In these days of commotion at the discovery of the new police infiltrator, from security culture, by allusions also, we want to launch some reflections.
Blame leads nowhere
First of all, we would like to send a warm greeting to the people who have had to deal closely with this situation. We know what it means to give our trust, time, support, affection and body to our loved ones and what it means when we are betrayed and instrumentalized. Especially if it is a case like this one, in which some of our colleagues have also been involved in more intimate relationships with this subject.
But it is useless to whip ourselves now that we already know it, when suddenly comments and ideas appear that, in the past, come out quickly, but are not very visible when the infiltration is taking place. We have to bear in mind that these tasks are part of police and state tactics with many years of experience that, in most cases, will surpass us. Either because of the means used, because of the intentions that lead the State to infiltrate someone, because we are a visible target, because they are trained for it and because we are human and we cannot always detect it easily. We count on the fact that this is something recurrent and permanent, that there have been, will be and will be more infiltrations that we have and that, until the hare jumps (in the cases in which it happens), it is complicated to find out. That is what it is all about and that is what they work hard at, however, they also have failures and letdowns of guard that allow us to pull the thread of some detail that, as unnoticed as it may seem to us, can lead to discover someone. What can be done now is to learn from the mistakes made, analyze the path of this person with us and see how it can affect us in the future. And at the same time, take into consideration the investigative work that has been done, the sensitivity in detecting suspicious behavior and the rapid dissemination of information to avoid further damage. Without forgetting the set of repressive tools that the state has at its disposal, infiltration being just one more and certainly less common compared to others.
Let’s take responsibility, let’s acquire good practices
But despite the fact that all this seeks to whip, the feeling of guilt and mistrust, it is true that it is in our hands to continue implementing a culture of security that safeguards our spaces of struggle and the people who are part of it. This goes through many axes, some of which have been exposed in these cycles of talks that were made from this project, with special emphasis on police work and forms of repression and highlighting the figure of infiltrators and whistleblowers as a tactic used.
Our responsibility is to create safe and trustworthy spaces in which it is not so easy to permeate at certain levels, but also assuming that many of these spaces and the people who make them up are public and visible and that they lend themselves to act from there so that it is easier to find people who want to join the struggles. Without trying to fall into an absurd dichotomy about “the public and the clandestine”, common sense will lead us to act in one way or another depending on the circumstances.
But it is not only through infiltration that they manage to gather all the information they have about us. This can be the most morbid and the one that can have the most personal damage, because of the implication it entails between the infiltrator and the investigated.
Social networks and the information we provide in them, along with our cell phones, are other interesting databases when it comes to generating information and creating profiles. With little effort, since we have them voluntarily and we share this information with many people we do not know. It is very easy to have a fake profile, follow accounts and collect information in the same way as, for example, through Telegram or Whatsapp broadcast groups, in which there are hundreds of people we do not know.
Caution vs. paranoia
In addition to the search for information, infiltration seeks to create paranoia and insecurity among people. It is also a psychological tactic that can undermine people’s confidence if we get carried away by the obsession of wanting to have everything under control, especially after the discovery of an infiltrator, which is when a high occurs, but with time we relax and make everything return to its course. A channel, natural on the one hand, that does not sin neither of innocence nor of paranoia. As we said before, common sense will be able to determine to what extent we should trust, with whom, what information we give, how we relate to each other, etc.
Therefore, having a cautious attitude, wanting to know where the people who join a fight come from, knowing ourselves well and progressively building trust, does not have to mean falling into distrust, starting to question everyone, closing ourselves off, withdrawing or acting strangely.
Nor should we fall into thinking that this does not make sense to happen in a social and political moment like the one we are in, since we know that there is nothing especially “juicy” in terms of struggles, as this police work also serves the purpose of maintaining constant control of the situation to continue profiling, managing information and being fully integrated in case the situation changes, explodes or modifies relatively quickly, avoiding generating suspicions in that case by the urgency.
Beyond victimhood
Rather than asking the state for transparency when it comes to wanting to infiltrate someone (who obviously will not collaborate) or to hold our hands over our heads when we discover cases like these, we should assume that it is something that can happen to us at any time.
We expose ourselves, we confront the State, we organize, we tense up, we launch speeches, we try to put them into practice, we bother, we get in the way, we hinder and we challenge. It is of little use to try to “democratize” a justice system governed by them or repressive bodies made by and for them. Legality serves to provide a certain order and to proceed with repression, which regulates and shapes it: legislation adapts to the new times and it is within the rule of law that it is exercised. To aspire to a more ethical or better regulated formulas of espionage necessarily implies considering that the repressive machinery can be reformed for the better, implying a strengthening of the state as if it could serve interests other than those of the ruling class and its representatives. Democracy and the state are this and not something else.
To postulate ourselves in the face of repression, as innocent activists, who suffer an obscure persecution by the state, who would never break the margins of consented protest or who do not see it legitimate to fight with all the means at our disposal, exposes those comrades who do decide to fight regardless of extraneous considerations, such as “legal” or “illegal”. Supporting the practices of struggle that the state tries to undermine, those that threaten the tranquility and normality of the order of the rich, those struggles that go beyond the margins tolerated by the system, is also a way of closing ranks in the face of repression and supporting our friends and comrades who have been beaten.
Avoiding a first reaction mediated by the first emotions on the surface, understandable in the heat of the events, we ask ourselves if perhaps it could be more effective to train ourselves, to put these questions in common, to bet on this culture of security we were talking about in the talks, to continue adding contributions from wherever we want and try to have deeper and less superficial relations that propitiate scenes like these. To move away from frenetic forms of militancy, without time for self-criticism and reflection and from the typical figure of the comrade who goes to everything and nothing at the same time, accumulating information without any objective. Creating less easy spaces, more conscious, open or closed, public or secret but with involvement, without mantras easy to reproduce, without curiosity, morbid curiosity or fetishes. Creating real communities of struggle, not mediated by aesthetics and alternative leisure as the main form of socialization. And all this serves both for security issues and also to avoid an instrumentalization of our struggles, making them less recoverable if we are clear about what we do, where we go, with whom and how we do it.
To share with people we trust any detail that has generated doubts at some point, is also a way to not get confused alone, because in the end we think better with more heads focused on the same issue and it can clarify the matter. From calm and serenity without panicking and systematically suspecting as a rule, we can contribute to the isolation that repression seeks to generate. Normalizing these guidelines is also a culture of security.
Do not try to know everything, stay away from curious attitudes and bragging in front of people. Nobody cares about what you have done, only the police. The safest information is the one you don’t have. It is necessary to cultivate a culture of anonymity. You don’t need to know who does what. You don’t need to know where some calls come from, or who is behind them. We understand that we are talking about contexts where political militancy has an important “public” and “visible” part, but that does not mean that we should not develop aspects of the struggle in fields of greater confidence, in secret and anonymity.
We hope we have been useful by providing the information we have deemed necessary. You can continue to consult everything on the web at www.culturadelaseguridad.noblogs.org.
We will continue to add to the debate from wherever we are in order to continue building this security culture we are talking about, without panic and without paralyzing any fight. The idea was to be brief and send a brief message to the debate and to the current moment, but without repeating ourselves, since everything we can present here and now on this subject, we have dealt with in the talks. Soon we will publish the script of the talk “recognizing the enemy: the police” where we talked about this, among other issues.
To all the infiltrators who have passed, are and will continue to pass through our spaces over the years and to the repressive bodies in its broadest definition. Thank you for making us hate you a little more every day. We hope you do not sleep peacefully.
Source: Publicacion Refractario