Security for Activists

foreign

was essentially security for activists so um today you know with all the NSA news and things like that it's becoming abundantly clear that we're under constant surveillance technology has permitted all aspects of our lives and the idea was to do a talk about how we activism has evolved into to where it is now and security measures that need to be taken to protect yourself as an activist activism is typically a if not outright illegal it's skirting very close to the law and um well they get red flag a lot that way yeah absolutely uh just being just being a member of Greenpeace can actually get you denied on a security clearance so um the the United States government

especially considers um environmental activism very very close to terrorism so um there's been a lot of uh greenpace activists that have been put on terrorist watch lists for example peaceful they've never committed any kind of act of violence there's no evidence that they that they plan to commit an act of violence but they're put on terrorist watch lists regardless um Peta if Peta is a little bit more um tends to have a little bit more of a extremist association with it but still for the most part they're very peaceful they don't commit extremist acts same thing a lot of them have been put on terrorist watch lists as well no fly list they can't get on a plane things like that

so yeah and they've never committed yeah absolutely and they've never really even committed a crime they've just been associated with an organization there's people that have lost jobs just because of this of their political affiliations or their activist affiliations so um it's very important to a decide if that's a risk you're willing to take and if it is what safeguards to take to make sure that it doesn't have long-term ramifications there's no one simple solution unfortunately it's to be really secure there's a patchwork of things you need to do unfortunately you need to do some real life operational security you need to do some encryption on the back end you need to make sure you don't trust your phone

whatsoever um I highly recommend if you're going to be going to like activist type engagements maybe even leave the phone at home don't take it with you at all cell phones are not to be trusted in any way shape or form if you're an activist you can't trust your cell phone treat it like it's the plague the the government corporations have the ability to monitor track you watch you listen to you through your cell phone um at will essentially I mean they really do what's that even pay as you go uh it depends um I mean they all have microphones in them um they're all capable there's some way there is a way of being switched on if

it's got GPS you can be tracked it through it even pay as you go um the three axis accelerometer that's present in most of the smartphones they can they can identify you by the way you walk yep yeah Gus hunt who's the head of technology for the CIA said as much in a talk earlier this year at the I think it was the Giga om conference at the beginning of the 2013 so yeah it was kind of interesting to to hear that so it's we're getting to that point where we have this ubiquitous surveillance that is never going away and never forgets you know like 30 years from now the things that you put on MySpace will

still be there you know like the the things that we probably should have never put on MySpace are still there operational Security in your real life make sure that you're not um not cross-contaminating your activist life with your real life you know you got to keep the two separate treat activism like a job treat your home life like your home life and make sure that there's no cross-contamination with the two those are the two big ones you know you don't want to bring work home with you you don't want to take home to work um depending on what type of activism you're doing and some of it can be very peaceful writing letters to companies

writing letters to your government Representatives some of it can be very you know some of them take it to the extreme where they're doing property damage and things like that burning cars burning buildings things like that which I don't recommend or advocate in any way shape or form but some people do take it to that level and if you are going to take it to that level you need to make sure that you're not taking that home with you