Surveillance

China: Robo-Cop smart helmet

Posted on 2022/05/03 - 2022/05/03 by darknights

The fast-scanning, infrared camera is connected to an AR (augmented reality) headset, allowing cops to measure people’s temperature in real-time. If thats not enough it can scan up to 13 people at once and 200 in a minute. The helmet can also be paired with contact-tracing apps and facial recognition software.

KC Wearable was started by Chinese students of Oxford and Duke universities (because theres nothing better than colonising the world with knowledge of smart technologies from the West!), becoming a “global leader in industries such as AI, AR/VR, smart wearable helmet, smart watches, smart glasses as well as new wireless communication technology, which provide comprehensive solutions for a variety of scenarios in smart city and smart life….

We believe that today people are wearing our technology on the outside and, one day on the inside, too.”

Trialed in India and Italy. Coming to a smart prison city near you soon!

The Uncivilized

Italy: Social Credit Score – Rome & Bologna testing new app that monitors & rewards behavior

Posted on 2022/05/03 - 2022/05/03 by darknights

In line with recommendations being laid out by the World Economic Forum and the UN 2030 Agenda, Bologna, Italy, plans to launch a social credit style app that has striking similarities with Communist China’s social credit system. The app rewards or punishes its citizens for their behavior. Dubbed “Smart Citizen Wallet,” the app will track activities such as recycling, public transportation use, and energy management.

The primary argument for the program is to “save resources” and promote climate-friendly behavior. Those displaying good behavior will collect digital coins and receive discounts at local shops based on the given scores.

The app is already active and in experimental stages in Rome and is set to go live in Bologna in Autumn. Bologna Mayor Matteo Lepore and Massimo Bugani, director of the city’s “Digital Agenda,” discussed the project at a March 29 conference. Bugani indicated the app was part of a more comprehensive effort by the city to invest in digital innovation.

In 2020, Italy and six other nations signed an agreement to become “Agile Nations” in partnership with the WEF. Besides Italy, the deal—co-organized by the OECD—includes Canada, Denmark, Japan, Singapore, UAE, and the UK and sets “each country’s commitment to creating a regulatory environment in which new ideas can thrive.” Expressly—with the Fourth Industrial Revolution front and center. Continue reading “Italy: Social Credit Score – Rome & Bologna testing new app that monitors & rewards behavior” →

Santiago, Chile: Sabotage and demolition of surveillance cameras in the Simón Bolívar neighborhood + Claim of “Some shadows in the night”

Posted on 2022/04/28 - 2022/04/28 by darknights

Source: Noticias de la Guerra Social

On April 10, an anonymous group decided to demolish a huge metal structure located in the Simon Bolivar square, on San Pablo avenue, destroying a series of cameras and surveillance infrastructure that was installed to observe the population.

The action took place before the commemoration of the fall in combat of Erick and Ivan Palacios, which is remembered every April with fire and street agitation. The action was vindicated by “Some shadows in the night”.

Claim

Sabotage to the panopticon of power

In the early morning of Sunday April 10 we went to the Simon Bolivar square in Quinta Normal to demolish several cameras of the power and police that were on a 2-story metal pole in which there were 3 cameras.

We claim this sabotage a few days before commemorating 33 years of the fall in combat of the combatants Erick Rodriguez and Ivan Palacios at the hands of the C.N.I.* in an ambush in an attempted action to knock out an eletric transformer in the San Pablo and Radal avenues, this in the same neighborhood Simon Bolivar on April 18, 1989. Continue reading “Santiago, Chile: Sabotage and demolition of surveillance cameras in the Simón Bolívar neighborhood + Claim of “Some shadows in the night”” →

Bristol, UK: Soldarity Demo for imprisoned anarchist comrade Toby Shone, 6th May 2022

Posted on 2022/04/23 - 2022/05/02 by darknights

Paris, France: Text by Some of the participants at the Libertad anarchist library

Posted on 2022/04/14 - 2022/04/14 by darknights

Police bug found at Libertad anarchist library

Hi everyone,

Although my designers pompously christened me “RISO comcolor 7050” when I left the factory, I am better known as the Libertad Anarchist Library’s printer-copier. My move away from the filthy mouth of the real estate speculators who initially employed me gave me a bit of a thrill two years ago: goodbye invoices, rent receipts and other advertising leaflets to be reproduced… and long live subversive ideas! Just imagine if I had had to end my days in yet another branch of domination, printing indigestible university dissertations or insipid democratic petitions addressed to the authorities. In short, in this Belleville library, it was rather posters, leaflets, newspapers, brochures and other anti-authoritarian gems that began to parade before my eyes at a jerky rhythm, when I wasn’t snoozing in my corner in the middle of books and heated discussions against the old world.

Until this beautiful spring afternoon…

Tuesday, March 29, 2022, after having removed about fifteen screws to remove several casings and finally access my entrails, some curious individuals suddenly found themselves face to face with a small red light. While they were trying for the umpteenth time to solve a recurrent failure, they came across a well-hidden listening device. I don’t know how long it had been there, but the police lackeys must have at least entered the library when no one was there, before choosing my gut to hide it in and to do some tinkering. To do so, they directly soldered two cables to my power socket, which they then connected to a transformer (220v/12v), itself connected to a small box containing a modified RB800 router card, a battery, a 64 GB micro SD card, an Orange sim card… from which were protruding an antenna and two microphones (left and right), fixed as close as possible to the slots opening onto the outside. The imposing stature of my carcass preventing it from going on the road, they didn’t consider it necessary to add a GPS, although the connectivity is present inside the box. Finally, after a little autopsy, it turns out that this device was manufactured by one of the suppliers of various intelligence services: Innova, located in Trieste (Italy)*.

As for the background, there is nothing surprising in the fact that those who intend to destroy all authority are the object of the indiscreet attention of the State, whether in libraries or homes, in vehicles or via cell phones, in the context of judicial investigations as well as in the context of the “white notes” of the intelligence services. Even if it is more widely any individual who does not fall into line who can enter into their sights. And so, it is neither the first nor the last time that some and others will unearth surveillance devices here or there.

To continue to defend and spread one’s subversive ideas without falling into paranoia, while finding ways to deepen affinities far from any electronic device, remains a challenge. As for making this discovery public so that it can be useful to all -according to the good advice that our friend Riso immediatly provided-, it seems to us the minimum to do in this kind of situation.

Some of the participants at the Libertad anarchist library
19 rue Burnouf – 75019 Paris
Permanences every Tuesday from 5pm to 8pm

* See here : https://earsandeyes.noblogs.org/innova/

PS : you will find attached all the pictures of the spy device, as well as the technical sheet of the RB800.

Source: bibliothequelibertad.
Via & Translated by Act for freedom now!

Buenos Aires, Argentina: Arrested comrades accused of participating in the arson attack against the newspaper El Clarin.

Posted on 2022/03/26 - 2022/03/26 by darknights

On November 22, 2021 Molotov bombs hit the façade of the newspaper El Clarin in Buenos Aires. The action was not vindicated, and a few days later, according to the press, the police had come across a series of surveillance cameras where the attackers were identified on their way to the action.

In December, the police arrested a comrade accused of the attack and he is still in custody.

On March 21, 2022, in various repressive operations carried out by the DUIA (Departamento Unidad de Investigaciones, DN: Anti-terrorist), the police arrested five suspects in the attack. According to police versions, through the use of public transportation cards used in the sector, geo-referencing the use of cellular antennas and surveillance cameras, they were able to build the route of the attackers.

The dubious police astuteness allowed them to use social networks to observe the links between some of the suspects and decide to launch the hunt. In order to define the houses to be raided and the links of the detainees, the police installed a surveillance camera around the home of one of those under investigation.

Five arrests were finally made, but one person was released shortly after, and three comrades and one comrade were brought to justice. All of them charged with the crime of “public intimidation”.

Internationalist solidarity with those arrested for the attack on Clarin!

Source: Publicacion Refractario

Continue reading “Buenos Aires, Argentina: Arrested comrades accused of participating in the arson attack against the newspaper El Clarin.” →

Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for attack on luxury altenative tourist appartments ‘Graffiti Boutique’ in Exarcheia

Posted on 2022/02/27 by darknights

A new condition is shaping everyday life in the neighbourhoods of the city centre. The pre-election “promises” of Mayor Bakoyannis* for the complete transformation of the centre of the Athenian metropolis into a tourist zone are being put into practice with the fencing of the last squares and their conversion into metro stations.

The displacement of oppressed populations from the neighbourhood of Exarchia, the foundations of which have been laid under the Syriza government, through the evacuation of migrant squats, continues in terms of class warfare through the appropriation of the neighbourhood.

The unaffordable rents, the posh shops with expensive goods and services, the cameras on every corner and face controls at the entrance of shops make it impossible for the social base to stay.

Housing becomes a commodity and capital is called upon to exploit it to the fullest. Houses and former squats are being converted into airbnb and luxury housing, which local and international capital is throwing into the real estate market at the expense of the needs and burdening the lives of those below. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for attack on luxury altenative tourist appartments ‘Graffiti Boutique’ in Exarcheia” →

Paris and elsewhere: Let’s destroy the cameras

Posted on 2022/02/10 - 2022/02/20 by darknights

Year after year, the State develops its equipment and its methods of generalized surveillance. The process of gentrification and gentrification of the population that accompanies the Greater Paris project, the Olympic Games of 2024, the famous “feeling of insecurity”, are as many reasons and pretexts for the implementation of new security devices, in the Parisian suburbs, but not only. It is not new, moreover, that the State files us, manages us, and spies on our lives by means always more perfected, intrusive and effective. Its dirty cameras film us in the streets, in the squares, in the stores, in the transport, the elevators, the intercoms, the smartphones, the drones, at the tolls, etc…

In the name of the unbearable security of all, social peace and the common good that we do not want. This security is always the reduction of life, restricted to pacify us in the capitalist production machine. Surveillance, as a tool of control, poses in its acceptance or refusal the question of life. Let’s fight against this flat and bland existence, without any subversion of normality, without any setting in motion of ourselves, without perspective of a global collective emancipation. Cameras, and surveillance in general, restrain our desires. We tell ourselves that there is no point in stealing a safedeposit box, burning a car or breaking a window because we will be spotted. The role of cameras is today major in the pacification of revolts, as much in prevention by their dissuasive aspect as in repression by their judicial utility. The State wants to make us believe by its cameras that it is all-powerful, that it could permanently have access to all our actions: no it is not! Its cameras, like all the buildings it erects, are imperfect in their functioning but also perishable and destructible. The cameras would be used to “protect” us? But who is this “us”? It is order, money, property, the bourgeoisie, the State. They take us to prison. Let’s refuse the logic of security, of filing, of control and management! Let’s destroy the barriers that stand between us and freedom. Let’s attack their surveillance cameras.

For that there are several means:

(which are far from being exhaustive, let’s be creative)

Attack the camera

The video surveillance cameras are usually placed on a post or fixed to a wall. It is possible to attack the camera or to damage the wires that supply it with electricity.
For the first option, if it is reachable, it is possible to hide the view with paint, a thick marker, a sticker, a garbage bag, or other non-transparent objects. If the camera can move, it can also be forced to turn to look at the sky or a wall. A camera that can’t see anything is of no use to them.
To make sure it is out of order, the most effective way is to rip it out with a sledgehammer or a hammer. If it is high up, you can use a pole to give yourself more reach, by attaching a noose to the end of the pole to pull the camera out by catching it in the noose and then pulling with your body weight. Good climbing poles and ropes can be found in climbing stores or at the Vieux Campeur. Continue reading “Paris and elsewhere: Let’s destroy the cameras” →

London, UK: An Invitation to Deflate the System

Posted on 2022/02/10 by darknights

act for free received by anonymous email:

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An Invitation to Deflate the System

As the walls of control close in its hard not to feel a sense of despair. As an anarchist inside the Great British Prison Island, with apathy and inaction the main pillars of the anarchist ghetto, its hard not to feel deflated. Daily humiliations tend to extinguish your burning desire to attack the system. Every time you try to get a fire going another excuse puts it out. Too much risk for that action This action is inconsequential The atmosphere of trepidation is paralyzing.

You end up stuck between a fantasy of burning the whole edifice down and the reality of your limited abilities which seem to you to offer very little. But this is where you are wrong. You already have everything you need to begin. Besides, you can’t do anything with what you haven’t got. You can only do something with what you have got. Inabilities become abilities along the way but only if you take that first step.

Be realistic about your situation! The targets for attack are everywhere and within reach. The simple weapons needed can be found in shops on every high street. Alone or with others, all you need is the will to put one foot in front of the other. So what if you can’t get your hands on an Amazon server or some other privileged target yet? The infrastructure of control is also sustained by simple and unguarded technology.

As well as wanting to demonstrate this point, we are sick of feeling deflated. So over the last few days we went out and deflated the system instead. More than 30 vans that maintain the network of online communication, surveillance and data mining were put out of action. These vans are necessary to service the system and to fix glitches in the matrix of control. Without these vans, disconnection proliferates. These vans are parked in streets up and down the country, unguarded and easy to attack. You can identify them by the various corporate logos (Virgin, Vodaphone, BT, etc.) that have been conveniently painted as targets.

We invite you to join us in deflating the system.

How many decommissioned vans would it take to seriously disrupt the system? We have seen recently how power outages, downed servers and broken apps can have unpredictable and detrimental effects on the system. When disconnection is liberation, its not just about financial losses but also about a loss of control. What if, in a particular area, the internet connection goes down the same night a significant number of vans are put out of use? How many hours in delayed repairs equals how many millions wiped off the stock market? What chain reactions can be set off by the most modest of actions? The answers are unclear but that’s not the point: the joy is in discovering and overcoming the limits of the questions.

Insurrection never happens tomorrow. Neither is it something done by others. It is what you do tonight before the dawn. It is a journey into the unknown, a journey that begins right now where you are. There is no such thing as a predetermined future and there are no limits that can’t be overcome. There is no need to calculate outcomes. When every thing is increasingly connected to everything else, every attack reverberates beyond itself. As you watch the sun rise you know yourself a little deeper. The quality of your affinity with your co-conspirators is richer. As old limits are overcome, new possibilities emerge organically. There is no need to worry about what you don’t know or can’t do. Start simple and the rest will follow.

Anarchists.

Italy: Democracy is the other face of fascism

Posted on 2022/02/03 - 2022/02/03 by darknights

DEMOCRACY IS THE OTHER FACE OF FASCISM

Since two years we live in a state of emergency without end, following the advance of a virus that has become a global pandemic. Sooner or later it had to happen in a globalized and capitalist world that for mere profit destroys the natural environment, where goods and people move in a short time from one end of the planet to another (and only the poor are rejected at the borders) and where more than half of the world’s population lives crowded in mega-urbanized cities.

The emergency proclaimed, however, has been used by the state not to put hand to the health sector, decimated by continuous cuts that governments have made over the years and that have caused so many preventable deaths (not only because of the virus), but in order to accelerate all those authoritarian and coercive mechanisms of which the democratic regime is capable.

We are not only talking about the compulsory vaccination for certain categories (health workers, teachers, over 50) about which there would be much to discuss, but especially about the social control put in place, not least the instrument of the Green Passport, which is still only a step towards the race to forced digitization of all the data that concern us. Controlling and trading digital data, as we know, is the new frontier of “surveillance capitalism,” which through emergency management is gaining momentum.

From tracking apps to facial recognition cameras, from the internet of things to artificial intelligence, technology at the service of masters and states, which was not born to simplify our existence but to monitor us, will be increasingly present in our lives, but it is only with the digitization of data and their transmission (5G, ultra-wideband) and interconnection (home automation, smart-city) that this will be possible. It is no coincidence that the PNRR of the Draghi government, the Italian Recovery Fund financed with European money, for a large part serves to channel astronomical sums towards surveillance technologies and the digital modernization of all essential sectors: school, work, telecommunications networks, mobility and health (with telemedicine). It is also not by chance that the Draghi government has made it easier for public administration bodies and institutions to collect and process personal data, through an article of the Capienze Decree that last October abrogated article 2 of the Privacy Code, also reducing the role of the Guarantor in charge of data protection.

For many people perhaps it is not a problem that their data are used by private companies, multinationals and state institutions, through massive surveillance. People still think that because they do nothing wrong, their data is not a secret. But social control is never something that concerns only the sphere of personal freedoms and privacy; there are several reasons to oppose the digitalization of data and invasive tools such as the Green pass, among the most immediate: from the ease of the employer in monitoring his own employee (and riders and Amazon employees know something about it!) to those living in a situation of forced illegality (see undocumented migrants) who see their lives continuously threatened by the increase of increasingly sophisticated monitoring devices. Let’s not forget then the discrimination of those who already today do not have access to new technologies, that is often the poorest people in society, who see their access to rights and social services undermined, conquered years ago at the cost of hard struggles. Continue reading “Italy: Democracy is the other face of fascism” →