Security primer 5/20/2001 MIM and others have discussed the repression of activists by the Amerikan government elsewhere.(1-6) This document is intended to give RAIL and SLALA activists tactical and strategic tips for a good security practice. Keep in mind though, that—as we argue in the attached essay "Stone Fish"—"[s]ecurity is not a matter of devising the perfect rule. The point is simple, can someone pinpoint what you are doing in detail or are you swimming in the sea as Mao said?" Basic principles 1. Don't give out information unnecessarily. For example, the cops should not be able to able to pick up a MIM Notes or RAIL paper, walk into a local coffee shop and say "Wow this is cool, how can I get in touch with these people?" and have someone give out your home number. If somebody asks where you live or where you work, you don't have to tell them. Say something vague. Make something up. Tell them you won't answer that for security reasons. Don't let petty-bourgeois ideas about "politeness" compromise your security and that of your comrades. 2. Don't gossip. Gossip can create unprincipled friction via misunderstandings and persynal vendetta. Gossip is also a great medium for the deliberate spreading of misinformation by the enemy. Do not gossip and criticize others when they do it.(7-8) 3. Separate the personal and the political. This is good for a variety of reasons. (a) Professionalism. It ensures that your recruits are doing things for the correct political reasons and not because they are your friend, spouse, whatever. When people feel used, they get vindictive and that can really hurt us. (b) Not mixing your personal life with your political life keeps information that can be used against you away from the people watching your political work. Use the "Need to Know Principle" (c.f. 1 above). Nothing--except bourgeois and patriarchal socialization--says that we need to share everything with our friends, spouses and family. Note that bourgeoisie professionals often have policies regulating the intersection of personal and professional lives—teachers should not sleep with students, doctors with patients, government officials with security clearance should not tell their spouses classified information, etc. 4. Put politics in command. A clear line on the futility of armed struggle now in Amerika will protect us from all sorts of agent provocateurs. Also, avoid don't give in to sub-reformist, "lifestyle" politics—what kind of music you comrades' listen to, who they sleep with, what movies they watch etc. are not important.(9) What is important is their revolutionary commitment, political line, and work. Tactical ideas: 1. Get a pseudonym for your public work. The masses won't care. And if you do it right, they won't know. 2. Get a PO Box for your political mail. Why should that stuff be sitting outside your door? We need to be able to print addresses and give them out, but let's not make it so easy to find you. 3. Get a voicemail box to give to the masses instead of a home number. Cost: $5-$20/month. 4. Park around the corner from political events. In some states, the department of motor vehicles will sell for $3 the name and address of any license plate to anyone. It's free to the FBI and police. 5. Don't break the law. This gives the pigs an excuse to bust you, either because it's simpler to bust you for pot possession than under some obscure anti-communist law, or because you were just unluckily in the wrong place at the wrong time. 6. Don't get drunk without the presence of a sober comrade. 7. Don't have sensitive political conversations on the phone, in your home, or car. 8. Don't call people from home you don't want to expose to the pigs. Assume your house and phone are bugged. 9. Learn to use PGP for email discussions when discussing something on email can't be avoided. 10. Learn to live and work without electronic handholding. 11. Throw out draft literature, old documents, political mail somewhere besides your home/office trash. Do you really want draft copies of MIM Notes articles in the same dumpster as your credit card statements? 12. Learn to lock your house and car doors. 13. Keep political literature out of sight in your car and out of sight in your house. If you get pulled over, why should the cops learn something they haven't earned? And in your house, there is nothing to be gained by having literature exposed everywhere. 14. Hassles with cops. Note that security guards have no right to do anything to you. Cops in most places can NOT arrest you for refusal to show id, although they could bust you for something else if they really wanted to. Ask if you are under arrest. If the answer is no, then leave. 15. Dealing with arrest/potential arrest situations: Pay attention, take notes, videotape if possible. Make no statements without a lawyer. Notify your branch immediately. Find out what the specific charges are, if you are going to be detained, and where. 16. Approach the mainstream media. Keep interactions with bourgeois hacks on your terms. Rule of thumb: If they approach you and you have not worked out a concrete plan for dealing with them previously, don't talk to them. The thing to avoid is the "feature" interview that avoids politics and is nothing but a fishing trip for the pigs. We don't want exposure in the enemy's papers about us as individuals, we want it about our work. Feature stories give the bourgeoisie leadership. Instead, we need to use the mainstream media by leading it tactically. Be prepared for the bourgeois media to get hostile and start digging if you refuse 17. Wear sunglasses or a scarf when doing public work outside. Try and keep your photo from getting in FBI's files today or later thru everyone's home demonstration movies. Notes: 1. MIM, "What is a pig question?" What is MIM? 1996, pp 10-11. 2. MIM, "Notes from a panel discussion," MIM Theory 7, pp. 57-59. 3. MIM, "FBI's war on the southern California BPP," MIM Theory 11, pp. 74-80. 4. Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement, Boston: South End Press, 1988. 5. Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall , Cointelpro Papers : Documents from the Fbi's Secret Wars Against Domestic Dissent, Boston: South End Press, 1990. 6. Brian Glick, War at Home: Covert Action Against U.S. Activists and What We Can Do About It, Boston: South End Press, 1989. 7. Mao Zedong, "Combat Liberalism," Selected Works II, pp. 8. RAIL, "Socialist Equality Pigs serve the state," RAIL Notes, November 1997, http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/rail/novrn.html. 9. MIM, "Repudiate sub-reformism! Fight revisionism!" http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/wim/cong/subreform.html. Stone fish by MIM 7/29/92 Security is not a matter of devising the perfect rule. The point is simple, can someone pinpoint what you are doing in detail or are you swimming in the sea as Mao said? Let me take this point a notch higher. Mao said that the imperialists can't really beat your security in the end because imperialism is doomed. That means they can know exactly what you are doing, study Mao's Selected Works, and in the end it won't matter. Don't take the above as a call to lacking tactical respect for the enemy. However, let me suggest two principles instead of rules. First, are we clear politically? We should not let provocateurs or the state generally confuse us by getting lazy in figuring out political line for ourselves, being self-reliant. Second, swimming in the sea means you bump into other fish sometimes, maybe even rocks. But does the spearfisher have any way of telling you apart from the other fishes? [And don't forget, spearfishers may also confuse each other.] One advantage we have as fish is that we're "stone fishes." We can look like rocks if we want to. A fish that lies from time to time will do quite a bit to screw up the spearfisher. I mean a fish that displays yellow colors when it's really a red fish. A fish is swimming in a school of yellow tailbacks may have bumped into the spearfisher on occasion. But the spearfisher doesn't know the stone fish is really a stone fish until it sees the spearfisher and turns into a stone form swimming in fright. If the stone fish just changes colors at appropriate times to lie to the spearfisher, everything is cool. 1. If you make it appear in DETAIL that you are really somewhere doing something that you aren't, all the better!!! So long as you haven't confused anyone politically. 2. As you can see from 1 above, if you sort out political truths that need to be known from other things, you will appear to be swimming in the sea. Details don't matter. Just get the work done, lie for appearances and tell the truth on politics. Oh, and a third point: Again, when people say something is insecure what are they comparing it with? If you have to get something done, do you have another way? is that way any better? Now I would like some people to pause and think practically what it means for the state, what it has to do CONCRETELY to infiltrate your work and CONCRETELY what they have to do to infiltrate your different kinds of work. Just make them do it the most difficult way possible given the constraints of politics. I could travel around the country on foot, changing my sneakers everyday so as not to leave the same footprints, and speak only by word of mouth on the desert, but there is a political constraint against that. Now here is an example of something no one but us can use: I've made mistakes on security, but I've also not made mistakes on security. Sounds pretty casual? Well casual deception to match casual undeception is a good way to go. Keep swimming and don't forget that you are swimming. Sometimes you can even take a shit in the middle of the school and no one will notice because you're still in the middle of the school. Just keep swimming. Even better, see someone else shit in the school and take credit for it.