Indymedia as target

Friend inside the beast | 22.08.2002 09:24

Indymedia-UK is one target of a working party of the intelligence services of this country. What follows is what has been leaked to me by a friend in another country's intelligence service.

Indymedia-UK is one target of a working party of the intelligence services of this country. What follows is what has been leaked to me by a friend in another country's intelligence service. How much truth it contains I have no way of knowing, but what was said to me made a lot of sense.

The strategies used with Indymedia include the following:

(1) real-time surveillance and permanent record of all activity on site; cataloguing of archive relative to posters, subjects, mapping of threads and correlation with other IMC sites; identification of posters on database via other signals intelligence; integration of intelligence with public order and anti-terrorism policing

(2) interference:
(a) posting "static": insertion of several postings of more or less relevance around posts which are viewed as dangerous; or simply to clog up the newswire
(b) weakening legitimacy of site (so it is viewed as eccentric and irrelevant by mainstream citizens and the mainstream media): insertions of inflammatory postings; extremist postings of the left and right; association of site with minority ultra-left parties

(3) active postings under pseudonyms to develop the internal contradictions within the left:
(a) promote tensions between the SWP and other parties of the Left and the anarchists: the more debate is built up within these elements, the less relevant the site will be to a wider public
(b) use class, race and gender to divide participants
(c) try to separate local politics from national and global foreign policy issues
(d) build up one or two voices on the medium so that in a crisis they can intervene to tip debate in one or another direction.

Friend inside the beast

Comments

Hide the following 20 comments

well if that is intelligence then...

22.08.2002 09:43

It does not take much to think that this is a possibility but at the same time this post does the same; discredit the newswire and scare peopel off. Can't really win there, all we have to do is keep moving forward and ignore them they will not go away and neither will we.

matilda

What a load of bollocks

22.08.2002 09:51

You've just put all the things *you* don't like about the site and are saying the security services are doing them!!

As if MI5's gonna start debates with the SWP! We anarchists are going to do that anyway because they're a bunch of fuckwits who are destroying the movement.

If this post has no evidence to back it up, it shouldn't be here.

@narcho

SWP propaganda

22.08.2002 10:10

This is evidently a ploy to smear those who criticise the SWP as somehow involved in the intelligence services. This is a tactic used frequently by the SWP to discredit anarchists. They argue that because anarchists have no formal hierarchical structure, they are easily infiltrated (why would they be more easily infiltrated than the SWP?). Now the smear is directed against the IMC, another non-hierarchical organisation, for allowing radical groups to publish their material. I wonder whether the original post was sent by an SWP member or perhaps the party leadership.

Dan

part and parcel of life as we know it

22.08.2002 10:20

Unfortunately intelligence services monitoring this site is a fact of life, and part and parcel of any site that the state views subversive.they are particualarly active on indymedia.ie, where right neo nazis and FRU,MI5/MI6 brit intelligence services run amok, reflecting the norm in northern ireland and ireland, where intelligence services rule and are particularly active in that part of world.

babsdebrawl

SWP bashing

22.08.2002 10:29

Still, lets save the SWP bashing for u75 and ensure that Indymedia doesn't descend into a tit-for-tat battleground like the afore-mentioned message board.

Marxist_Mike

in my experience

22.08.2002 10:37

'intelligence' services are far more stupid than we would believe..
check out cryptome.org for examples
don't know what level paranoia 'they' have about indymedia, probly quite high and yes they are probly watching you, it an easy enough thing for them to do(rather than being out there catching real crims or whatever they're supposed to do)

whether they are trying to subvert indy, i couldn't say but wouldn't have thought it would be worth their while..
nonetheless, goes without saying that on an open forum like this you should use your common sense about all news stories you see.

onemonkey
mail e-mail: indy@onemonkey.org

It might make more sense than you think

22.08.2002 10:37

The original post makes a lot of sense to me.

Anyone seriously interested in building a left opposition in this country knows that anarchists will have to work with the SWP with the other trotskist and maoist sectlets and with trade unionists and with people in the churches (Anglican, Catholic, methodist, quakers, Jews, Moslems) and with random grannies, liberals, and angry youth. It is clearly in the interest or our enemies to "split and wreck" this coalition-- and particularly prior to the Iraq War which everything is being bet on.

I don't see the original post as pro-SWP or anti-anarchist, it merely suggests that anti-anarchist, and even supposedly pro-SWP and supposedly pro-anarchist posts which direct energy towards the internal debates within the left could sometimes be driven by agent provacateurs who wish to take us away from attacking capitalism, the war machine etc. I think everyone knows the SWP has been fairly well infiltrated by the intelligence services for decades.

When you watch how people move and speak always ask yourself the old Latin question: "qui bono?"-- which is to say "who benefits?". You will know them by how they move.

Wondering

in my experience

22.08.2002 10:40

onemonkey
mail e-mail: indy@onemonkey.org

*

22.08.2002 11:07

I'm inclined to agree with Wondering.

Even if this post is bullshit - the lessons to be learned from it are real.

Posters such as Marxist_Mike, Lenin and Space Trotskyist could do with reading this article and thinking about it. The same could be said for their anarchist equivalent although I'm less enclined to name names with the anarchos (put it down to personal bias).

This site functions best when people don't waste space with abusive rants and turgid theoretical debates. Information about social/environmental issues from a perspective of resistance doesn't need to be so crude. It can be exciting, accesible even intelligent if we try.

I realy think the Trot. element should show more sensitivity to the fact that they are engaging with a resource which comes out of a wider community at indymedia. Respect the fact that the other people who contribute to sustaining indymedia don't want to be ranted at and don't want the service to be abused with irrelevant post. However, Trot bashing is easy and often counterproductive. The rest of us should have the confidence to dealwith them in a confident asertive manner without being reduced to name calling.

The security issue is one we should all be aware of and take responsibility for in a manner that makes sense to us individualy and in the groups we work with. Being aware of this is not paranoia it is just common sense.

*
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MI5/MI6/FRU borin wankers but..

22.08.2002 11:16

the intelligence services maybe thick boring spotty mummies boy more than my jobsworth one dimensional robots with no imagination, but they still have at their disposal vast resources, and technology .

guessagain

reds under the bed?

22.08.2002 11:36

Wahey, yet again someone posts something that pisses people off, and within minutes it's decided "it must have come from the SWP" "yeah, probably from their Central Committee"

I don't mean to be rude but don't you think the SWP CC are probably a bit busy to spend all their time stirring on your website? Are y'all even aware there are actually a few people in the world who don't read IMC, or (shock horror) may not even have heard of it?

sceptical

Who is the SWP?

22.08.2002 12:09

What is the SWP? Never heard of them. Probably just another group of reactionary pseudo-lefties cosying up to the Labour Party. Who cares anyway?

Antidote

Well well well

22.08.2002 17:42

Yet another flame war about that most maligned of leftist groups, the SWP! What is it about these guys that annoys you so much. While the various groups in the Left are trying to "out-holy" each other, people are being put off because of all this tit-4-tat point scoring. What the various left wing groups should be doing (including both "anarchists" and SA/SWP/GR/ANL) is putting their differences aside and joining forces to fight this onslaught of neoliberal capitalism that is being forced down our throats by the governments of the world. There is an old saying: "divide and conquer", and it is true, because while the Left is still divided and fighting over who has the greatest ideals, it is never going to do anything positive.

Thomas J

Put down molasses and down come the flies

22.08.2002 19:08

I think the development of this thread rather proves the point of the original post.

Keep your eyes open and walk good my friends

Entomologist

The SWP are paracites

22.08.2002 19:15

Most of the posting looked like standard cointelpro. The intelligence services will be doing stuff like this against indymedia and the wider protest movement.

We can never work with the SWP because:
(i) They leach off the movement, trying to recruit people into their moribund sect.
and
(ii) They systematically sabotage any struggles they are associated with.

The SWP are like an anti political innoculation given to students to get the radical politics out of their system. So many people who may once have been good activists joined the SWP and are now no longer politically active. It is one of the biggest blocks to radical progress there is.

No movement which has links with them will last.

Steve Booth
mail e-mail: grandlaf@lineone.net

ferchrissakes

22.08.2002 21:29

like I always say to criticism about my erratic postings,instead of squabbles, listen to what the original posting says and test the points against what actually occurs. You got a maybe, does it correspond to reality?

You paranoid freaks!

22.08.2002 22:17

This is what the internet does to people!

But if it's true : Stop wasting your time spys! There are terrorists to be caught! It's a question of PRIORITIES.

mossad agent. Ha ha

hey mossad agent haha

22.08.2002 23:30

the spies are the terrorists. there are no terrorists except those backed up by their own agencies.It's a fuinny old world. And we'll all be classified rerrorist soon. Better believe it

If you criticise authortity...

23.08.2002 00:37

...you're a terrorist. Me, you, everyone involved in IndyMedia, we are all terrorists in the eyes of Blair, Dubya, Sharon and company. Strangely enough, we consider THEM as terrorists. You know what they say though, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter...

Thomas J

Iagree with comments. something odd with this

23.08.2002 13:01

One line stands out for me:
"association of site with minority ultra-left parties". Frankly, isnt the IMC supposed to catering for the needs of minority parties ? Isnt the term "ultra-left" a quick way of condemning anyone to the left of your own opinions ?
Doesnt it seem ludicrous to imagine that the 'security forces' would NOT be taking advantage of all this free info churning out by the day ? All YOU have to do is keep your own personal details private (as is your natural right)

Space-Trotskyist