What they’ll do is arrest someone on bogus charges and then get their phone (legally via a plea or illegally whatever works). Since signal links your account with a phone number they can cross reference the contacts sync with the signal profiles and work their way up that way.
Best thing to mitigate this is to use a communications app that doesnt link to any personal details like SimpleX or GNU Jami, that way if one person gets booked then the entire network can be more resilient.
Signal is an upgrade from SMS but the phone number linking makes it impossible to create disposable identities. Signal is what you use outside of organizing talking to colleagues and family because WhatsApp is a slop mess and its fairly well known that you have an easier chance on getting people on board.
The signal chats have been already leaked publicly by right wing infiltrators, so I don’t think there’s much that can be done now. All the data is already out there, the FBI don’t even need to seize phones to get a start on the investigation.
Yo I hope that’s been posted somewhere else more prominent.
I have been undercover inside the groups for days.
Looks like he’s doing better than the regular FBI.
Sounds like they are doing an OK job of organization and security given the constraints. Signal is main issue here but comparable info could likely be obtained with an IMSI catcher.
It’s the blending of communication channels and operational channels. My local groups had this problem until we developed better practices.
Comms channel is only for rapid response, who-what-where, to get people on the scene documenting everything, informing victims of their rights, and impeding police fuckery. This is considered “public”, in that the bar for entry is quite low and the worst that an infiltrator would find out is “hey, cops, in about 10 minutes you’re gonna have a bunch of cameras on you”, a fact that they’d know soon enough anyway.
People love to chat, so there’s a chatter channel. Nothing important goes on here, and things are strictly moderated. The closest thing to operationally relevant information is stuff like “hey, I’m trying to organize X, react if you’re interested”. Again, worst case an infiltrator knows some vague information about planned actions.
All the resulting planning happens in person or in very tightly vetted invite-only threads. It is possible for infiltrators to get into these, but it requires establishing a lot of trust that’s just not gonna happen for a random lurker. For anything remotely serious, at most there’s a handful of core organizers updating each other. A lot can be done with 3-5 people without endangering the operation of the whole group, so you keep the scale small until you need bodies. Once you do, you break the action into disparate areas of responsibility and recruit through whisper networks and trusted individuals. These groups do not coordinate directly. If you lose an organizer, you jettison channels and either adapt the plan or start over. It’s easy to cut the head off of a snake, so you gotta be a hydra.
And I’m talking a not very large city with an incredibly overbearing police presence. If this isn’t going on 100 times over in Minneapolis (and everywhere else), they’ll roll up everyone they can identify on “conspiring” or “obstruction” or RICO or similar nonsense charges and hang them up in court/prison until people are so scared/exhausted that they give up or buy into some “emotional” outburst about how we all just need to put a 👍 on a message about doing a little domestic txrrxism to “take back our city”.
I do not think mostly anybody should be planning “dangerous” actions (mainly due to lack of opsec and experience), but the writing is on the wall: whether you want to move the needle or just keep yourself safe, you need a cell, a gang, a cadre, not a big tent. Let a thousand gangs bloom. 🌺
What they’ll do is arrest someone on bogus charges and then get their phone (legally via a plea or illegally whatever works). Since signal links your account with a phone number they can cross reference the contacts sync with the signal profiles and work their way up that way.
Best thing to mitigate this is to use a communications app that doesnt link to any personal details like SimpleX or GNU Jami, that way if one person gets booked then the entire network can be more resilient.
Signal is an upgrade from SMS but the phone number linking makes it impossible to create disposable identities. Signal is what you use outside of organizing talking to colleagues and family because WhatsApp is a slop mess and its fairly well known that you have an easier chance on getting people on board.
Afaik it’s not anything to do with signal as a platform it’s that they had rats in the chat
The signal chats have been already leaked publicly by right wing infiltrators, so I don’t think there’s much that can be done now. All the data is already out there, the FBI don’t even need to seize phones to get a start on the investigation.
didnt’ know this happened
yeah…
Yo I hope that’s been posted somewhere else more prominent.
Looks like he’s doing better than the regular FBI.
Sounds like they are doing an OK job of organization and security given the constraints. Signal is main issue here but comparable info could likely be obtained with an IMSI catcher.
Hmm. How did this guy get in here? How are they verifying access to these groups? I feel like you could better atomize these groups.
It’s the blending of communication channels and operational channels. My local groups had this problem until we developed better practices.
Comms channel is only for rapid response, who-what-where, to get people on the scene documenting everything, informing victims of their rights, and impeding police fuckery. This is considered “public”, in that the bar for entry is quite low and the worst that an infiltrator would find out is “hey, cops, in about 10 minutes you’re gonna have a bunch of cameras on you”, a fact that they’d know soon enough anyway.
People love to chat, so there’s a chatter channel. Nothing important goes on here, and things are strictly moderated. The closest thing to operationally relevant information is stuff like “hey, I’m trying to organize X, react if you’re interested”. Again, worst case an infiltrator knows some vague information about planned actions.
All the resulting planning happens in person or in very tightly vetted invite-only threads. It is possible for infiltrators to get into these, but it requires establishing a lot of trust that’s just not gonna happen for a random lurker. For anything remotely serious, at most there’s a handful of core organizers updating each other. A lot can be done with 3-5 people without endangering the operation of the whole group, so you keep the scale small until you need bodies. Once you do, you break the action into disparate areas of responsibility and recruit through whisper networks and trusted individuals. These groups do not coordinate directly. If you lose an organizer, you jettison channels and either adapt the plan or start over. It’s easy to cut the head off of a snake, so you gotta be a hydra.
And I’m talking a not very large city with an incredibly overbearing police presence. If this isn’t going on 100 times over in Minneapolis (and everywhere else), they’ll roll up everyone they can identify on “conspiring” or “obstruction” or RICO or similar nonsense charges and hang them up in court/prison until people are so scared/exhausted that they give up or buy into some “emotional” outburst about how we all just need to put a 👍 on a message about doing a little domestic txrrxism to “take back our city”.
I do not think mostly anybody should be planning “dangerous” actions (mainly due to lack of opsec and experience), but the writing is on the wall: whether you want to move the needle or just keep yourself safe, you need a cell, a gang, a cadre, not a big tent. Let a thousand gangs bloom. 🌺