouvé dans une bibliothèque anarchiste en France a été analysée, ce qui a révélé quelques détails à propos du dispositif.

TFSR: Oui, cet exemple est vraiment intéressant. Les auditeurs peuvent se renseigner sur ce cas en cherchant la bibliothèque anarchiste Libertad à Paris. J’ai vu un article à propos de ça sur anarchistnews.org il y a quelque temps, reposté depuis Ears and Eyes. J’ai l’impression qu’il faudrait que des gens soient très attentifs à leur environnement pour remarquer une petite caméra pointée sur eux depuis la lucarne d’un immeuble voisin ou la vitre arrière d’une camionnette garée depuis trop longtemps dans leur rue. Sans parler de trouver un micro installé à l’intérieur de leur photocopieuse, aspirant leur électricité, comme dans le cas de la bibliothèque Libertad à Paris. Comment est-ce que les gens trouvent ces dispositifs et comment est-ce qu’une connaissance intime de leur environnement peut aider à les détecter ? Est-ce qu’il y a des techniques ou outils conseillés pour ce type de recherches ?

Aster: À propos de comment les gens trouvent ces dispositifs, parfois c’est juste par hasard, par exemple dans le cas de la bibliothèque Libertad à Paris, les camarades étaient simplement en train de démonter la photocopieuse pour la réparer quand iels ont trouvé le micro. Et parfois, des gens cherchent spécifiquement des dispositifs de surveillance et en trouvent.

À mon avis, si on soupçonne qu’un endroit ou véhicule pourrait être sous surveillance et qu’on veut chercher des dispositifs de surveillance, la première chose à faire c’est une recherche manuelle, visuelle. Pour ça, il faut savoir où les dispositifs sont généralement cachés, et notre site web peut aider pour ça.

– Dans le cas des bâtiments, les dispositifs sont souvent cachés près d’une source d’alimentation électrique, pour s’y connecter au lieu d’avoir besoin d’une batterie. On peut prendre un tournevis et d’autres outils et démonter les prises électriques, les multiprises, les plafonniers, tous les appareils électriques, et chercher quelque chose qui ne devrait pas être là. On peut aussi regarder dans les meubles, en gros n’importe où où un dispositif pourrait rentrer. C’est un processus qui prend du temps, ça peut prendre plusieurs heures pour une seule pièce.

– Dans le cas des véhicules, les dispositifs sont cachés soit à l’extérieur du véhicule, généralement dessous, soit à l’intérieur du véhicule. On peut commencer par regarder sous le véhicule, dans les roues, sur les pare-chocs arrière, derrière les grilles de ventilation, en cherchant quelque chose qui ne devrait pas être là. Ensuite on peut se munir d’outils appropriés et démonter l’intérieur, le plafond, le tableau de bord, les appuie-tête, etc. Des dispositifs peuvent aussi être cachés dans des motos ou des vélos, par exemple à l’intérieur ou sous les sièges.

– Dans le cas d’une caméra installée à la fenêtre d’un bâtiment voisin, on pourrait la détecter avec des jumelles, mais bien sûr ce n’est pas évident.

– Dans le cas d’une caméra installée dans un véhicule de surveillance dans la rue, c’est là qu’avoir une connaissance intime de son environnement, comme tu dis, peut être utile. Je vais rapidement décrire une technique particulière pour détecter un véhicule de surveillance muni d’une caméra pointée sur un domicile. Cette technique fonctionne seulement si on vit dans un endroit où il n’y a pas trop de véhicules différents qui se garent, donc ça marche dans certaines zones résidentielles dans les villes et dans la plupart des zones rurales. En gros, à chaque fois qu’on part ou qu’on rentre chez soi, on prend note de tous les véhicules garés dans la rue qui ont une visibilité sur le domicile. On note leur modèle, couleur, et plaque d’immatriculation, on mémorise les informations ou on les met par écrit, comme on veut, mais si possible on fait ça sans avoir l’air suspect. Au bout d’un certain temps, on va connaître la “base” des véhicules qui se garent dans la rue, qui vont être les véhicules des gens qui habitent à côté ou de leurs invités. Une fois qu’on s’est familiarisé avec cette base, on peut repérer les véhicules qui ne font pas partie de cette base et les examiner attentivement pour vérifier s’il s’agit de véhicules de surveillance.

Il existe aussi des appareils de détection spécialisés, par exemple des détecteurs de fréquences radio pour détecter les dispositifs qui transmettent des données sur des fréquences radio, ou des détecteurs de lentilles de caméras. Je n’ai pas d’expérience avec ces appareils de détection et donc je ne me sens pas capable d’en parler, mais je pense que ça peut être une option intéressante qui devrait être étudiée.

Aussi, une chose dont il faut se souvenir c’est que, quand on cherche des dispositifs de surveillance, on ne peut pas exclure les faux négatifs. Si on ne trouve pas de dispositif, c’est peut-être qu’on en a manqué un. Et même si on en trouve un, peut-être qu’il y en a d’autres qu’on a manqué. Je pense que le but de chercher des dispositifs de surveillance devrait être d’empêcher l’État de se renseigner sur nous, et pas de considérer un espace comme étant dépourvu de dispositifs de surveillance. Notamment, je pense que les conversations incriminantes ne devraient pas avoir lieu en intérieur, même dans des bâtiments dans lesquels on a cherché des dispositifs de surveillance, et devraient toujours avoir lieu en extérieur et sans appareils électroniques.

Une dernière chose que je voudrais dire c’est qu’une autre option pour contrer cette menace c’est simplement d’essayer d’empêcher l’installation des dispositifs de surveillance. Pour installer un dispositif dans un bâtiment ou un véhicule, l’État a besoin d’accéder à ce bâtiment ou véhicule. Dans le cas des bâtiments, ils essaient généralement d’entrer de manière discrète quand les habitant·e·s ne sont pas là, soit en crochetant la serrure soit en demandant les clés au propriétaire du bâtiment : on peut contrer ça en faisant en sorte qu’il y ait toujours quelqu’un dans la bâtiment ou en installant notre propre système de vidéo-surveillance pour surveiller le bâtiment quand on n’y est pas. Dans le cas des véhicules, ils installent généralement les dipositifs sur des véhicules garés dans l’espace public : on peut contrer ça en ne se garant jamais dans l’espace public, mais bien sûr ça n’est pas toujours possible.

TFSR: Pour conclure, j’ai vu au fil des années des militants parler du fait d’entrer en conflit et des répercussions qu’iels pourraient subir au niveau individuel, mais ignorer les impacts sociaux de la répression d’État et les conséquences de la contre-insurrection sur nos réseaux. Est-ce que tu voudrais parler du rôle de la contre-surveillance et de la culture de la sécurité au niveau collectif ?

Aster: Clairement, la répression peut déstabiliser des réseaux, à la fois dans des dimensions matérielles, par exemple en envoyant des gens en prison, et dans des dimensions psychologiques, par exemple en répandant la peur et la méfiance. On a déjà parlé des dimensions matérielles dans le reste de cette discussion. J’aimerais parler de deux choses que je pense qu’on peut faire pour aborder les dimensions psychologiques.

La première chose c’est de trouver le bon équilibre dans la manière dont on aborde mentalement la répression d’État. En particulier, je pense qu’on devrait éviter à la fois de croire que l’on est *impuissants face à la répression* et de croire que *la répression ne frappera jamais*. On n’est pas impuissants parce qu’on peut s’organiser, on peut prendre des mesures contre la surveillance, on peut éviter la répression, on peut agir. Mais c’est également faux de penser que la répression ne frappera jamais, parce qu’on ne peut pas être certain de ça, même si on prend beaucoup de précautions il y a toujours du hasard et des choses qu’on ne peut pas prévoir. Je pense que si on arrive à trouver cet équilibre, alors si un camarade se fait attraper ou si on se fait attraper nous-même alors on saura qu’on a fait de notre mieux pour empêcher que ça arrive, mais on ne sera pas non plus pris par surprise.

La deuxième chose c’est qu’on *peut* se préparer à la répression. On peut discuter avec nos ami·e·s de nos peurs de se faire attraper. On peut faire en sorte que les gens arrêté·e·s aient des avocats. On peut soutenir nos prisonnier·e·s et les inclure dans nos luttes. Si on se prépare à la répression, on sera moins pris par surprise si elle frappe.

TFSR: Aster, merci beaucoup pour le temps que tu as pris pour cette conversation et pour le travail que vous faites. Je t’en suis reconnaissant, solidarité à vous !

Aster: Merci pour l’interview ! C’était une bonne occasion pour moi de réfléchir à notre travail, c’était vraiment utile.

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