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Title: Towards a Collective Security Culture Author: CrimethInc. Date: June 25, 2009 Language: en Topics: security culture Source: Retrieved on 29th October 2020 from https://crimethinc.com/2009/06/25/towards-a-collective-security-culture
For as long as anyone can remember, the FBI has infiltrated radical
communities in hopes of framing people on criminal charges. This has
intensified in anarchist circles over the past few years. A handful of
unfortunates now languish in prison, serving up to decades for actions
they never carried out and probably would never have even considered
were it not for the efforts of agents provocateurs. How does the
government choose who to target? What factors put people at risk? Most
importantly, what can we do to protect ourselves and each other?
This is required reading for anyone going to the impending Earth First!
Rendezvous in Oregon, the CrimethInc. convergence in Pittsburgh July
20–26, or, for that matter, any other radical gathering or protest.
We’ve also added a guide to security culture to our online library,
which we hope everyone will read as well.
Perhaps, gentle reader, you’ve never been part of a community targeted
by the US government. Picture undercover agents attending your events
with the intention of setting people up to be framed for illegal
activity. Most of your friends and family would have the sense to keep
themselves out of trouble, of course—but can you be absolutely sure
everyone would?
What if someone fell in love with the agent and was desperate to impress
him or her, and the agent took advantage of this? Every community has
people in it who may sometimes be gullible or vulnerable, who may not
display the best judgment at all times. And what if the agent
provocateur is a person everyone trusts and looks up to? Government
agents aren’t always outsiders—often, the FBI recruits or blackmails
long-time participants, such as Brandon Darby and Frank Ambrose. Don’t
underestimate these people; they’re cold-blooded bounty hunters ready to
do whatever it takes to earn their paychecks, guided by experts with
millions and millions of dollars of funding.
Perhaps you’re still saying to yourself “It would never happen—all of us
are law-abiding citizens.” Sure you are, every last one of you. The US
has 2.3 million people in prison, and over 5 million more on probation
and parole—if there isn’t a single person in your whole community who
has ever broken the law, you’re exceptional, and probably exceptionally
privileged. Anyway, it doesn’t matter—your unfortunate friend or
neighbor doesn’t even have to do anything illegal to get framed by the
government. They just have to end up in a situation in which it’s
possible to make it appear that they could have been considering doing
something illegal.
Often the evidence is so tenuous that it takes the government multiple
attempts to obtain a conviction. In an entrapment case resulting from
the mobilization against the 2008 Republican National Convention,
defendant David McKay received a hung jury at trial, only to be coerced
into pleading guilty afterwards behind closed doors. In another recent
entrapment case, it took two hung juries before a third jury finally
convicted some of the defendants—prompting a law professor quoted by the
New York Times to say, “It goes to show that if you try it enough times,
you’ll eventually find a jury that will convict on very little
evidence.”
Muslims and people who care about the environment are at the top of the
list for operations like this; opponents of unaccountable authority are
close behind. And here we arrive at the one significant difference
between “law-abiding” white middle America and at least some of the
communities currently targeted by the FBI: the latter are critical of
the government. Who can blame them, considering?
There have been two instances in which people who attended a CrimethInc.
convergence have been entrapped. Eric McDavid, Zachary Jenson, and
Lauren Weiner met each other and an informant by the name of “Anna” at
the 2004 and 2005 convergences, among other events. Anna drove them
across the country, rented them a wiretapped cabin, bought bomb-making
materials, and took advantage of McDavid’s attraction to her to pressure
the group into discussions that resulted in McDavid’s conviction on
conspiracy charges. Afterwards, Elle Magazine quoted regretful jurors as
saying “the FBI was an embarrassment” and “I hope he gets a new trial.”
In 2008, Matthew DePalma attended a CrimethInc. convergence in
Wisconsin, at which he was approached by Andrew Darst, a federal
infiltrator posing as a member of the RNC Welcoming Committee. Darst
persuaded DePalma to assist him in manufacturing explosives, recorded
conversations with him in a wired apartment, and drove him around to do
research and purchase supplies. DePalma was indicted on felony charges
[PDF, 3.4 MB] for possession of “unregistered firearms,” and eventually
pleaded guilty.
Besides these two cases, not one of the hundreds upon hundreds of people
who have attended CrimethInc. convergences has been convicted of
anything having to do with bombs or Molotov cocktails. These
infiltrators sure are precise! Apparently, they can show up in a chaotic
space filled with hundreds of people who don’t know each other,
immediately identify the most dangerous extremists, and insinuate
themselves into their closest confidence—all in a very short time. Next
thing you know, the snitches are saving the day, narrowly rescuing
ordinary citizens from terrorist attacks—which the criminals would have
been about to carry out anyway, even if the agents provocateurs hadn’t
befriended them, talked them into crazy schemes, and supplied them with
all sorts of incriminating materials.
If you’re gullible enough to believe that version of the story, you’re a
perfect target for government entrapment yourself. It seems much more
likely that these agents provocateurs pick on the most vulnerable people
they can find: the lonely, the naĂŻve, the impressionable, the mentally
or emotionally unstable, people who lack close friendships or life
experience. This is easier than messing with shrewd, well-connected
organizers. The point is not so much to catch the people organizing
resistance to the government—charges of Conspiracy to Riot in
Furtherance of Jaywalking are just not that impressive—so much as to
discredit resistance movements by framing somebody, anybody, as a
Dangerous Terrorist. If that means destroying the life of a person who
never would have actually harmed anyone, who cares—honest, compassionate
people don’t become snitches in the first place.
None of this is intended to blame or insult those who are entrapped. We
all have moments of weakness. The guilt lies on those who take advantage
of others’ weakness for their own gain.
Why go on meeting publicly, if the government sees this as an
opportunity to entrap us? Wouldn’t it be safer to shift to informal
networks or small underground cells?
The government would like nothing better than for us to retreat to
private scenes and cliques, so there are fewer opportunities for
unconnected individuals to get involved. It is to our oppressors’
advantage for small numbers of radicals to escalate to more militant
tactics while losing connection to a social base; this makes direct
action less likely to spread, while rendering it easier to justify
repression. It might be harder for the government to track down
clandestine groups at first, but you can bet they’ll set their minds to
doing so with a vengeance; Operation Backfire is proof that closed,
high-security structures are also not impenetrable.
The most important thing for us to be doing is not secretively carrying
out military strikes against the State, but generalizing whatever ideas,
skills, and momentum we can. To that end, we desperately need public,
participatory activities offering points of entry for new people and
opportunities for existing groups to connect.
Right now, there’s no reason to believe that everyone with “RADICAL”
stamped on their FBI file is about to be rounded up and sent to camps.
It seems that the current government policy is to collect as much
intelligence as possible on radicals, target high-visibility organizers
with conspiracy charges when there is a good chance of convicting them,
and entrap whichever random victims are easiest to frame. That means
rank-and-file participation in radical movements and communities is
still relatively low-risk, so long as you use your head.
Let’s review what that entails:
Never undertake or discuss illegal activity with people you haven’t
known and trusted for a long time. Don’t trust people just because other
people trust them or because they are in influential positions. Don’t
let others talk you into tactics you’re not comfortable with or ready
for. Be aware that anything you say may come back to haunt you, even if
you don’t mean it. Always listen to your instincts; if someone seems
pushy or too eager to help you with something, take some time to think
about the situation. Reflect on the motivations of those around you—do
they make sense? Get to know your comrades’ families and friends.
It’s also useful to study the behavior of informants. An interesting
analysis of the communications of the agent provocateur in the Eric
McDavid case is available here.
All this is fairly common sense among seasoned radicals, but perhaps we
can go a step further. Thus far, activists and anarchists have thought
of security largely in personal terms—as a way for individuals to avoid
incriminating themselves and their friends. The forms of “security
culture” common in our communities have reflected this individualism.
Yet even if 99 out of 100 anarchists are able to avoid getting framed,
when agents provocateurs manage to entrap the 100^(th) one we still end
up all paying the price—losing friends, spending years working on
prisoner support, and ceding the government yet another opportunity to
demonize us in the media.
We need to evolve a new security culture that can protect others as
well, including vulnerable and marginal participants in radical spaces
who may be particularly appetizing targets to federal bounty hunters. In
addition to looking out for yourself, keep an eye on others who may put
themselves at risk.
For example, imagine that you attend a presentation about a direct
action mobilization, and one person in the audience keeps asking crazy
questions and demanding that people escalate their tactics. It’s
possible that this person is a cop; it’s also possible that he’s not a
cop, but a hothead that might make a very attractive target for cops.
Such individuals are typically shunned, which only makes them more
vulnerable to agents provocateurs: “Screw these squares—stick with me
and we’ll really make something happen!” Someone who has nothing to lose
should approach this person in a low-stress environment and emphasize
the importance of proper security culture, describing the risks that one
exposes himself and others to by speaking so carelessly and urging him
to be cautious about trusting anyone who solicits his participation in
illegal activity. A ten-minute conversation like this might save years
of heartache and prisoner support later on.
A great deal of thinking remains to be done on this subject. How do we
look out for each other without prying into each other’s business or
stepping on each other’s toes? Are there other ways we can protect
against the machinations of infiltrators and informants? We don’t know
the answers to these questions yet; we’re asking you to think them
through with us. The sooner we can develop a collective security culture
that prevents federal agents from framing naĂŻve young people, the sooner
we’ll be able to build a durable, visible struggle against oppression.