Text via Sub.Media
Movement Defense Against State & Corporate Surveillance
Ours is an age of historically unprecedented state and corporate surveillance. Our society’s growing addiction to social media, smart phones and other forms of digital communication has ushered in a more interconnected society, but one that is almost entirely dependent on the technological infrastructure of massive telecommunication, software and IT corporations. The rise of surveillance capitalism has also granted state intelligence networks like the NSA with an unfathomably intimate snapshot into our personal lives. These days, everything we do or say online is collected and stored in massive server farms, accessible to intelligence analysts and state security forces at any time of their choosing. These enhanced surveillance capacities have, in turn, revolutionized more traditional methods of gathering intelligence on political dissidents, by helping local and federal police departments map out the networks they hope to infiltrate, and identify prospective targets that are most vulnerable to being flipped and/or coerced into betraying their supposed comrades. Yet even with all these tools at their disposal, states around the world are finding it harder and harder to control the explosion of popular anger provoked by their increasingly severe policies of ecological destruction and capitalist exploitation. In this month’s episode of Trouble, anarchist media collective sub.Media interviews a number of individuals about their experiences of dealing with undercovers and informants, and looks at some of the ways that we can build movements that are more resilient to state and corporate surveillance.
