Culture de sécurité, garantie de confiance collective

Culture of safety, guarantee of collective trust

Safety culture refers to automations, practices, and attitudes that are accessible to everyone, taught in order to improve the safety of our communities. Faced with ever more advanced tools of coercion and repression, resistance must impose a culture that learns from the security flaws of our predecessors, for an appropriate response — avoiding paranoia or laxity — while remaining flexible and up-to-date. For the sake of brevity, we will only provide an introduction to this culture here, but additional resources are recommended at the bottom of the page.

Principles of safety culture

• In a group, to protect yourself is to protect others and vice versa. There is no collective security without trust: stick to the information you need to succeed in your mission.
• Do not talk about your involvement or that of someone in hiding and in illegal actions. Don't ask others about it. If someone tells you about it, explain to the person that they don't have to keep you up to date with their activities.
• You can discuss past publicly known civil disobedience actions, without giving details, when speaking to people who are convinced or who could support you.
• You can propagandize all forms of resistance, including sabotage, as long as you express yourself in a favourable climate (people to be convinced, a known audience, or a large audience when you are trained). Don't mention any details or make explicit calls for violence.
• About the police and intelligence services : never talk to them. They are not seeking the truth and are not motivated by a sense of justice. Their aim is to extort information from you and to charge you abusively. You only have to justify yourself in front of a magistrate so keeping silent is the best way to not reveal anything without having to lie. Do not allow them to enter your home without requiring a rogatory commission issued by the judge. They need to be able to enter a private place. Systematically destroy documents that you no longer need.
• Keep up to date with current and future laws and case law. Surround yourself with competent lawyers and jurists. Exchange information with your group on a regular basis.
• Good security requires an understanding of computer and digital tools. Follow the guides, train collectively, set up a safety routine.

Open organization and clandestine organization

Organizations with open faces or Aboveground act within the framework of the law or outside it, but while protecting themselves from numerous safeguards (media coverage, mass support, lawyers, law enforcement agencies). Although easily identifiable, they have no obligation of transparency. Thus, withholding information is essential. ATR is and will always remain a non-violent legal organization. It will never initiate actions that go beyond this framework.

Clandestine organizations or Underground operate in hiding so as not to have to suffer a repression that is potentially fatal for the group. The safety regulations are more stringent than forAboveground. It is imperative to choose between Aboveground and Underground before fully engaging in activism. Operating on both fronts will endanger your coverage or expose your identifiable organization to the risk of persecution by authorities.

Questions/Answers

“Isn't it safer for everyone to completely mask their identity? ”

Our activities leave traces that intelligence services know how to exploit and it would be naive to consider being able to remain completely anonymous. Embarrassing ourselves with inadequate restrictive measures extinguishes our ability to act. A good safety culture offers a satisfactory preventive shield and secures our backs by legitimizing our actions.

“Using the Internet for a revolution is stupid, you would be better followed than Little Thumb.”

Exploiting digital tools involves the risks of tracking and data theft, but these are offset by the usefulness of these tools. It would be silly for an organization with an open face to deprive itself of the effectiveness of digital tools to communicate, exchange or train. Adapted attitudes or protocols quickly reduce most of the risks incurred. For example, information will be transmitted through channels in line with the criticality and urgency of the message.

“How do you deal with reckless profiles? ”

Safety culture is not innate and the acquisition of automation will take time. Show pedagogy with those who go too far, highlight the responsibility that falls on them (that of the survival of the group). Be careful not to call someone an undercover person without solid proof, as most mistakes were made by resisters who thought they were doing the right thing. If the person continues to break safety regulations despite recalls, the person should be excluded from the group.

To go further

• “In the face of the police, in the face of justice. Guide to legal self-defense” by the Cadecol collective (Syllepse, 2016, 2nd edition), available online.
• “Handbook for survival in police custody” available online.
• Collective Legal Self-Defense Network (RAJCOL): https://rajcollective.noblogs.org/
• Digital self-defense guide, online or In paper version at Tahin Party
• Get the book Full Spectrum Resistance and see chapter 6 on security, Aric McBay, Éditions LIBRE, 2020
• Refuse the DNA file
• Useful tools and tips to improve web security (in French) hither and thither, in English hither and thither)

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