Category Archives: Security Culture

Corvallis Bookfair, Tyumen Case, and Counter-Surveillance

"TFSR 3-10-24 | Heart of the Valley Anti-Capitalist Bookfair, Updates on Tyumen Case, and Counter-Surveillance" featuring: a photo of posters of the Tyumen prisoners strung between trees in a forest; a logo of flames licking a double-helix of DNA; a print for the bookfair with people reading under a tree
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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 ]

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 ]

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 ]

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

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Featured Tracks:

Continue reading Corvallis Bookfair, Tyumen Case, and Counter-Surveillance

Uncovering Spy Cops in the UK

Uncovering Spy Cops in the UK

A collection of posters from the #SpyCops campaign
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This week, I spoke with Dónal O’Driscoll, an animal rights activist and anarchist from the UK talking about the work of the Undercover Research Group to investigate possible SpyCops in the UK, share resources by those harmed by the lies of long term undercovers in activist communities and the current Inquiry that activists are using to unearth the legacy of police infiltration since the 1960’s.

Helpful sites:

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Track Heard In This Episode:

SpyCops by Armoured Flu Unit from Crusading Nations

Justice4Jerry2020, Confederate Monuments + Repression During The Movement for Black Lives

Justice4Jerry2020, Confederate Monuments + Repression During The Movement for Black Lives

Aerial of "Defund The Police" painted on street by Asheville Police Dept in June, 2020
photo by Ben Harper
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This episode has three portions following a segment by anarchist prisoner, Sean Swain, about confederate monuments.

[00:02:31 – 00:09:32]

This episode warrants a general content warning for the mentioning of the murder by shooting of a Black man at the hands of the police.

Justice4Jerry 2020

[00:09:32 – 00:29:36]

First up we got the chance to sit down with Najiyyah Avery Williams, who is a community member, organizer, and mother of Jai Lateef Solveig Williams, also known as Lil Jerry. Jerry, who was a children’s book author, artist, musician, and a 35 year old father was brutally killed by the Asheville Police Department on July 2nd 2016 by Sgt Tyler Radford.

This interview happened outdoors in front of the courthouse and police station in downtown Asheville, where the city was powerwashing a DEFUND THE POLICE street mural which was done autonomously the previous day to honor the life of Jerry Williams, and to call attention to the culture of violence and silence that the police hide behind when they murder Black people. Visit our social media for pictures of this mural before it was taken down!

In this segment we talk about Lil Jerry’s life, his work, the circumstances surrounding his passing, racist violence and harrassment his family has received in the aftermath, and projects his mother is working on and would like to see for the future.

An article by Socialist Worker detailing the initial murder and how contradictions were evidenced at the get go.

To help support Justice for Jerry, which is trying to get his unfinished books published and will go to supporting his family, you can venmo to the handle @J4J2020, or follow them on social media platforms by searching Justice 4 Jerry 2020.

Rural Protest Against Racist Legacy

[00:29:36 – 00:39:10]

After Najiah, we’re happy to share a voice message we received from Gabriel from Tyrrell County, North Carolina, about a protest that happened on the 26th in Columbia, the county seat. Gabriel shares his experience of the protest in this tiny town, giving an insight into some rural experience of confronting confederate monuments and their legacy.

Michael Loadenthal on Repression During 2020 Uprising

[00:39:11 – 02:10:16]

In the third portion of this episode, you’ll hear Michael Loadenthal of The Prosecution Project, which maps how politics impacts the weight of criminal charges attached in the U.S. Michael talks about the scale of repression brought by local, state and federal law enforcement and ideas of resisting it during the uprising against police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others, the destruction of racist statues known variously as the rebirth of the Movement for Black Lives, or the #ACABSpring. For a great article on the subject, check out Mapping the State’s Strategy of Repression Against the Rebellion on IGD. Michael talks about the construction of federal felony charges for what would normally be smaller local charges, the use of grand juries to map social networks. He also shares thoughts about safer practices with social media, shifting dialogue around the role of police in society, the role of open source intelligence as well as surveillance technologies like drones and facial recognition.

Some points to follow up on from Michael’s chat:

 

Digital Security / Tenant Organizing / #MeToo and Updates from Hong Kong

Digital Security / Tenant Organizing / #MeToo Hong Kong

This week, we feature three portions.

Lauren Regan of CLDC

art by Ar To
poster by Ar To
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First up, we share a chat with Lauren Regan of the Civil Liberties Defense Center, or CLDC, to chat about safer practices around technology for activists, as well as the “reverse search” warrant used by the NYPD with Google to capture info on antifascists and the Proud Boy attackers last year. More at https://cldc.org. An article about tech security and phones that Bursts references is called “Never Turn Off The Phone” [starts 10m 08s]

Palm Beach Tenants Union

Following this, Withers (a new collective member at The Final Straw) shares a chat with Adam and Amy, two organizers with the Palm Beach Tenants Union out of Florida about their work and the sorts of mutual aid disaster work they’ve done with Hurricane Irma and advocating for and organizing with renters in their communities for dignity in housing. More on the Union at https://pbctu.org and more on how you can get involved in mutual aid up at https://mutualaiddisasterrelief.org. There are a number of donation sites around the region to prepare for this Hurricane season, as well as distribute support to Bahamas that you can find by searching social media for DRASL (Dorian Response Autonomous Supply Line), as mentioned on itsgoingdown.org. [starts at 54m 06s]

#MeToo and Updates from Hong Kong

Finally, you’ll hear a conversation with Enid and Rebecca, who feminist activists in Hong Kong about the current state of protests there. Content warning, that segment deals in part with organizing around sexualized assault by police and by protestors. To hear our prior interview with Ahkok on protests in HK, check our website and see the great articles up at crimethinc. Also, the guests talk about the term 自由閪, or “Freedom Cunt” as a re-appropriation of a misogynist insult by police from the protests. [starts at 1hr 15m 51s]

*Correction to the HK conversation: The full name of the IPCC mentioned in regards to the establishment of an independent police inquiry is called the Independent Police Complaints Council. Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam appointed two new committee members to the already existing committee, not independent investigators. However, the IPCC has hired five foreign investigators to participate in examinations, though it must be clarified that the role of the IPCC is observational rather than investigative. The IPCC has no jurisdiction to either call witness nor collect evidence for the independent inquiry called for by citizens.

If you’re listening to the radio version, as usual, we suggest that you check out the podcast version for longer versions of all three chats in this episode as well as Sean Swain’s audio this week. You can hear that at thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org or via various streaming platforms we publish to, such as youtube, soundcloud, stitcher, pandora and so-on.

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A Jailhouse Lawyer Speaks About #PrisonStrike 2018

A Jailhouse Lawyer Speaks About #PrisonStrike 2018

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This week, we feature three segments. First, we’ll feature a statement about recent doxing of a number of anti-racists in the Asheville area by far-right keyboard warriors.

After that, we feature an interview with Dee, an anonymous incarcerated organizer affiliated with Jailhouse Lawyers Speak. In this conversation we ask about the effectiveness of the #August21 2018 Nationwide Prisoner Strike, the push to move prisoners under storm threat as these increase under climate change, repression and changes in response to the strike, mail limitations in PA prisons, standardization of increased security in Ohio, outside support and organizing, critiques of the methods of NPS2018, and more. Check our show notes for links to more info concerning the strike.

If prisoners want to communicate with and/or join JLS, Dee suggests in some words near the end of the show that they reach out to:

Jailhouse Lawyers Speak
P.O. Box 1076
Knightdale, NC 27545

And you can find JLS on fedbook or twitter to keep up with their organizing

Hambach Forest Updates

In our final section of the show, you’ll hear a report by audio comrades in Germany about the recent resistance to the destruction of the Hambach Forest by authorities. The clearing of the ancient forest is to create the largest open-pit lignite coal mine in Europe on behalf of the corporation RWE, which sells to Netherlands, Germany & the UK. Lignite has a carbon content of around 60-70%, has a low energy yield, and is responsible for 1/3 of CO2 emissions in Germany. This segment shows up in the November 2018 episode of B(A)DNews, Angry Voices from Around The World from the A-Radio Network, of which we’re a proud member. Keep an eye on our podcast stream and website for a link to this episode coming out in the next couple of days.

Local Doxxings

Within the last week, over 15 people were doxxed by white supremacists in our community. Here is most of a collective statement released a day or two after the fact by some of those folks:

They’ve targeted more than twenty people they believe are involved in anti-racist organizing in North Carolina. They’ve posted information such as our home addresses, places of work, family members, license plates, social media profiles–whatever information they could find. They seem to be fixating on trans and nonbinary people in particular, and delight in trying to deadname and misgender us whenever possible. Some of us, and some of our family members, have received harassing messages.

They wrote about us like it’s some big secret that we oppose fascism, that we oppose racism, that we oppose all forms of bigotry and oppression. It’s not a secret. We weren’t hiding. We are not ashamed.

This isn’t a plea for sympathy. Our friends and immediate community have been amazing. Rather, this is a message to let you know that if you ever find yourself targeted by neo-Nazis and the far right, you are not alone. None of us need to face this rising tide of fascist scum alone. We have each other.

Robert Bowers, the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooter, actively and publicly chatted with alt-right trolls who had doxxed anti-racist activists. He even discussed violence against anti-racists in our region. This is probably a good time to think seriously about your online security and that of your family members and friends. But staying safe isn’t just a matter of changing your Facebook settings or making your Instagram private. It’s a matter of us showing up for each other. Of us not letting them intimidate us, not letting them isolate us. Not letting them stop us from our work. Especially when the work is stopping fascism.

To read the full statement, you can visit https://ashevillesolidarity.tumblr.com/ , where you can also see a list of bands and businesses which have been included in the current harassment. And of course, there are ways to donate and send support!

For an article about this (released just as our radio show was airing), including a statement by Firestorm Books contextualizing the specific harassment they’ve received, you can visit The Asheville Blade, which you can donate to here! To support Firestorm Books, our local anarchist community space and bookstore, you can join their Community Sustainer’s Program or leave them a positive review on Facebook, Yelp, wherever you can.

Additionally, for a really excellent walk through of how to help prevent this kind of thing happening to you or your crew, you can visit the Smiling Face Collective guide to preventing doxxing. This site can be easily adapted into an interactive workshop, because let’s face it, wiping your presence off the internet is a tedious, upsetting, and grueling process which is designed to wear you down. It’s always better to do this in groups! You can write to us about your experiences with internet hygiene, good, bad, or whatever, at tfsradioshow@protonmail.com

Rural Organizing Against Racism Benefit

For those in the Western NC area, there will be a Fall Fundraiser to benefit rural organizing and resilience on Friday November 30th at 6pm at the Marshall Container Co. which is located at 10 South Main Street, Marshall, NC. The event will center around a cornbread and chili dinner and will include several surprise musical guests!

Support Anti-Fascist Protestors in Philly

And finally, if you are in the position to donate to those injured yesterday fighting the Proud Boys in Philly and elsewhere, you can go to this rally.org page. Remember that if you donate to do so anonymously!

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Playlist here.

Error451: #12 (Efail w/ Micah Lee)

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This week, Bursts spoke with Micah Lee.  Micah is, according to his bio at The Intercept: ”

a computer security engineer and an open source software developer. He writes about technical topics like digital and operational security, encryption tools, whistleblowing, and hacking using language that everyone can understand, but without dumbing it down. An avid user of Qubes and Linux, he develops security tools such as OnionShare.”

Micah is kind enough in this conversation to break down the Efail scandal that rocked security-minded folks in mid-May.  A weakness in the way that many email clients handled PGP & S/MIME came to light months after it was discovered by a team of security investigators.  Micah explains how this encryption works, what was found out, safer approaches to encrypted messaging. We also talk a little about threat modeling and quantum computing.

Send encrypted text messages to Micah using Signal Messenger at (415) 964-1601.  Here’s a link to a cool article Micah published at The Intercept about a method of cheaply creating a second signal account, so you can give out a signal # without giving away your personal phone number.

Check out past episodes of Error451 and hit us up if you have ideas for segments or guests you’d like to hear from.  Check out our contact page!

featured track: “I Did It For The Kids But They’re Gonna PAY” by Spook Rat.

Post-Scarcity, Privilege and Walking Away: A Chat with Cory Doctorow

Walkaway by Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow on Post-Scarcity & Sci-Fi

This week, we present an interview that Bursts conducted with the sci-fi and picture book author, technologist and social critic Cory DoctorowCory is an editor of the blog BoingBoing, a fellow at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and his most recent book is entitled Walkaway, out from Head of Zeus and TOR books.  The novel plays with themes of open source technologies, class society, post-scarcity economics, ecological remediation, drop-out culture and liberatory social models. It was released a few days ago in paperback, along with matching re-issues of his other adult sci-fi novels.

For the hour, they chat about themes from the book, sharing, trans-humanism, imagination and monsters.  To find more work by Cory, check out his blog craphound.com.  You can also find him on twitter, free writings on Project Gutenberg, his content on archive.org, or his podcast.

Due to technical difficulties, we have no Sean Swain segment this week.  We hope this will be remedied next episode.

For a slightly longer version of this episode, make sure to check out the podcast version.

Stay tuned mid-week for a podcast special interview with an anarchist from Indonesia about May Day in Yogyakarta and the repression that has followed.  Also, if you haven’t been checking our podcast feed, you’re missing out.  We have been regularly releasing extra content mid-week including our 8th Anniversary episode with interviews of hosts of two Channel Zero Network podcasts.  You’ll also find two episodes of #Error451, our sometimes-weekly tech security podcast from an anarchist perspective.

Announcements

If you’re in Asheville this week, consider attending the Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair benefit show at the Odditorium on Haywood Road on the West Side. The show starts at 9pm, it features the music of Kortriba, Mother Marrow, Lynathrope and a special battle set of the project Fatal Comfort versus the stylings of FUNK JAMz. If you visit the ACAB table, you could be one of the first one of your friends to grab an ACAB2018 poster hot off the presses or ACAB2018 tshirt, both designed by super awesome local artists. Proceeds from the entry, shirts and posters go to pay for the local anarchist bookfair taking place between June 21st and 24th. More info on the bookfair at acab2018.noblogs.org

Also, this Friday Blue Ridge Anarchist Black Cross will be hosting it’s monthly presentation of the short documentary series, TROUBLE, by sub.Media. This month we’ll watch the second episode of two on the topic of gentrification and resistance to it. The film will be 30 minutes and then followed by a discussion with prompt questions suited to the Asheville’s specific brand of problems. The show starts at 6:30 and will last roughly an hour. Invite your friends!

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Error451: #3 (GPS safer practices)

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In perfect timing for holiday driving many will be doing in the U.S., we’re releasing episode 3 of Error451, The Final Straw’s occasionally weekly tech security podcast with William Budington. This episode is about GPS navigation on mobile devices and ways to use it without disclosing your information to service providers.

Oh, hand here’s a link to one of those Motherboard chat logs about Mr. Robot.

If you have ideas for topics you’d like to hear discussed or researched, send us an email at thefinalstrawradio@riseup.net.

Error451 #2: Burner Phones

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This is the first standalone episode of Error451, The Final Straw’s occasionally weekly podcast featuring a conversation between Bursts and William Budington about tech, security and safer practices. Upcoming episodes include how to avoid leaking info while using maps on your device and safer practices at borders. If you have other topics you’d like to see covered, drop us a line at thefinalstrawradio@riseup.net

In this episode, we have a brief conversation about the idea of burner phones, mobile devices kept insulated from the users personal information and which can just be dumped when no longer useful. We talk about reasons one might use them, approaches to getting them and using them and how to dispose of them after usefulness has ceased.

Hopefully you’ll find this helpful in your endeavors!

Support Herman Bell & a discussion on the Signal App

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For a 59 minute long, radio clean version for syndication purposes, please visit the archive.org collection.

Support Herman Bell

First this week, we had the opportunity to speak with Dr Kihana Mariah Ross, who is the daughter in law of Herman Bell, a former member of the Black Panther Party and a political prisoner who is currently clocking 44 years behind bars. We will speak about recent developments in his case, plus some historical context, and actionable items moving forward.

To learn more about Herman Bell and to read some of his writings, you can visit freehermanbell.org. To send him a card – and be aware that his 70th birthday is on January 14th and his upcoming parole hearing is in February 2018 – you can write to him at

Herman Bell 79 C 0262
Shawangunk CF
P.O. Box 700
Wallkill, NY 12589-0700

How Best to use Signal?

In the second segment of today’s episode, we’ll air another conversation with William Budington, a digital security expert and trainer about the Signal end-to-end text encryption app for smart phones and desktops. Signal, produced by WhisperSys, is an easy to use, free means for folks to avoid one type of surveillance in their day to day communication. The ubiquitous, normalized use of encryption shields the purpose of the use, obscuring whether the practice is to shield illegal activity or not. In the conversation we talk about the human failure side of communication, as well as the informational leakage possibilities of the devices we use to engage Signal app. If you really enjoy the pie-baking/Betty Crocker metaphor, don’t despair, it doesn’t end with this segment. Check out more on this topic in our occasional series, Error451.

Stay tuned soon for a conversation with William about burner phones and more. If you have a topic about digital security, devices and programs, surveillance or related topics, leave us a suggestion at thefinalstrawradio@riseup.net ! If you want our pgp key, check our website.

Editorial

Now, it’s my turn for a brief editorial, dear listeners. This is Bursts. I grew up in a part of so-called California known as Sonoma County, lands stolen from the Pomo and the Miwok peoples first by the Spanish, then by Mexico and Russia and then the U.S. I lived there from the mid-1980’s through 2009 and consider it my home in a way I could no other place. The rolling hills, the foggy mornings, the Coastal Live Oak groves, the nasty but 100 year old Eucalyptis groves, the early evening sky that turns a goldish orange into purple, the Manzanita, the people, the ocean breeze coming out from Bodega. These are things that I remember fondly from the deeply damaged yet still beautiful biome I called home for most (and definitely the more formative years) of my life.

This has been a year for spectacular disasters around this hemisphere, with a record 10th hurricane now appearing in the Carribean and southern U.S., 2 major earthquakes rocking Mexico and now the fires in Northern and Southern California. The fires in the north, which I’ve been paying more attention to because they QUITE literally bring home to me a sense of devastation I still haven’t been able to digest from this distance, have been whipped up by winds, a seasonal dryness out of the ordinary and fed by the aftermath of a wet winter that created a ton of easy-to-burn fuels. California has long been racked by fires, but never this many deaths and never have they consumed large parts of cities as they have with Santa Rosa. Thousands of homes have been turned to ash, monuments standing over a hundred years are cinders, human and non-human animals have been killed, damaged and displaced. California is yet another part of the world feeling the first hand effects of anthropogenic climate change, after years of over-taxing it’s water levels with large scale and animal and food agriculture, it’s manicured industrial lawns, the barely regulated weed industry booming, the building of human settlements in the middle of deserts and the idea promoted by high levels of industry and state that as the 6th largest economy in the world it could buy itself climate chaos. Day by day, year by year, this is proven more and more a delusion. But I digress.

I’d like to give a shout out to the brave folks doing search and rescue in my home away from home, the neighbors who look out for each other, that roused each other from sleep to escape the fire storms, who shelter and feed each other. Also to the fire professionals who are working to fight back the fires. An element of this that is under reported, of course, is the fact that over a thousand prisoners of the state of California and it’s included counties, are putting their lives on the line for $1 to $2.56 a day to train and then fight these blazes. That can be compared to the $31.85 an hour of the median hourly wage for non-inmate firefighters. I would like to bring this up because as the climate becomes more chaotic and the ever-tighter squeeze of austerity capitalism turns further and further away from more sustainable and stable incomes like unionized firefighters this continues a nasty trend.

Putting prisoners on the fire lines to fight the blazes, while more deadly for them than other modes of work, arguably offers them a potentially more meaningful and lucrative engagement with community service. This also fuels the profit motive of governments bent on incarcerating mostly poor communities of color, often people with chemical dependencies and neuro-divergencies the state can’t be bothered to treat but to stick them in a concrete and steel cage. More prisoners means more low-pay and expendable firefighters who’s crime was to be born the wrong color or class in the age of mass incarceration. I don’t bring this up to denigrate those risking themselves to save lives and homes, whether a prisoner or not, but to point out that this is not how a community organizes itself for it’s members, this is the logic of capital and thus streams value to the top of the pyramid.

My heart goes out to those who suffer at the hands of these fires. Let’s fight for futures where we are better prepared, where we don’t employ slave labor to fight them, and everyone has what they need to live in true community, which means true accountability to the impact of our survival on the non-human environment with which we share this awesome world.

If you’d like to help by sending some money to autonomous organizing for relief in Sonoma County, consider visiting https://generosity.com/emergencies-fundraising/northbay-iww-fire-relief-fund

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