In the modern age of police hypersurveillance, knowing how to minimize the amount of information you broadcast is crucial not only for your safety but for the safety of your peers. People often repeat the importance of "practicing good opsec" when they themselves do not know how to do so beyond black bloc and admonitions to blur faces. However, as Foucalt's Boomering once again comes to crack our skulls in, it's important to learn as much as you can now before things escalate even further.

The foundation of good opsec, solo or grouped, is a strong security culture. In so many words: every day is Shut The Fuck Up Friday. Learn more about it in "Security Culture: A Handbook for Activists." Though the zine is over 20 years old now, good security culture is timeless.

Primed and ready to go, consider learning + applying threat modelling concepts to further refine your risk tolerance and preparedness. "Threat Modelling Fundamentals" serves as a pretty good introduction to the concept and offers directly applicable techniques to the reader. This practice dovetails nicely with any intelligence gathering practices you may already be engaged in!

This comes for a collection zines you can find here from riot medicine with more information.

From the same source, "Mobile Phone Security for Activists and Agitators" goes indepth into the fraught, complex relationship between activism and smartphones. While phones are unprecedentedly powerful sousveillance tools, they are just as powerful for tracking and deanonymization through a variety of means. Learn what you can do to keep yourself safe from authoritarian SIGINT (yes I use fed and military jargon when it's useful, die mad about it) because I guarantee you that they are always watching.

And, finally, a quick and dirty guide to scrubbing EXIF metadata from what you post online.

https://www.comparitech.com/blog/information-security/remove-metadata-from-photos/

To those on the ground: Stay safe.
To the rest of us: Stay informed, donate what you can, counter the mass media narratives, and start preparing for the possibility of another long summer.

Inshallah from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. 🍉🍉

https://cornellsun.com/2024/05/02/fattal-the-feeling-of-the-encampment/

Here's an account of the Cornell encampment from a student journalist. Sure, it's not exactly CNN or NBC or Fox in terms of reach but, unlike those reporters, he came in good faith and found what lies at the movement's heart.

"So, what does it mean when the administration’s gravest threats can no longer serve as a deterrent? What does it mean when people fully, truly, practically believe that together they have an unshakable strength? What does it mean when we act on the realization that our institutions need us more than we need them?

I suppose it means hope. I hope it means hope."

We must remember why these protests are happening, however. The movement's won some small victories here in the US, but as we speak Israel continues to bomb and encircle Rafah in preparation for a historic massacre in the same genre as Srebrenica. It's my fervent hope that there will not be another day of remembrance. Never again means all genocides.

https://www.npr.org/2024/05/02/1248669695/biden-remarks-white-house-live

"We are a civil society and order must prevail."
"This isn't a moment for politics, this is a moment for clarity."
"Dissent must never lead to disorder."
"It [protesting] needs to be done...within the law."
"As President I will always defend free speech and I will always be just as strong standing up for the rule of law."

Every authoritarian always reverts to the same talking points. That's not surprising. He also reiterated there will be no policy change in the region.

Journalist: "Mr. President, have the protests forced you to reconsider any of the policies with regard to the region?"
Biden: "No, thank you." He then very quickly leaves the room.

Genocide will continue until approval ratings improve.

Whoops! Turns out I missed a large story yesterday! The House of Representatives has passed 320-91 (70 Democrats voting against) the Republican-favored Antisemitism Awareness Act which codifies antisemitism as a Civil Rights offense using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's Zionist definition of antisemitism. Should the bill pass, it forces the US Department of Education to consider criticism of Israel's past and present racism as antisemitic violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Moreover, vague examples like "Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation," provide room for convenient interpretations of antisemitism; other acts such as "Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis," effectively silence accusations of genocide and mass, systematic murder by the Israeli government against Palestinians. Should the AAA be signed into law, ALL educational institutions in the US will be legally obligated to swiftly crush all resistance against Israeli's ethnic cleansing.

The upshot is that the AAA is unpopular with rank-and-file democrats, who have been supporting the parallel Countering Antisemitism Act, which doesn't bode well as it heads to the Democratically controlled Senate.

It's worth keeping an eye on these bills and how they evolve over the next few months.

You've probably heard of kettling before, but it's not the be-all-end-all of crowd control tactics. If you can tell what moves the pigs are trying to make you can effectively avoid, counter, and co-opt their techniques.

Courtesy of https://www.instagram.com/p/C6bQkJQA2rR

https://twitter.com/PplsCityCouncil/status/1770972732240564390

This thread has more information specifically on the crossbow tactic and its origins in military policing of all things