for a very long long long time, Wake up!

When the database contained just anti-fascist and animal rights people no one cared. In those days the database had mainly working class activists. Now that it will contain many middle-class people in the plane stupid and climate campers etc it suddenly becomes outrageous.

Such is the way of the world.

Sorry bouncy but thats simply not true. First databasing wasnt simply limited to antifa and animal rights activists - the surveillance and database development goes back years and included travellers / new age travellers, ravers, eco-direct action types, and footie firms.

What is newer is the latest round of press attention post G20 (which was already brewing following the police stepping up the harassment of journalists and photographers (and everyone else)).

While I certainly agree there is a higher middle class presence within the climate camp / plane stupid activists AND this formed part of the G20 complaints and coverage thing, it was the killing of ian Thopmson that kicked off the major press attention towards police tactics. The climate camp legal and press teams had also been working hard to highlight dirty police tactics (esp kingsnorth), as well as the efforts of Fitwatch, as well as the efforts of some photographers and journalists who cover protests.

look what the Guardian got their hands on
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/25/spotter-cards

few years ago,when i was crossing the border in dover, the cops found 325 magazine on me, then temporarily arrested me on that occasion, saying it's terrorist newspaper, told me I will be written on potential list of dangerous people in UK , asked me questions about my family abroad and after all, before I got back to Brighton, they raided my squat (medina house) , ripped off the floors and walls in my room, allegedly looking for weapons :), still i dunno how the fuck they knew i was living there.
i think the times came that we should consider whether we are paranoied or thinking realistically.

It's typical of the liberal press to worry about our civil liberties in one article, when they have previously helped smear eco-activists as Green Terrorists alongside the state in others.

The story has been pulled together here:
 http://www.thesparrowsnest.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3:scanned-and-online-documents-project&catid=9:library&Itemid=4

Never mind that that Enemy Within nonsense on Channel4.

A good reason to mask up on demos.

---

Meanwhile repression of anarchists and anti-fascists is becoming even worse in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. The situation is well covered in the english-language magazine 'Abolishing the Borders from Below', published in Berlin. Repression is not limited to one nation state and police responses shouldn't be taken in isolation in spite of the term 'domestic extremism' - since they talk across borders themselves after all.

Researchers Build Anonymous, Browser-Based 'Darknet'
Black Hat USA presentation will demonstrate how the latest browser technology makes underground, private Internet communities simpler to form, more secretive

Jun 15, 2009 | 05:18 PM
By Kelly Jackson Higgins
DarkReading

A pair of researchers has discovered a way to use modern browsers to more easily build darknets -- those underground, private Internet communities where users can share content and ideas securely and anonymously.

Billy Hoffman, manager for HP Security Labs at HP Software, and Matt Wood, senior security researcher in HP's Web Security Research Group, will demonstrate a proof-of-concept for Veiled, a new type of darknet, at the Black Hat USA conference in Las Vegas next month. Darknets, themselves, are nothing new; networks like Tor, FreeNet, and Gnutella are well-established. The HP researchers say Veiled is the same idea, only much simpler: It doesn't require any software to participate, just an HTML 5-based browser. "We've implemented a simple, new darknet in the browser," Wood says. "There are no supporting [software] programs."

Unlike its predecessors, Veiled doesn't require much technical know-how to join, either. "The coolest thing about this is it lowers the barrier to entry to a darknet," Hoffman says. "You could put some very interesting applications on top of it. It could be a way to do secure whistle-blowing, [for example]. When you have something decentralized like this, no one can control or stop it." No one can take it down, either, he adds, all of which makes it more approachable for a wider community of legitimate users.

Darknets can also be abused by the bad guys as a way to cover their tracks, but Hoffman and Wood say they see this as more of an opportunity for adding legitimate and mainstream uses of darknets, such as anonymous suggestion boxes or other ways for users to express themselves anonymously without their IP addresses potentially giving them away. "Students are getting reprimanded at school because of their Facebook postings," perhaps criticizing something about school, Hoffman says. "They're being punished for free speech. Where can you freely express yourself without fear of consequences? This could be an interesting app."

"The point of our research is not to give bad guys a tool for nefarious use, but to get security researchers discussing and talking about the new concept of browser-based darknets," he says.

Veiled is basically a "zero footprint" network, in which groups can rapidly form and disappear without a trace. It connects the user's HTML 5-based browser to a single PHP file, which downloads some JavaScript code into the browser. Pieces of the file are spread among the members of the Veiled darknet. It's not peer-to-peer, but rather a chain of "repeaters" of the PHP file, the researchers say.

"It's a file on a Web server, but I can also host one on my Website, for example, and we can join those two files together," Wood says. "It's very distributed."

The researchers are building encryption into the file distribution network as a way for users to remain anonymous and communicate securely.

Hoffman says he and Wood mainly want to show that building a browser-based Darknet is possible. And they don't consider Veiled a replacement for existing darknets. "We don't think this is the best solution...Our message is that the technical barriers to these secure anonymity networks are not that high," he says. "We are trying to build an infrastructure for this type of communication and file storage to occur, and allow others to decide how they should architect it."

Have a comment on this story? Please click "Discuss" below. If you'd like to contact Dark Reading's editors directly, send us a message.

 http://www.darkreading.com/security/encryption/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=217801293

At the last NATO event they got me on my own and insisted on videoing me for about five minutes. I was happy to because there was about ten officers around me doing nothing while my mate was inside and undetected.

At an anarchist demo before that, I realised that they knew some stuff about me that I hadn't ever said online. I had told a few folk a tip for getting away, I'd memorised the addresses of everyone in the UK with the same name as me. So they not only asked me my name and address, they also asked me details about my address, such as which local buildings were near it, and then they radioed my local station for confirmation. To identify the leak, it was simply a matter of telling only one or two people certain things and then testing to see if the police knew about it.

Years before that, I attended a Royal Navy public briefing on X Berths, and it was obvious they were expecting me. For one thing, there was a look of recognition in the eyes of the officers who were speaking who I'd never seen before, and I wasn't allowed to ask any questions. That is subjective, I know. However, I'd arrived late and the hall was full, but I was escorted to the one empty seat in the middle of the hall by two police officers. No one else got a seat reserved for them.

It's not paranoia to assume that they are just like the Stasi except with better computers. If someone calls you paranoid then you can be pretty sure that they aren't cautious enough. If they can do it, they do do it.

In 1983 I purchased a VW. I got stopped by the police who immediately identified me as a CND activist. Except I was not. I had simply purchased the vehicle from a CND activist. I happily played along because they wasted their own time. I know of other people whose telephones were tapped - for knowing the wrong people. The State has always treated its masters with contempt.

The more recent problem with the police is that it is seen as a viable career - along with security guards - for former military personnel. Think about the tremendous shift that has caused since the "end" of the cold war. All those "highly trained" military types filtering into the Police Service (which they regard as "undisciplined") thereby promoting a new model of authoritarianism. This is contempt with military training.

The truth is that the middle classes never really suffered the beating that the Working Class took in the 1970-1980's. Now that we have "no class politics" it has become open season on all "political activists". So all the formerly marginal causes (animal rights, climate and so on) are simply getting the same treatment that working class activists have been getting since the formation of special branch and its predecessors in 1888. The police have always kept the working class under control. Now the middle class will experience the same.

Unless there is a radical return to some form of class solidarity, all that will happen is that the police will cherry pick which protestors to seek legislation against. This will tighten the screws on all protestors. Except that already happened through the insane individualist agenda of most protestors.

Welcome to the world you made: middle class through and through.

Recently at the Ratcliffe power station actions - which i think were brilliant - I was, so it seemed to me, constantly watched and eyeballed by a few pigs that couldn't take their eyes off me. I don't mind, they know me anyway, I'm scared of it. but the fact is, it can be an uncomfortable feeling when you find yourself spied on/harassed, etc, by the state.

Yet it is not always the state.

Allow me to explain a little:

Private detectives and private spies, employed by the likes of, say, BP or E.ON, or McMurders, earn nice money for helping to spy on us (revolutionaries).

I certainly think I was spied on "privately", in 2005, after the Shake Down Fundraiser in a squatted venue in notts (which was a fundraiser in itself for the anti-g8 stuff in scotland that year). That venue, incidentally, is owned by a millionaire associate/friend of the queen, who turned up days after anouncing he wanted some of the money that was raised after police intelligence reports said upwards of 20,000 pounds was donated by party goers, i heard this from the man who guided him around the building.
Anyway, climbing down from the roof after attaching a banner relating to anti-capitalist action in the coming days, I spotted a man in a hire van/brand new van talking in to a head set and watching me continually up the road and next to his van were i stood staring at him til he drove away. I guessed the millionaire land lord wanted to know what was going down in his building. That was not the only incident, others include "unexplained/dodgy" visits by the police or community officers wanting a look round the premises. It wasn't officially a squat, so there was no real reason why this should happen.

Anyhoo...I'm waffling, but the point is, spying on us is nothing new, like other posts have mentioned, yet it is important to realise that it may not always be the state/police. Be on the look out for those that take special interest in your actions and your words...........spies are literally every where!

And another thing, intelligence gathering is spying, full stop. So the police should stop relying on that sound bite, it's not impressive.

Various infiltrators have turned out to move from being private eyes to being employed by the state and then back again in the blink of an eye, all to avoid legal process. Adrian Radford springs to mind.

Maybe the comment about the Guardian should be replaced with a link to this article?

Guardian in hot water over activist face flash
 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/26/guardian_activists/

The baddies should be on the run ....not us!

I'm proud to know a few of the people on the police/guardian flyers. So why arn't i on there? Do they think i'm a "crap" protester??
Causing "distress" is a criminal offence. (s5, POA)

I'd agree that the activists should feel proud to be targetted, and that their employers shouldn't use it against them. The best activists I've met could have, or sometimes have had, successful corporate careers until they acted on their conscience or they got blacklisted simply for expressing a dissenting opinion. It really doesn't take much to be blacklisted in the UK today though so care is required - it is okay to risk your own identity but not strangers. I think the problem is essentially the old one of activists publishing other activists photos without airbrushing them or asking permission.

It is a bit more complex since this card was already published in the mainstream, but further publication carries further risk. More discriminatory employers read the Guardian than will have watched 'Taking Liberties' and the faces could and should have been airbrushed just in case.

As an extreme example, Joe Derby, the soldier who blew the whistle on the abuse at Abu Ghraib, had been promised anonimity by his superiors. He remained a soldier after The New Yorker magazine published his identity as, he explained, "who the hell reads the New Yorker?". Not many GIs for sure. However, when Donald Rumsfeld went on US TV to personally thank him for whistle-blowing, he was sitting in a canteen full of soldiers watching it and all eyes turned to him, and his family home was immediately attacked by soldiers who considered him a traitor. He was forced into a military witness protection programme. Derby himself has no doubts that this was a deliberate, back-handed punishment by Rumsfeld.
"I don't think it was an accident because those things are pretty much scripted, but I did receive a letter from him which said he had no malicious intent, he was only doing it to praise me and he had no idea about my anonymity. I really find it hard to believe that the secretary of defence of the United States has no idea about the star witness for a criminal case being anonymous."

It is generally accepted on Indymedia that photos of protestors should be disguised unless you have permission or in extreme cases where the photograph is more important than the considerations of their personal safety. As anti-fascists regularly point out, it isn't just decent people who read this site and we don't want to do the bastards dirty work for them. I can't see it would have diminished in the slightest the Guardian story, or the 'Taking Liberties' documentary, or the comment above, to disguise these photos unless they got permission from the targetted individuals. These are awful times in this country and they could be about to turn unimaginably worse. The police don't protect you from the fascists and there is no one to protect you from the police.

"The police don't protect you from the fascists and there is no one to protect you from the police. "

Who arrested all those fash the last time they got silly? girl guides.

If your going to talk rot at least make sense, Ive got no real love for the cops but I take each one on his/her own merits, blanket statements just make us look stupid

I was carjacked at knifepoint, held hostage, drugged and was about to be 'suicided' by my local fash - and this was probably a random event, a normal night for them. And if it was a targetted attack, it was directed by the state. When I told an ordinary cop they classed that as an 'uncorroborated allegation of assault' so I didn't even report it, despite me being able to prove most of it. Much later I talked to a senior cop, and they told me they viewed this sort of thing as 'gang on gang' violence, the sort of thing it isn't in the public interest to pursue. I'm not in a 'gang', but I am in a community.

What has protected me since is two things, alerting and mobilising my friends, neighbours and family to the threat, and the release of several of my attackers names and addresses on the first leak of the BNP membership list.

So yeah, you get better and worse cops, like any other group, but you are making a fatal mistake if you are looking for police protection from fascists and if you are that inexperienced then no offence, but you shouldn't be offering other people here dangerous advice.

> In 1983 I purchased a VW....
...
> Welcome to the world you made: middle class through and through.

Oh the irony. You damn middle class hippie! LOL ;-)

Please, someone, leak this list to Wikileaks. Would make wonderful reading.