• perestroika@slrpnk.net
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    22 days ago

    Wow, interesting reading. Picking some things to highlight:

    Early warning and response became increasingly local:

    As ICE operations accelerated in volume and speed, the open, more nimble chat grew in members and became a space that attracted those who wanted to do more than simply record ICE operations. People integrated the existing whistle program to alert targeted people about ICE’s arrival and to harass the agents, then increasingly got in the way—blocking ICE vehicles with personal cars, using their bodies to block agents, using crowds and car patrols to intimidate small groups of agents into withdrawing.

    As the chats got larger, more chats were made to break the city up into smaller and smaller segments—some of which have gotten as small as a four-block radius. This allows people to see reports directly relevant to them and respond to nearby sightings quickly and effectively.

    Permanent counter-surveillance was set up:

    Whipple Watch, as it’s called, has involved protesters and observers stationed there for months, gathering intel on the convoys headed into the city or taking detainees to the airport, identifying patterns of operations such as surge days and times, and carefully cataloging the plates of vehicles going in and out. This database of plates gets near constant daily use, enabling rapid responders on foot and in cars to confirm known ICE vehicles in real time. ICE has begun swapping out cars and plates throughout the day to undermine this counter-surveillance, but the volume of submissions pouring in is only growing.

    Taxi, ambulance and police operating procedures were copied. The single point of vulnerability is Signal. If something happens to Signal, one should be ready to apply Telegram or Tox. If connectivity is disrupted, one should have a plan of switching to Briar or other meshes (wifi + backbone of radio modems).

    Each chunk of the city (Southside, Uptown, Whittier, and so on) has rotating shifts of dispatchers, who admin a running Signal call throughout operational hours. Sometimes, multiple dispatchers overlap to split up the extra tasks of watching the chat, relaying reports to other channels, and checking license plates. Dispatch also helps people evenly distribute patrols across an area, takes notes, and assists people through confrontations. All patrollers in cars and on foot and stay on the call throughout their patrol. There is a constant flow of information, allowing other cars to decide whether they are well-positioned to join in, take over tailing the car, or continue searching for additional vehicles.

    Since the structure has divided up into more granular neighborhood-based zones, people in many areas have also developed a daily chat system, with chats that are re-made and deleted each day to keep them clear and not maxed out of participants (as the maximum number of members of a Signal group is capped at 1000).

    A “recruitment, vetting and instruction” process has appeared.

    Another development was the Neighborhood Networks intake chat, which acts as a clearinghouse for incoming volunteers. New people from anywhere in the city—or anywhere in the state of Minnesota—can be added and oriented to a list of chat options, and admins will add them to the open chats or connect them to the vetting and training processes for the more closed chats.

    Handing off work to another zone has appeared:

    Most recently, dispatchers have experimented with a relay system in which patrollers who tail vehicles to the edge of their zone can communicate through dispatch across chats to pass off the vehicle to a patroller in the next region. This allows the patrollers to remain in tighter and tighter routes, which they can swiftly come to know intimately well in order to navigate them better than any ICE agents.

    …and of course, this has made the thugs desperate:

    The response from ICE has been measurable. They have changed their tactics. They have been chased out of neighborhoods during operations. They have been caught discussing how scared they are and the fact that many of them have left.

    /…/

    Agents have not only followed patrollers home, but have identified the driver or vehicle following them and led drivers to their own home addresses as a form of intimidation. Patrollers shared with us that agents have beaten them, have tried to run them over, have driven directly at their vehicles head on, held them at gunpoint, shot out their tires, dragged them out of moving vehicles, and shot them. While the murder of Renee Nicole Good shocked the nation, it came as no surprise to those who have been on the streets of the Twin Cities over the past six weeks.

    And surprisingly, local cops don’t want a part in the federally imposed mayhem.

    police are unlikely to deploy as reinforcements for ICE operations.

    • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net
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      22 days ago

      The single point of vulnerability is Signal. If something happens to Signal, one should be ready to apply Telegram or Tox. If connectivity is disrupted, one should have a plan of switching to Briar or other meshes (wifi + backbone of radio modems).

      Besides XMPP, Deltachat is an interesting option since it uses email as its backend protocol, which makes it very difficult for a state actor to block without also blocking all regular email, which isn’t economically viable to do for any length of time.

      • solo@slrpnk.net
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        21 days ago

        There is also the option of Session and similar apps that don’t use mail or phone number. From my experience with it, it was super easy to use and even tho at first it was quite buggy, but the devs were constantly improving it. I haven’t used it for a couple of years now, and was great then for the way we used it - but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is even better now. I mean, I hope!

        https://getsession.org/