Montréal Contre-information
Montréal Contre-information
Montréal Contre-information

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Montreal Anarchist Tech Convergence 2025

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Aug 232025
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Technology is a steaming pile of whatever. The salad of transistors, capacitors, and wires that we marinate in for 17.2 minutes before we drink our coffee are the first thing we see each morning, while our subversions of the droppings of surveillance capitalism are the last things burning their images into our retinas before we close our eyes each night. The AI-augmented totality that numbs our senses and optimizes our labour lumbers on, vulnerable but unhindered. Let’s not say we never tried.

The Montreal Anarchist Tech Convergence is a yearly gathering on the intersection of anarchism and technology.

A 2-day event: October 11 and 12 2025 At Batiment 7 in Tiohtia:ke Montreal

  • workshops
  • presentations
  • skill shares
  • discussions
  • and more!

Welcome to anarcho-curious techies, tech-curious anarchists, and everyone in between.

Our goal is to connect with each other, to practice, to throw that rectangle that constantly demands your attention into a blender and sculpt the shattered pieces into the shape of a butt to plaster onto your landlord’s porch.

Please submit your proposition before September 15th.
https://mtl-atc.org

4 Gitxsan Development Corporation Vehicles Burned in New Hazelton

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Aug 222025
 

Anonymous submission to BC Counter-info

On Monday, in New Hazelton four Gitxsan Development Corporation vehicles were burned.

Gitxsan Development Corporation works with McElhaney Geomatics Engineering which had vehicles destroyed by fire in Smithers and Terrace.

McElhaney Geomatics Engineering is contracted to build roads for Prince Rupert Gas Transmission Line (PRGT). More information is available on their involvement in Against Extractivism: PRGT and its Actor

Parts of this article were found in local news.

In Palestine and Everywhere Else, Resistance Persists!

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Aug 212025
 

De la Convergence des luttes anticapitalistes

Semaine d’action en solidarité avec la Palestine

Depuis 1947, le peuple palestinien lutte contre l’occupation et la colonisation de ses terres par l’entité sioniste (connue sous son nom colonial ”Israël”). Alors que la création de cette entité sur des terres volées est facilitée par l’ONU, les Palestinien·nes, dépossédé·es et déplacé·es de force dans des territoires de plus en plus grugés par l’entité sioniste, ne se laissent pas faire et résistent à l’envahisseur. Alors que Gaza était assiégée depuis près de 20 ans, la résistance a culminé le 7 octobre 2023 dans un coup de force. Déterminé à ne tolérer le moindre écart de conduite, l’entité sioniste en a profité pour accélérer ses politiques et pratiques génocidaires contre le peuple palestinien avec la complicité de ses allié·es. Bombardé·es et affamé·es délibérément par l’entité sioniste depuis deux ans, les Palestinien·nes à Gaza luttent pour survivre et continuent de résister, tout comme les Palestinien·nes en Cisjordanie et à Jérusalem-Est qui font face à une accélération des attaques des colons et du vol de leurs terres.

Pendant que les Palestinien·nes sonnent l’alarme et implorent le reste du monde à arrêter cette violente machine de guerre qui a déjà fait des dizaines de milliers de martyrs, les gouvernements, incluant le ”Canada” et le ”Québec” enchaînent des déclarations vides de sens sur le « respect du droit international » et la fausse « solution à deux États », tout en continuant à supporter l’entité sioniste financièrement, militairement et politiquement, et en refusant d’imposer quelconque sanction. L’entité sioniste, armée par ses complices occidentaux et impérialistes, est bien décidé à prendre le contrôle complet de la bande de Gaza et à anéantir le peuple palestinien. L’armée d’occupation commet des massacres jour après jour en direct dans l’indifférence. Lorsqu’ils en parlent, les médias invisibilisent la réalité sur le terrain : une occupation militaire et une colonisation brutale de par l’entité sioniste, et une lutte de libération historique d’un peuple contre des puissances coloniales qui assujettissent le monde entier.

Cela fait deux ans que les peuples solidaires de la libération de la Palestine protestent partout dans le monde, en rupture avec leurs gouvernements complices. Les actions se multiplient : manifestations, campements, graffitis, occupations, actions de perturbation et de sabotage, flottilles, caravanes et marches mondiales pour briser le blocus. Continuons nos actions pour mettre fin au génocide en cours et soutenir le peuple palestinien dans sa lutte de libération, pour la justice et la dignité !

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Du 6 au 12 octobre 2025, D4P et la CLAC invitent tous·tes et chacun·e à s’organiser avec sa communauté en vue de provoquer, déranger et perturber pour visibiliser notre refus collectif à la complicité au génocide et rappeler la légitimité de la résistance, sous toutes ses formes, en Palestine et ici. 

Alors que la violence et la déshumanisation des vies palestiniennes est devenue honteusement normalisée, la résistance en devient d’autant plus légitime et nécessaire ! Confrontons nos gouvernements à l’insignifiance de leurs actions et à leur complicité active ! Ciblons les profiteurs de guerre, où qu’ils soient dans la vaste toile de complicité : qu’ils produisent des armes, des outils d’intelligence artificielle, des fonds de pensions ou des services d’investissement ! En groupe d’affinités, en comités de quartier, avec nos associations étudiantes, dans nos lieux de travail, attaquons partout, par l’éducation populaire, les manifestations, l’action directe et notre mobilisation généralisée.

Pas de paix tant que Gaza saigne : notre devoir est la résistance, par tous les moyens!

* Cet appel à l’action fait écho à celui lancé le 20 juillet 2025 par six groupes politiques et organisations de résistance à Gaza qui nous demandent d’escalader nos actions pour accentuer la pression sur nos gouvernements complices. 

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Pour endosser la semaine d’actions en tant que groupe: https://shorturl.at/YAS52

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L’affiche en français

L’affiche en anglais

Enbridge Sabotage: Disruption of Service on Line 9B

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Aug 202025
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

The boreal forest is burning, the water is being poisoned, all the trees are being cut down, and the treaties are being betrayed. The mirage we call “liberal democracy” bows down to the oil lobby. There is talk of new pipelines that will cross the country like scars, new gas projects that will disfigure the land.

Our history has always been that of an extractive colony founded on plunder and dispossession. It’s up to us to put an end to this disaster.

Last night, we attacked line 9B. This pipe of death snakes through lands stolen from Indigenous peoples, transporting the world’s dirtiest bitumen through waterways, cities and our lives. We hit two control valves, destroying the electronic equipment before vanishing into the night.

Now more than a dozen kilometers of pipeline can no longer be controlled by Enbridge. Until these installations are repaired, it is as dangerous as it is illegal to flow oil through them.

We choose to disarm Enbridge because the current system protects profit and lets ecosystems die. We are taking action because every barrel poisons us, kills us, flows against the grain of history. We are those who face the truth, who recognize the urgency of the situation. We choose to obey the love of life and the future.

Line 9B carries the end of the world barrel by barrel. It’s time to take direct aim at the infrastructures that are responsible.

The facilities concerned are at Saint-André d’Argenteuil (45°33’25.1 “N 74°20’53.7 ”W) and Mirabel (45°36’42.3 “N 74°04’46.6 ”W).

“Israel” terrorist, media complicit

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Aug 192025
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Tiohtià:ke/Montreal, August 18th, 2025 — it’s with a broken heart and rage in the stomach that autonomous militants targeted Quebecois media tonight, denouncing their biased coverage of the genocide of the Palestinian people, in particular the recent massacre of the Al Jazeera team in Gaza by the Zionist occupation forces. Tonight, we honour our martyred siblings Anas Al-Sharif, Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohamed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa of Al Jazeera, Sahat Media journalist Mohammed Al-Khali, Saad Jundiya, and the 262 other journalists who have been killed in this inhumane affront against the freedom of the press. This autonomous action to redecorate the office of the Montreal Gazette (MG) was also in response to the call from the Palestinian resistance, published on July 20th, 2025, calling on international activists to escalate the pressure to open channels of humanitarian aid.

For the past two years, Quebecois media has been providing heavily biased, one-sided, and dehumanizing coverage of the genocide in Gaza. Their editorial framing presents a false symmetry of violence, erasing the fundamental colonial context: the Zionist Entity, “Israel,” has been an expansionist occupying power since 1948, and Palestine an occupied territory. Thr vocabulary chosen by Quebecois journalists has also been extensively documented as being biased in favour of “Israel,” which receives a far more empathetic treatment than the Palestinian victimes, who are treated with distance and coldness. Finally, in the face of the ban imposed by “Israel” against international journalists entering Gaza, Quebecois media have obeyed, without calling the ban into question whatsoever, and none of them have judged it necessary to hire a Palestinian correspondant to document the daily massacres. On the contrary, Quebecois media had offered an exclusive platform to Au the genocidal Zionist authorities, including the higher-ups Tsahal. And yet, no Quebecois media has invited any representatives of the Palestinian resistance to speak.

Tonight, MG was targeted in particular because they represent one of the most powerful propaganda tools of the dangerous and genocidal Zionist ideology. Tribune of choice of the fasho-zionist in chief of the municipal governments, Jeremy Levi, MG spews terrible articles and doubtful chronicles with the goal of encouraging the most sadistic cognitive dissonance of the 21st century. The daily paper has been denounced by the organization Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East at least two separate times over the quality of their coverage of the student encampments in solidarity with Palestine, and more generally for their pro-Zionist biases in their coverage of the genocide in Gaza. In addition, MG is a part of the large Postmedia. Network family, which also owns the National Post, a collection of mediocre pseudo-journalistic texts. It is therefore unsurprising to see MG’s editorial line staunchly in favour of Zionist ideologies. Indeed, the primary stakeholder in Postmedia Network is Chatham Asset Management, an American speculative investment fund known for its proximity to the Republican party, also known to be the power bottom of choice for the tyrannical and genocidal ambitions of Netanyahu. Not only should we thusly consider MG as foreign media, we should also not be surprised when it’s coverage takes so many liberties with basic journalistic integrity when it’s leaders flirt openly with modern fascism.

What will it take for the media to listen to the people and begin to cover the genocide in Gaza to the height of the principles of journalistic integrity to which they claim to adhere? Earlier this week, militants occupied the offices of La Presse and Radio-Canada, without being offered adequate coverage of their critiques against them. Only exception being a mediocre editorial at La Presse from François Cardinal hiding behind a false sense of neutrality to dodge his active role in the normalisation of the genocide in Gaza. It is becoming more and more clear that Quebecois media don’t want to hear anything about the demands and legitimate protests of the people, and that it is only through economic damage that they will understand that they are standing on the wrong side of history.

sounds appeliste but ok

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Aug 042025
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

The April 2025 text “Echoes of an Overflow” engages in many of the hallmarks of ‘appelist’ discourse, a white political tendency that proposes alliances with reformist & liberal organizing structures as a strategic necessity to reach that promised land of the left-wing political tradition, “revolution.”

Specifically, it features:
– exclusive citation of white euro theorists.
– the suggestion that militant, destructive actions & their proponents are primarily responsible for a failure to be “understood.”
– a lack of concern for [anti]political content—what people claim to be fighting for—paired with a near-exclusive concern for political form—the organizational structures [not] used.
– repeated insistence on “necessities” (the word “must” appears 30 times in the anglican version).
– a passionate desire to fuck the word “composition.”
– a general attitude that the author[s] & whoever they cite approvingly are the only people who grasp the importance of having a plan.

Often, such texts are right, or at least insightful, about some things. The shortcomings of “revolutionary milieus” (“radical scenes,” “the left,” “the so-called movement”) are perceptively outlined, which strengthens the appe[a]l of their otherwise tepid proposals. But be careful! It’s a trap. The website dimanche.pm summarizes and collects numerous resources exploring the general problems with this approach.

“Echoes of an Overflow” has fuckall to say about whether or not “revolutionary milieus” are seeking to burn down klanada, to obliterate slaver colonialism & its world, to make amerika nothing again. In autre words, it is silent on what it would take to produce an overflow, revolutionary, insurrectionary, liberatory, apocalyptic if you like. Cities into funeral pyres. Tar sands into memorials. Allow me to begin with the idea that a milieu with desire and capacity to demolish prison/jail, spirit away criminals and animals meant for containment and slaughter because the milieu is composed of criminals and animals, will be able to answer this question in life beyond words. A milieu where britspeak or quebeckish are no longer necessities for socialization, because communication with these hegemons is no longer desired, will have grounds for a conception and way of life in unflinching antagonism to “prime minister,” “province,” “parliament,” “politics.”

Skulls of the defeated, fangs intact: mourn them, and let new monsters materialize.

PKP You Have Blood on Your Hands!

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Aug 012025
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Last night, multiple autonomous groups responded to the call from the Palestinian Resistance to activate and escalate pressure on international political, media, and economic institutions in order to allow aid into Rafah. Thus, Montréal/Tiohtiá:ke, as crowds gathered to applaud the finale of the fireworks season, multiple groups mobilised to remind you that in Gaza, the sounds of explosions signal death and ethnic cleansing.

For almost 22 months the Zionist Entity has been bombarding, torturing, attacking, and starving Palestinians, all before our eyes, and with full complicity from our leaders. As our siblings in Gaza live a famine orchestrated by Zionist forces, it is our responsibility to denounce the structures in place at the core of our society, which enable this genocide by normalizing the attrocities of the army, by normalising Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian hate, by profiting financially from Zionist propaganda, and by favouring repression against activists fighting for Palestinian liberation.

Who would be better to represent this complicity than Pierre-Karl Péladeau and his Quebecor empire? With a hand in each sphere of the media and culture landscape, Péladeau has played a large role in forming Quebecois public opinion for decades. Through a diversity of media entities, editing houses, advertising companies, and cultural productions, Quebecor propagates infinite hatred towards all vulnerable and marginalized communities. Queer and trans folks, drug users, immigrants, houseless people, just to name a few examples, all suffer dehumanization by the hands of PKP’s cronies. We can not ignore the systemic role that the Quebecor empire takes in the flagrant rise of Islamophobia in recent years; an integral element to the desensitization and general normalization of the Palestinian genocide in the public discourse. Through a plateform unilaterally offered to Zionists such as the CIJA lapdog Julien Corona, combined with an explosion of hateful rhetoric from his demagogues in chief, Quebecor looks to render the 77 years of Zionist colonialism in Palestine acceptable and palatable. But the people have not been duped, they are not insensitive. Even as PKP massively invests his dirty money in private security firms such as SIRCO, which profiles and brutalizes pro-Palestine activists, he will never succeed in normalizing the unacceptable.

It’s not because you are brown-nosing Zionists to shop for more Hollywood contracts that you will be able to shut us up, Péladeau!

Fuck your empire!

Fuck your Zionist friends!

Fuck your racism, your transphobia and your misogyny!

The people will always be stronger than you!

The Briarthorn OpSec Guide

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Jul 132025
 

From No Trace Project

PDF: read | letter bookletTXT

Introduction

There’s a lot of work that goes into figuring out how not to get arrested, and how to minimise the damage if you are. To try to make it easier for our comrades, we want to share the techniques we’ve developed while operating an illegal activist organisation. This is a guide for non-experts, but for some procedures it will help to be moderately techy or at least be working with some techy friends.

Caveats

DON’T TRUST US TOO MUCH. We’ve put a lot of thought into this and we haven’t been caught yet, but it’s always possible we’ve just been getting lucky. Where possible, do your own research and think it through for yourself. These procedures are starting points to develop from, provided because they’re a better place to start from than the usual insecure ways of doing things. We’ve tried to make it harder to blindly trust us by explicitly noting when there’s something we don’t know.

THIS INFORMATION WILL GO OUT OF DATE. We’re writing this in 2025. The longer after that you’re reading this, the more likely some details are no longer true.

ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT WHAT THE POLICE CAN OR WILL DO ARE RELEVANT TO THE UNITED KINGDOM (UK), because that’s where we work.

And perhaps most importantly, DON’T LET WORRYING ABOUT SECURITY STOP YOU FROM GETTING SHIT DONE! If you get paranoid and don’t do something because it’s too difficult to do perfectly safely, the surveillance state wins. Do things safely enough for the level of risk they carry, and always take easy opportunities to make things safer, but if you spend days setting things up perfectly safely just to do some graffiti or something then they’ve won by virtue of stopping whatever other thing you could have done with all that effort.

General Principles

There are two fundamental principles to bear in mind across all of this.

Threat Modeling

In order to know what to do to keep yourself safe, you need to know what the realistically likely dangers are. A threat model is an idea of who’s trying to stop you and what they can do, and if you’re doing operational security then you need to have one. The procedures in this document are written on the assumption that you’re mainly up against the UK police, and they’re not willing to invest more resources into stopping you than they are any random low-to-mid-level illegal activist group (i.e. you’re not doing any terrorism or anything). It also assumes that you’re not doing anything very public, that most of your operations will never be reported to the police. If you’re doing headline-grabbing propaganda stuff then you may face a different threat profile, for instance you don’t have to keep the existence of the group secret but you might have to worry more about infiltrators. The reason we’ve chosen this threat model is that it’s the situation we have experience with, and also that we feel more groups could do with focusing on changing the world directly ourselves rather than trying to convince the government to do it for us.

Defense In Depth

There will always be things you overlook, and things you couldn’t have known. When your defenses inevitably fail, you should have other defenses in place so that it’s not a total disaster. This means that even if you trust someone completely, you still don’t tell them incriminating things they don’t need to know. Even if your encrypted drive is secure, you still delete things off it when you don’t need them anymore. Even if you’re using an encrypted messaging app, you still use pseudonyms. When you fuck something up, it shouldn’t be the end of the world.

Procedures

This section is the bulk of the guide. It contains a set of procedures for doing various things more securely. Often they refer to each other, e.g. part of the procedure for securely buying things from the internet is to apply the procedure for securely using the web. Each procedure has three increasingly secure versions: Acceptable, Good and Paranoid. More secure versions include doing all the things mentioned in the less secure versions as well unless otherwise specified. We’ve made this division so that people won’t get bogged down worrying about security that’s way over the top for what they’re doing. As a rough guide, we feel that for crimes that don’t necessarily invite police attention every time as described in the introduction, the Acceptable level is appropriate for when we’re risking up to maybe six months, Good for up to a couple of years, Paranoid for up to maybe five or six years. But that’s just our personal comfort levels at this particular stage in our lives, so don’t take that as gospel. For crimes that do invite police attention, we’d probably move everything down one category — no custodial sentence, six months, a couple of years.

Going Somewhere

Acceptable

Wear a mask and nondescript clothing.

Good

Leave your phone behind — the phone company knows its location at all times and keeps records for years. Pay for public transport in cash if possible. Be aware of CCTV, especially cameras that may be government-operated rather than belonging to private businesses since the police can access them more easily.

Paranoid

Don’t bring anything with your name on it. Possibly arrange for a comrade to alibi you if necessary.[1]

Using The Web

Acceptable

Use Tor Browser. If you’re not familiar with it, Tor Browser is a web browser that routes your connection through a series of other computers before it reaches the website you’re connecting to. This means the website doesn’t know who you are because your connection appears to come from somewhere else, unless of course you tell it who you are yourself (e.g. by signing into an account in your own name). It’s easy to install and use on pretty much any computer, including smartphones. See torproject.org.

Good

Use Tails. If you’re not familiar with it, Tails is a piece of software you put on a USB stick or SD card (see the procedure for storing digital information) that lets you boot the computer you plug it into using a secure operating system. Tails ensures all internet traffic goes through Tor, and leaves no trace on the computer of what you were doing. See tails.net.

Paranoid

Use Tails from a public wifi network, such as in a coffee shop. This will probably involve applying the procedure for going somewhere, unless you live across the road from a coffee shop or something and can connect to the wifi from your house. Be aware of CCTV, but most businesses don’t store CCTV records for too long. If you get a coffee, pay in cash. Don’t make a habit of using the same place every time.

Messaging Someone On The Internet

Acceptable

Use Signal. If you’re not familiar with it, Signal is an encrypted messaging app. It requires a phone number to sign up, but can be used on a computer as long as the account is tied to a phone. Apply the procedure for storing digital information to any device that you install Signal on. If you think you might be arrested, uninstall Signal. When you reinstall it you will have lost all your messages, this is an unavoidable consequence of the security features that prevent the police from recovering your Signal messages from a device you’ve uninstalled it from. Note that the way that your Signal messages with someone are most likely to be leaked is if the police get hold of your or that person’s inadequately-secured device and simply unlock it and read the messages the same way the intended recipient would. However, if that happens they won’t necessarily know who the other person in the conversation is (unless you revealed who you are in one of the messages they read). See signal.org.

Other encryted messaging platforms exist, but Signal is very popular, so firstly it’s less suspicious to be using it and secondly it’s been extensively tested in practice. If Signal isn’t an option, we like the look of Matrix or SimpleX, but we don’t have experience with them.[2]

Good

Use separate Signal accounts for different purposes, so if one of them is identified as you the others may not be. You need a separate phone number for each account, so you’ll need to get a SIM card, they’re sold in many supermarkets (apply the procedure for buying something in person, or just apply the procedure for going somewhere and steal one). You don’t have to activate the SIM card in order to receive the verification text, so don’t — that will connect your bank account to it. You’ll need to keep hold of the SIM card in case you lose access to your account (e.g. by having to uninstall Signal), but you should keep it hidden because if the police search your house and find it they may be able to discover and maybe even impersonate the account it’s associated with. Alternatively, if you set a Signal PIN (see below) you may be able to use that to recover your account without the SIM.

Configure Signal settings to be more secure — set “who can see my number” and “who can find me by number” to nobody, set a default disappearing messages timer, turn off link previews, read receipts and typing indicators, turn on call relaying, turn on screen lock, set a Signal PIN (use a secure alphanumeric PIN) and enable registration lock.

Consider using Molly (molly.im). Molly is an alternative frontend for Signal. It makes it harder for someone who has your phone to get into your account, but it isn’t widely-used enough to be quite sure it’s well-made and safe.

Paranoid

Instead of using a phone, have your sensitive Signal accounts on Tails using signal-cli. We won’t go into detail about signal-cli because if you’re technical enough to use it you’ll be able to figure it out yourself. You can connect signal-desktop to the account for ease of use. Don’t put the SIM in your own phone, use a burner phone (acquired with the procedures for buying something, either online or in person). Never turn the burner on at home or in a location connected to you, or in the presence of your or your comrades’ phones, as the phone company will know where it is and what other phones are nearby and store that information. Once you’ve registered your account, get rid of the burner. Apply the procedure for storing an object for the burner and SIM. They should be stored together, as getting access to either one will reveal all the information that could be acquired from either, unless you decide to just dispose of the phone and get a new one if you need it.

Eventually, the phone company deactivates unregistered or registered but unused SIMs and allows a new one to be made with the same number. When this happens you’ll no longer be able to recover your account using the SIM, and it’s possible that the person who buys the new SIM will use it to register for Signal, kicking you out of your account (note that they won’t gain access to your account, it’ll just be lost). In order to prevent this, note when your SIM will expire and move your account to a new number before it happens. If you’re getting reasonably newly made SIMs this shouldn’t be more than every couple of years. You’ll need to do this even if you haven’t kept the SIM card and you’re just using the PIN to get back in if you lose access.

Using Cryptocurrency

A detailed guide to the non-security aspects of using cryptocurrency is out of scope for this document, so this procedure is written assuming you know how to use cryptocurrency.

Acceptable

Apply the procedure for using the web, and use monero. Monero is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency, which is important, because contrary to popular belief most cryptocurrencies are extremely traceable. For regulatory reasons it’s difficult to buy monero in the UK, but you can buy other currencies and easily exchange them. Apply the procedure for storing digital information to your wallet. You can buy cryptocurrency from an onramp service or an exchange.

If the thing you want to buy can’t be bought with cryptocurrencies, you can buy virtual prepaid debit cards using monero on sites like coinsbee.com (not forgetting to still apply the procedure for using the web) and use those to pay for it.

Since storing information securely leads to an increased risk of losing it, you may want to keep a record of your wallet seed. This should be stored securely itself, either as digital information or written down. Someone who gets access to it gets full access to the wallet.

Good

Make sure you’re using a local wallet rather than an exchange (but it’s unlikely you can get monero on an exchange these days anyway). Access the monero network over Tor, the feather wallet has a facility for this built in (featherwallet.org). Make sure to transfer your monero between two wallets you control, so that more than one transaction has to be compromised to trace what you’re spending it on. If you’re buying cryptocurrency, consider buying it from a peer-to-peer exchange so it’s harder to tie to your bank account.

When storing the seed, consider writing the seed words out of order, as long as you’ll be able to remember how to put them back in order.

Paranoid

When moving money through any kind of series of accounts, always put more in than you take out at the far end, so someone watching both ends can’t guess that it’s the same money because it’s the same amount. Likewise don’t do it all at once, leave delays between transfers.

If you’re keeping the seed words written out of order, recover the wallet corresponding to the order they’re written in and make some small, non-incriminating transaction with it, so if the seed is found you can make a plausible case that this is the real wallet.

Buying Something In Person

Acceptable

Apply the procedure for going somewhere. Pay in cash.

The Good and Paranoid versions of this procedure are just the same using the Good and Paranoid versions of the procedure for going somewhere.

Buying Something On The Internet

Acceptable

If it’s something that’s not illegal in itself, have someone who’s not doing anything else illegal order it and pick it up from them. You can reimburse them in cash. Don’t forget to remove the label with their address on it from the box if you’re keeping it, so if your house is searched the police won’t find out about this person from the label.

Good

Apply the procedure for using the web and order it using the procedure for using cryptocurrency, either still to someone else’s address or poste restante[3] in a name that you have a good fake ID for (if you can’t give a valid ID the post office may refuse to give you the parcel).

There isn’t a Paranoid level for this, because we don’t have the experience with ordering anything that warrants that level of security to be able to speak authoritatively on it. Anything we could say would be speculative.

Laundering Money

Acceptable

Buy things with the money and sell them. Buy and/or sell things in a similar way with your own money to obscure it. This process is okay at a glance but won’t stand up to actual investigation, and isn’t practical for large quantities of money.

Good

Using the procedure for accessing the web, buy monero with the money (see the procedure for using cryptocurrency). At this point the money should be disconnected from its source. Use the monero to buy prepaid virtual debit cards as mentioned in the procedure for using cryptocurrency. Note that although the source of the money is obscured, the fact that it came in the form of monero isn’t, so it may still look suspicious.

Paranoid

Buy monero with the money and move it between two accounts. At this point the money should be disconnected from its source. Trade the monero for cash sent to you by mail on a peer-to-peer exchange such as retoswap (retoswap.com) (using the advice in the procedure for buying something on the internet for receiving it by post securely).

Sending Post

Acceptable

Apply the procedure for going somewhere. Buy postage in cash. Alternate between various post offices. Follow the post office rules (e.g. on the proper way to post liquids) as far as possible to reduce the chances of your packages being opened.

Good

Buy stamps and envelopes in cash, and post at postboxes. Alternate between various postboxes. If you need to send large items, use parcel postboxes, but if you’re not in a city there might not be many to alternate between. Don’t post lots of things all at once in one postbox, as this might raise suspicions and get them opened. With stamps, be aware that the barcodes on them can’t be used to trace where they were bought, but they are scanned by the sorting office so they can be used to trace at least to the sorting office of the place where something was posted from (and that’s one of their purposes).

Paranoid

For occasional posting, use commemorative stamps, as they don’t have the barcodes on them (but posting lots of parcels with commemorative stamps in one place would be suspicious). Buy envelopes from different places so which brands of envelope you use can’t be used to identify where you’re going to buy them (or more likely as circumstantial evidence after the fact based on the fact you frequently went somewhere that sold those envelopes). Pick postboxes in locations such that your house isn’t in the centre of all the locations you use.

Storing An Object

Acceptable

If your address is unlikely to be a target of investigation, just keep it in your house. If you or your housemates are at risk of arrest, or if the address is used to order things to, hide it. Small things like SD cards and SIMs are easy to hide very well, so don’t just stick them behind a picture frame and call it a day, unscrew the back of something that isn’t ever opened up under normal circumstances or something.

Good

Even if your house isn’t likely to be searched, hide it anyway. If it doesn’t need to be regularly accessed, keep it at the house of someone who isn’t doing anything dodgy.

Don’t be tempted to hide things in public places, since a search warrant then isn’t needed to get at them.[4] Storage units are probably a bad idea too, since they’ll be connected to whoever pays for them.

Paranoid

If the item is replaceable, and it’s cheap and/or rarely used, consider not storing it at all and getting a new one whenever you need it. If the item can be split into parts that aren’t (as) incriminating on their own, store it across several people’s houses. We know of no good way to hide a unique, single item to a Paranoid standard of security, so if you find yourself needing to do so all we can recommend is minimising the time you need to do so for.

Storing Digital Information

Acceptable

Store it on a computer with full disk encryption. If you don’t know how to set this up, see VeraCrypt (veracrypt.fr).[5]

If you must store it on a smartphone, e.g. because it’s a messaging app that’s hard to make work on a computer or because you need access to it on the go, then set a strong password on your phone (i.e. NOT just a numeric PIN) and disable fingerprint unlocking. If you think you may be going to be arrested, turn your phone off, as some methods of unlocking it only work if it’s been unlocked previously since it was turned on.

If the police believe that encrypted data they’ve found is relevant to an investigation and that you know the password, they can legally compel you to decrypt it. The penalty for refusing can be up to two years imprisonment, or five if it’s a terrorism investigation. For this reason, don’t assume that even totally secure encryption will keep the police out if the evidence it protects is worth less that two years. There is a defense if you can cast doubt on whether there really is any encrypted data (this requires technical skills to set up) or on whether you really know the password.

Using cryptpad (cryptpad.org) is okay as long as you remember to set a password, and don’t share the password right next to the link as this defeats most of the point of having one.

When you no longer need the information, apply the procedure for destroying digital information.

Good

Store it on an encrypted microSD card and keep it hidden, or store it in a VeraCrypt hidden volume on a traditional hard drive (i.e. not an SSD, and not a USB stick or SD card, as these can’t hide the existence of a hidden volume reliably). If using an SD card or USB stick, note that they can sometimes fail. If the information is important, keep a backup, also encrypted. If you’re using Tails (see the procedure for using the web), you can use the persistent storage to store information in this way, and it’ll sometimes warn you before the device fails.[6]

Paranoid

We don’t have a good strategy for storing digital information with a Paranoid level of security.[7] We can only recommend minimising the amount of time you have to store it for, and making it as hard as possible to prove that any one person knows the password.

Destroying Digital Information

There isn’t an Acceptable level for this procedure, because overwriting is good enough to be Good but just deleting isn’t good enough to be Acceptable.

Good

When a file is deleted it’s not removed from the drive, it’s just marked as deleted until it’s overwritten by something else being stored in the same place. In order to delete it properly, you’ll need to overwrite it with meaningless data first. This can be achieved with tools such as sdelete and secure-delete. However, this only applies if you’re using a traditional hard drive, as opposed to an SSD (almost certainly the case in a laptop), USB stick or SD card. If you’re using an one of these, this approach won’t work for individual files. Instead you’ll need to wipe the whole thing at once, by overwriting the entire drive using a tool like DBAN or dd.

Paranoid

Overwrite the entire drive multiple times (even if it’s a traditional hard drive in case a copy has been stored somewhere for automatic backups or something). Alternatively, and this is probably overkill but quicker if you’re in a hurry, physically destroy the drive it was stored on. You’ll need to make sure you’re actually getting at the part where the data is held. The traditional approach of drilling holes in a hard drive isn’t actually that reliable, ideally you’ll want intense heat or powerful magnetism.

If You Do Get Arrested

(As a reminder, this document is based on UK police practices.)

If, despite your precautions, you do get arrested, there are still things you can do — or mostly, avoid doing — to minimise the damage. What it boils down to is: DO NOT TALK TO THE POLICE FOR ANY REASON. The police are very good at tricking you into saying something incriminating or that they can use as the basis for reasonable suspicion. There are many circumstances under which talking to the police can make your life harder. There are no circumstances under which talking to the police will make your life easier (with maybe two exceptions, discussed later). If they suspect you, nothing you can possibly say will make them suspect you less. It doesn’t matter how you refuse to talk to them — you can say “no comment”, “I’m not going to answer that”, “Am I legally obliged to answer that?”, nothing at all, whatever, just don’t tell them anything. Here is a list of circumstances under which you should not answer police questions:

  • If they tell you they’ll let you go quicker if you talk, or keep you longer if you don’t. This is generally not true, and they can’t keep you for too long without charging you anyway.
  • If they make any kind of offer to reduce your sentence. The police don’t have the authority to reduce your sentence, that’s a matter for the court.
  • If they offer only to charge you for a small offense if you admit to it, and drop a more serious charge. They are lying.
  • If they tell you they have enough evidence already to convict you, or that an accomplice has confessed. They are probably lying, and even if they aren’t, unless a competent lawyer says otherwise you probably still stand a better chance of minimising your sentence by keeping quiet.
  • If they make polite small talk. Once you start talking it’s easier for them to keep you talking. Remember, they’re trained to extract information from people.
  • If they ask questions whose answers are definitely not incriminating. If you answer these questions but then refuse to answer the questions which are incriminating, it looks pretty bad in court.
  • If you have an alibi. Save it for your lawyer and the court. The police don’t need to know your alibi, and they won’t believe it. Anything you say to the police, you’ve effectively committed to saying in court. You don’t have to commit to anything, so don’t.
  • Likewise, if they’re accusing you of something you can easily prove you didn’t do. It’s to your advantage if they try to charge you with something you can easily prove you didn’t do, as it makes the rest of the charges look less credible. Save it for your lawyer and the court.
  • If they’re demonstrating ignorance. It may be genuine, or they may be baiting you into showing knowledge of a topic relevant to the accusations. Either way, making fun of them isn’t worth the risk.
  • ANY OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES AT ALL, apart from the exceptions mentioned below.

The two cases in which it might possibly be to your advantage to tell the police something are these:

  • When you arrive at the station (and not before), you may want to tell them your name and address. This is because if you refuse to provide your name and address and they decide to charge you, they can keep you locked up until the court date regardless of what you’re accused of (because if they let you go they wouldn’t be able to find you again). Giving false details is an offense, and they can usually check pretty easily. Note that if you do you give your address, they may go and search it.
  • Under some rare circumstances, refusing to answer certain questions may be an offense in itself. A specific example of this is mentioned in the section on storing digital information — under some circumstances it may be an offense not to give up the password for encrypted data. This kind of thing doesn’t come up very often, and if it is the case they’ll tell you (or they should, and probably will if they actually intend to charge you with it since the court would likely require them to demonstrate that they did). Conversely though, if they tell you that you’re legally obliged to answer a question, they may be lying — if at all possible verify that with your lawyer.

Last Words

Having read all that, the thing we most want to make sure is that you’re not too intimidated. Like we said at the start, if the attempt to be secure leads to not taking action, the surveillance state wins without having to do anything. If you don’t feel capable of achieving the level of security that you feel you’d need for the actions you want to take, take less dangerous actions in the meantime rather than focusing exclusively on learning everything about security. Real life experience is the best way to learn.

<3


1. No Trace Project (N.T.P.) note: For this level, you may also want to take precautions to ensure you are not being followed. For more information, see our Threat Library mitigations “Surveillance detection” and “Anti-surveillance”.

2. N.T.P. note: We would recommend SimpleX rather than Matrix, as Matrix does not protect communication metadata as well as SimpleX does. Compared to Signal, SimpleX does not require a phone number to create an account. For more information, see AnarSec’s guide “Encrypted Messaging for Anarchists”.

3. N.T.P. note: Poste restante is a service where the post office holds mail until the recipient calls for it.

4. N.T.P. note: We think storing things in public places can be a viable solution if done properly. For more information, see our Threat Library mitigation “Stash spot or safe house”.

5. N.T.P. note: On computers (i.e. not smartphones) we recommend encrypting all your digital information using the full disk encryption system Linux Unified Key Setup (LUKS), which is available by default in most modern Linux systems, and thus does not require installing additional software such as VeraCrypt.

6. N.T.P. note: The Tails persistent storage uses LUKS.

7. N.T.P. note: An additional strategy for this level is to store the devices that contain the digital information in a tamper-evident way. For more information, see our Threat Library mitigation “Tamper-evident preparation”.

Two Years of Constellation and the Sky Hasn’t Fallen Yet

 Comments Off on Two Years of Constellation and the Sky Hasn’t Fallen Yet
Jun 202025
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

This reportback was inspired by a Mastodon post by Franklin Lopez, who wrote:

“It’s just so fucking cool to be back at the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair after so many years away. Gotta be real—back in the day, the Fair could feel like a stress factory. Lotta tension, lotta unresolved beefs, and way too many identity politickers turning the place into their personal UFC octagon.

But this time? Chill as fuck. Good vibes all around. People actually talking with each other instead of past each other. It felt like a space that remembered what solidarity actually feels like. Massive thanks to the folks at @constellation for bringing the Bookfair back and making it feel like home again.”

‘Twas the most wonderful time of the year. The Constellation Anarchist Festival wrapped up a second year in the traffic cone capital of North America, taking place from May 15-21 at various locations throughout the city.

Constellation is kinda like the old Montreal Anarchist Bookfair but without the Banhammer of Identity Politics restlessly waiting to come down and split your soul apart from your body at any given moment. While the old bookfair took to banning books, hairstyles, and art forms they deemed to be offensive, Constellation has taken a more laissez-faire approach, which is refreshing.

The main event was, of course, the bookfair, which once again went down in the always hot, always humid CEDA. Sure, we might not be able to be in there for more than 20 minutes at a time before crawling to the nearest exit for some fresh air, but honestly, we love that place. Plus, studies have shown that profuse sweating helps rid the body of harmful toxins, including microplastics.

It was rainy so the spot was even more packed than usual. The usual bevy of acronym orgs, zine peddlers, rad crafters, and publishing conglomerates were all there, eager to hawk their sweet, sweet products. There was at least one tarot deck for sale and nobody seemed to be losing their shit over it, almost as if the old bookfair’s claim of tarot being cultural appropriation was a psy-op to keep us from fighting the real enemy: the mid-ass chana masala.

Seriously, what the fuck? The bookfair usually has some tip-top vegan slop, but this year’s chana was so salty, it doubled the size of our kidney stones. We sincerely hope that the food is better next year.

But we digress. Overall, the vibes were right. Like we said, unlike the old bookfair, Constellation doesn’t seem so caught up in trying to police everyone to maintain some subjective semblance of a “safe space.” And everything turned out completely fine. The only thing we weren’t safe from that weekend were some of the smells y’all were expelling. Guys, not showering isn’t gonna hide your trust fund. Luckily, there were face masks available at the entrance that we doubled-up on to shut out the stench.

We don’t even think our White Dread-o-meter went off during the entire weekend, though we also haven’t changed the batteries in a few years. But, seemingly, it’s a non-issue. All the oogles who had dreads in 2016 have had lice by now anyway and have had to shave them off, so let’s just drop it already.

At this point, we can say it’s proven to be the case that we don’t need a central committee deciding what’s allowed or what’s not at one of the world’s largest anarchist events. The best way of making anarchy inclusive and relevant to lots of different people is not by setting down rules that are incomprehensible to anyone outside a narrow milieu of university-based activists (such as telling a Black bookstore they aren’t allowed to table tarot cards because of “cultural appropriation”). We hope we find ways to show our gratitude and respect for all that the old bookfair did to keep an important tradition alive over the years, while remaining true to our anarchist principles and to the promise of the gathering spaces we share.