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Title: What Is Security Culture? Author: CrimethInc. Date: November 1, 2004 Language: en Topics: security culture, activism, security Source: Retrieved on September 20, 2019 from https://crimethinc.com/2004/11/01/what-is-security-culture
A security culture is a set of customs shared by a community whose
members may be targeted by the government, designed to minimize risk.
Having a security culture in place saves everyone the trouble of having
to work out safety measures over and over from scratch, and can help
offset paranoia and panic in stressful situations—hell, it might keep
you out of prison, too. The difference between protocol and culture is
that culture becomes unconscious, instinctive, and thus effortless; once
the safest possible behavior has become habitual for everyone in the
circles in which you travel, you can spend less time and energy
emphasizing the need for it, or suffering the consequences of not having
it, or worrying about how much danger you’re in, as you’ll know you’re
already doing everything you can to be careful. If you’re in the habit
of not giving away anything sensitive about yourself, you can
collaborate with strangers without having to agonize about whether or
not they are informers; if everyone knows what not to talk about over
the telephone, your enemies can tap the line all they want and it won’t
get them anywhere.[1]
be emphasized enough, is that people should never be privy to any
sensitive information they do not need to know.
The greater the number of people who know something that can put
individuals or projects at risk—whether that something be the identity
of a person who committed an illegal act, the location of a private
meeting, or a plan for future activity—the more chance there is of the
knowledge getting into the wrong hands. Sharing such information with
people who do not need it does them a disservice as well as the ones it
puts at risk: it places them in the uncomfortable situation of being
able to mess up other people’s lives with a single misstep. If they are
interrogated, for example, they will have something to hide, rather than
being able to honestly claim ignorance.
Don’t ask others to share confidential information you don’t need to
know. Don’t brag about illegal things you or others have done, or
mention things that are going to happen or might happen, or even refer
to another person’s interest in being involved in such activities. Stay
aware whenever you speak; don’t let chance allusions drop out
thoughtlessly.
Don’t answer any questions you don’t want to—not just with police
officers, but also with other activists and even close friends: if
there’s something you don’t feel safe sharing, don’t. This also means
being comfortable with others not answering questions: if there’s a
conversation they want to keep to themselves, or they ask you not to be
part of a meeting or project, you shouldn’t take this personally—it’s
for everyone’s good that they’re free to do so. Likewise, don’t
participate in any projects you don’t feel good about, or collaborate
with anyone you feel ill at ease with, or ignore your gut feeling in any
situation; if something goes wrong and you get into trouble, you don’t
want to have any regrets. You’re responsible for not letting anyone talk
you into taking risks you’re not ready for.
If captured, never, ever give up any information that could endanger
anyone else. Some recommend an explicit oath be sworn by all
participants in a direct action group: that way, in a worst-case
scenario, when pressure might make it hard to distinguish between giving
up a few harmless details and totally selling out, everyone will know
exactly what commitments they made to each other.
to.
Don’t be too predictable in the methods you employ, or the targets you
choose, or the times and places you meet to discuss things. Don’t be too
visible in the public aspects of the struggle in which you do your most
serious direct action: keep your name off mailing lists and out of the
media, perhaps avoid association with aboveground organizations and
campaigns entirely. If you’re involved in really serious clandestine
activities with a few comrades, you may want to limit your interactions
in public, if not avoid each other altogether. Federal agents can easily
get access to the phone numbers dialed from your phone, and will use
such lists to establish connections between individuals; the same goes
for your email, and the books you check out from libraries, and
especially social networking sites like Myspace.
Don’t leave a trail: credit card use, gas cards, cell phone calls all
leave a record of your motions, purchases, and contacts. Have a cover
story, supported by verifiable facts, if you might need one. Be careful
about what your trash could reveal about you—dropouts aren’t the only
ones who go dumpstering! Keep track of every written document and
incriminating photocopy—keep them all in one place, so you can’t
accidentally forget one—and destroy them as soon as you don’t need them.
The fewer there are in the first place, the better; get used to using
your memory. Make sure there aren’t any ghosts of such writing left
behind in impressions on the surfaces you were writing on, whether these
be wooden desks or pads of paper. Assume that every use of computers
leaves a trail, too.
you might want to try at some point.
Wait to propose an idea until you can gather a group of individuals that
you expect will all be interested in trying it; the exception is the
bosom companion with whom you brainstorm and hash out details in
advance—safely outside your home and away from mixed company, of course.
Don’t propose your idea until you think the time is right for it to be
tried. Invite only those you are pretty certain will want to join
in—everyone you invite who doesn’t end up participating is a needless
security risk, and this can be doubly problematic if it turns out they
feel your proposed activity is laughably dumb or morally wrong. Only
invite people who can keep secrets—this is critical whether or not they
decide to participate.
public.
It’s important to work out a way to communicate surreptitiously with
your trusted friends about security issues and comfort levels while in
public situations, such as at a meeting called to discuss possible
direct action. Knowing how to gauge each other’s feelings without others
being able to tell that you are sending messages back and forth will
save you the headache of trying to guess each other’s thoughts about a
situation or individual, and help you avoid acting strangely when you
can’t take your friend aside in the middle of things to compare notes.
By the time you have convened a larger group to propose an action plan,
you and your friends should be clear on what each other’s intentions,
willingness to run risks, levels of commitment, and opinions of others
are, to save time and avoid unnecessary ambiguity. If you haven’t been
part of a direct action planning circle before, you’ll be surprised how
complicated and convoluted things can get even when everyone does arrive
prepared.
situation.
One quick procedure you can run at the beginning of a larger meeting at
which not everyone is acquainted is the “vouched for” game: as each
person introduces himself, all who can vouch for him raise their hands.
Only vouch for those you are confident are worthy of your trust.
Hopefully, each person is connected to the others by some link in the
chain; either way, at least everybody knows how things stand. An
activist who understands the importance of good security will not feel
insulted in such a situation if there is no one present who can vouch
for him and the others ask him to leave.
You don’t want a place that can be monitored (no private residences),
you don’t want a place where you can be observed all together (not the
park across from the site of the next day’s actions), you don’t want a
place where you can be seen entering and leaving or that someone could
enter unexpectedly—post scouts, lock the door once things get started,
watch out for anything suspicious.[2] Small groups can take walks and
chat; larger groups can meet in quiet outdoor settings—go hiking or
camping, if there’s time—or in private rooms in public buildings, such
as library study rooms or empty classrooms. Best-case scenario: though
he has no idea you’re involved in direct action, you’re close with the
old guy who runs the café across town, and he doesn’t mind letting you
have the back room one afternoon for a private party, no questions
asked.
with whom you might collaborate in underground activities.
Be conscious of how long you’ve known people, how far back their
involvement in your community and their lives outside of it can be
traced, and what others’ experiences with them have been. The friends
you grew up with, if you still have any of them in your life, may be the
best companions for direct action, as you are familiar with their
strengths and weaknesses and the ways they handle pressure—and you know
for a fact they are who they say they are. Make sure only to trust your
safety and the safety of your projects to level-headed folks who share
the same priorities and commitments and have nothing to prove. In the
long term, strive to build up a community of people with long-standing
friendships and experience acting together, with ties to other such
communities.
infiltrators or not; if your security measures are effective, it
shouldn’t even matter.
Don’t waste your energy and make yourself paranoid and unsociable
suspecting everybody you meet. If you keep all sensitive information
inside the circle of people it concerns, only collaborate with reliable
and experienced friends whose history you can verify, and never give
away anything about your private activities, agents and police informers
will be powerless to gather evidence to use against you. A good security
culture should make it practically irrelevant whether these vermin are
active in your community or not. The important thing is not whether or
not a person is involved with the cops, but whether or not he
constitutes a security risk; if he is deemed insecure (double meaning
intended), he should never be permitted to end up in a situation in
which anyone’s safety depends on him.
interact with, and respect differences in style.
To collaborate with others, you have to make sure they feel at home with
you; even if you’re not collaborating with them, you don’t want to make
them uncomfortable or disregard a danger they understand better than
you. When it comes to planning direct action, not abiding by the
security culture accepted in a given community can wreck not only your
chances to cooperate with others on a project, but the possibility of
the project happening at all—for example, if you bring up an idea others
were planning to try in a setting they deem insecure, they may be forced
to abandon the plan as it may now be associated with them. Ask people to
outline for you their specific security needs before you even broach the
subject of direct action.
security.
The corollary of abiding by others’ expectations is that you must make
it easy for others to abide by yours. At the beginning of any
relationship in which your private political life may become an issue,
emphasize that there are details of your activities that you need to
keep to yourself. This can save you a lot of drama in situations that
are already stressful enough; the last thing you need on returning from
a secret mission gone awry is to end up in a fight with your lover: “But
if you trusted me, you would tell me about this! How do I know you’re
not out there sleeping with…!” It’s not a matter of trust—sensitive
information isn’t a reward to be earned or deserved.
Make explicit to those around you what risks you may pose to them with
your presence[3] or with actions you have planned, at least as much as
you’re able to without violating other precepts of security culture. Let
them know to the extent you’re able what risks you run yourself: for
example, whether you can afford to be arrested (if there are outstanding
warrants for you, if you are an undocumented migrant, etc.), what
responsibilities you have to keep up with, whether you have any
allergies. Don’t imperil others with your decisions, especially if
you’re not able to provide concrete support should they somehow get
arrested and charged on account of your behavior. If someone else drops
a banner in an area immediately adjacent to a fire you set, the police
might charge them with arson; even if the charges can’t stick, you don’t
want to risk their ill will, or accidentally block their planned escape
route. If you help initiate a breakaway march that leaves the permitted
zone, try to make sure you keep your body between the police and others
who have come along but don’t necessarily understand the risks involved;
if you escalate a spontaneous parade by engaging in property
destruction, make sure others who were unprepared for this are not still
standing around in confusion when the police show up. Whatever risky
projects you undertake, make sure you’re prepared to go about them
intelligently, so no one else will have to run unexpected risks to help
you out when you make mistakes.
misunderstandings and potentially disastrous conflicts.
Security concerns should never be an excuse for making others feel left
out or inferior—though it can take some finesse to avoid that!—just as
no one should feel they have a “right” to be in on anything others
prefer to keep to themselves. Those who violate the security culture of
their communities should not be rebuked too harshly the first time—this
isn’t a question of being hip enough to activist decorum to join the
in-group, but of establishing group expectations and gently helping
people understand their importance; besides, people are least able to
absorb constructive criticism when they’re put on the defensive.
Nevertheless, such people should always be told immediately how they’re
putting others at risk, and what the consequences will be should they
continue to. Those who can’t grasp this must be tactfully but
effectively shut out of all sensitive situations.
avoid unhealthy paranoia by minimizing risks ahead of time.
It is counterproductive to spend more energy worrying about how much
surveillance you are under than is useful for decreasing the danger it
poses, just as it is debilitating to be constantly second-guessing your
precautions and doubting the authenticity of potential comrades. A good
security culture should make everyone feel more relaxed and confident,
not less. At the same time, it’s equally unproductive to accuse those
who adhere to security measures stricter than yours of being
paranoid—remember, our enemies are out to get us.
If your foes can’t learn your secrets, they will settle for turning you
against each other. Undercover agents can spread rumors or throw around
accusations to create dissension, mistrust, and resentment inside of or
between groups. They may falsify letters or take similar steps to frame
activists. The mainstream media can participate in this by reporting
that there is an informant in a group when there is not one, or
misrepresenting the politics or history of an individual or group in
order to alienate potential allies, or emphasizing over and over that
there is a conflict between two branches of a movement until they really
do mistrust one another. Again, a shrewd security culture that fosters
an appropriately high level of trust and confidence should make such
provocations nearly impossible on the personal level; when it comes to
relations between proponents of different tactics and organizations of
different stripes, remember the importance of solidarity and diversity
of tactics, and trust that others do, too, even if media accounts
suggest otherwise. Don’t accept rumors or reports as fact: go to the
source for confirmation every time, and be diplomatic about it.
Police attention and surveillance is not necessarily an indication that
they know anything specific about your plans or activities: often it
indicates that they do not and are trying to frighten you out of
continuing with them. Develop an instinct with which to sense when your
cover has actually been blown and when your enemies are just trying to
distress you into doing their work for them.
observation, but don’t mistake attracting surveillance for being
effective.
Even if everything you are doing is perfectly legal, you may still
receive attention and harassment from intelligence organizations if they
feel you pose an inconvenience to their masters. In some regards, this
can be for the best; the more they have to monitor, the more thinly
spread their energies are, and the harder it is for them to pinpoint and
neutralize subversives. At the same time, don’t get caught up in the
excitement of being under surveillance and begin to assume that the more
the authorities pay attention to you, the more dangerous to them you
must be—they’re not that smart. They tend to be preoccupied with the
resistance organizations whose approaches most resemble their own; take
advantage of this. The best tactics are the ones that reach people, make
points, and exert leverage while not showing up on the radar of the
powers that be, at least not until it is too late. Ideally, your
activities should be well known to everyone except the authorities.
voicelessness.
The stories of our daring exploits in the struggle against capitalism
must be told somehow, so everyone will know resistance is a real
possibility put into action by real people; open incitements to
insurrection must be made, so would-be revolutionaries can find each
other and the revolutionary sentiments buried in the hearts of the
masses find their way to the surface. A good security culture should
preserve as much secrecy as is necessary for individuals to be safe in
their underground activities, while still providing visibility for
radical perspectives. Most of the security tradition in the activist
milieu today is derived from the past thirty years of animal rights and
earth liberation activities; as such, it’s perfectly suited for the
needs of small groups carrying out isolated illegal acts, but isn’t
always appropriate for more aboveground campaigns aimed at encouraging
generalized insubordination. In some cases it can make sense to break
the law openly, in order to provoke the participation of a large mass
that can then provide safety in numbers.
need to be accessible to potential friends.
In the long run, secrecy alone cannot protect us—sooner or later they
are going to find all of us, and if no one else understands what we’re
doing and what we want, they’ll be able to liquidate us with impunity.
Only the power of an informed and sympathetic (and hopefully similarly
equipped) public can help us then. There should always be entryways into
communities in which direct action is practiced, so more and more people
can join in. Those doing really serious stuff should keep it to
themselves, of course, but every community should also have a person or
two who vocally advocates and educates about direct action, and who can
discreetly help trustworthy novices link up with others getting started.
level appropriate to it, and act accordingly from there on.
Learning to gauge the risks posed by an activity or situation and how to
deal with them appropriately is not just a crucial part of staying out
of jail; it also helps to know what you’re not worried about, so you
don’t waste energy on unwarranted, cumbersome security measures. Keep in
mind that a given action may have different aspects that demand
different degrees of security; make sure to keep these distinct. Here’s
an example of a possible rating system for security levels:
existence.
the group decides together who these will be.
might choose not to—that is, some outside the group may know about the
action, but are still expected to keep it a secret.
are free to invite others and encourage them to do the same, while
emphasizing that knowledge of the action is to be kept within the
circles of those who can be trusted with secrets.
community, but the identities of those at the center of the organizing
are to be kept a secret.
discretion, so as not to tip off the sleepier of the authorities.
To give examples, security level #1 would be appropriate for a group
planning to firebomb an SUV dealership, while level #2 would be
acceptable for those planning more minor acts of property destruction,
such as spraypainting. Level #3 or #4 would be appropriate for calling a
spokescouncil preceding a black bloc at a large demonstration or for a
group planning to do a newspaper wrap, depending on the ratio of risk
versus need for numbers. Level #5 would be perfect for a project such as
initiating a surprise unpermitted march: for example, everyone hears in
advance that the Ani DiFranco performance is going to end in a
“spontaneous” antiwar march, so people can prepare accordingly, but as
no one knows whose idea it is, no one can be targeted as an organizer.
Level #6 would be appropriate for announcing a Critical Mass bicycle
ride: fliers are wrapped around the handlebars of every civilian
bicycle, but no announcements are sent to the papers, so the cops won’t
be there at the beginning while the mass is still vulnerable. Level #7
is appropriate for a permitted antiwar march or independent media video
screening, unless you’re so dysfunctionally paranoid you even want to
keep community outreach projects a secret.
It also makes sense to choose the means of communication you will use
according to the level of security demanded. Here’s an example of
different levels of communications security, corresponding to the system
just outlined above:
of those involved, in surveillance-free environments (e.g. the group
goes camping to discuss plans); no discussion of the action except when
it is absolutely necessary.
action in surveillance-free spaces.
acceptable.
provided they’re careful not to give away certain details—who, what,
when, where.
in public spaces, announcements to newspapers, etc. may or may not be
acceptable, on a case-by-case basis.
encouraged.
If you keep hazardous information out of circulation and you follow
suitable security measures in every project you undertake, you’ll be
well on your way to fulfilling what early CrimethInc. agent Abbie
Hoffman described as the first duty of the revolutionary: not getting
caught. All the best in your adventures and misadventures, and
remember—you didn’t hear it from us!
Security Culture: The Puppet Show
Anonymity: Dressing for Success
[1] “But what about infiltrators and informers?” a CrimethInc. agent
asked long ago at his first major mobilization. “We’ll have them peel
potatoes,” was the casual reply from an experienced organizer.
[2] One CrimethInc. cell will never forget exiting an ultra-high
security meeting in a university basement only to discover that while
they’d been locked in, a crowd of liberal student protesters had flooded
the adjoining room to watch a slideshow which all the organizers of the
next day’s militant black bloc had to wade through in embarrassment!
[3] A hilarious example of why this is important occurred when
CrimethInc. agents Paul F. Maul and Nick F. Adams attempted to return to
the continental United States after a period spent hiding out in Alaska.
They were worried about how the Canadian customs agents would feel about
the massive quantities of assault rifle bullets they had with them, so
they removed the panels on the doors of their car and secreted the
bullets behind these. On the way to the border they picked up a
hitchhiker, a nondescript, clean-cut fellow who seemed harmless. At the
border check, both CrimethInc. workers held their breath as the customs
agent ran their I.D.s, but were relieved to receive them back without
incident. They thought they were going to pass through the border
without a hitch until the customs agent ran the hitchhiker’s I.D.;
suddenly armed officers surrounded their car and ordered them out at
gunpoint. The hitchhiker, it turned out, was a long-time Greenpeace
activist who had arrests in thirty countries! The officers
strip-searched their car, at last removing the door panels, and the
bullets clattered out onto the pavement. Our heroes spent the following
four hours locked in interrogation rooms, Canadian policemen screaming,
“Where are the guns? We know you have them—tell us where they are!,” and
paying little heed to their protestations: “This is all a big
misunderstanding—we don’t have any guns. We’re graphic designers—we have
the bullets for a design project. Honest, officer!”