If you organise (civil disobedience) actions, it is important to be aware that you can be seen as a risk by the state. The police and secret services do extensive research on activist movements like Extinction Rebellion. [1] They do this both to monitor and stop specific actions, and to map and dismantle networks of activists. The police and secret services make use of online surveillance as well as approaching activists as informants and using professional infiltrators. History shows that suspicion about infiltrators is one of the most important weapons the government has for tearing apart movements. This manual will therefore give you some basic tips on how to safely organise actions as an organiser without getting carried away by distrust and paranoia. Be aware that you can never regulate the safety of your movement completely, but that you can significantly reduce the risks of things going wrong by following a number of agreements.
Also read what you, as an organiser, have to take into account when it comes to digital security. If you participate in actions, read the guide for action participants.
Extinction Rebellion often makes use of mass civil disobedience actions. The success of such actions depends less on surprise and more on the number of people who can participate, and a certain degree of openness is therefore important. Also in such actions there are some principles to take into account, to protect rebels not only during the action but also when organising actions in the future.
¶ Basic principles
- The police is not your friend: no matter how friendly the police sometimes are (towards XR), don't talk to them. As a movement, there is nothing to be gained because, in the end, cops always follow orders from higher up/the mayor. The only thing that can happen is that you (accidentally) share information that can be used against XR. Moreover, by being nice to the police you show little solidarity towards groups of marginalised people, or other activist movements that face discrimination and police violence.
- Anonymity: Keeping your real name secret and using action names is a good way to make it harder for the police to track movements like Extinction Rebellion. Even if (part of) the group knows your real name, using an action name in all communication can make it harder for the police to convict you. Even though you could easily use your own name for the organisation of a specific action, you contribute to the long-term security of the movement by not doing so. If you consider going anonymous in actions read the anonymity guide.
- Devices during actions: As an organizer, do not take devices with you to actions. If you do, use burner-phones (phones you buy for the action, with a separate SIM card, which you throw away after the action) and encrypt these phones.
When organising smaller, more disruptive actions, or when a larger action has small, disruptive elements, it is even more important to be aware of security risks.
¶ Principles of disruptive surprise actions
- Meetings: Plan actions in physical meetings. If this is not possible for every action meeting, consider what part you organise online and what part you organise physically. For online action meetings, always use a well-encrypted platform (see digital security). Follow the meeting from a laptop and put other devices, such as your phone, out of hearing distance.
- Communication devices:- No phones/laptops etc during action meetings: if you plan an action, make sure that all devices with an internet connection are in another room, well out of hearing distance of the meeting. Switching off phones, or removing a SIM card, is not enough. If you want to take notes during the meeting, do not do it on a laptop, but on paper (or an analogue typewriter
).- Plan disruptive actions preferably on paper, or otherwise in a cryptpad with password (but still put the broad outline in there and no details). If you have to share details of an action digitally, limit what information you share and with whom, send it only via Signal and set the message to disappear shortly after it is read. - Need-to-know: Share information only with people who really need to know it, if you are briefing finger leaders, give them the information they need to fulfil their role properly (even if plans go differently than expected) but do not give them unnecessary details about elements of the action they do not need to know. As a rule of thumb, you can take the following approach: you only need to know information if you would not be able to perform your task/role without it.
- Organisers: If someone wants to help organise an action that you do not know, ask several people to stand as guarantor for this person. Someone can only vouch for someone if they have good experience at one or more disruptive actions with this person. If someone wants to join, but still has to prove themselves, that's no problem. There are plenty of roles in which people who cannot yet be trusted with everything can contribute. So it's also completely okay if you can't vouch for someone.