mtlcounter-info

How to safely submit communiques to MTL Counter-info

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Aug 082016

We thought it would be useful to summarize a basic technique to anonymously submit communiques, using the Tails operating system.

Tails is a computer operating system designed with security in mind, which can boot off a USB or CD, from any computer. After shutting down Tails and ejecting the USB or CD, the computer can start again with its usual operating system. Tails is designed to leave no trace on the computer by not interacting with the hard-disk, and only using the RAM for memory (which is automatically erased when Tails shuts down). In addition, it forces every internet connection to go through the Tor network [1. TOR is a network of proxies run by volunteers with the explicit purpose of maintaining anonymity online. With TOR, your connection goes through three proxies. You connect to TOR and each of the three proxies (nodes) you access encrypts your data. No individual node can know both what you are connected to and who you are. The third node decrypts the data and accesses the website, sending the information back through the proxies in encrypted form.], so is much safer than using just a Tor browser on your normal operating system.

IP and MAC addresses:
Every internet connection has a specific IP address[2. An Internal Protocol address is a string of numbers that allows you to send and retrieve data over an internet connection (for example, 78.125.1.209). This number identifies the location, Internet service provider, and technical details of your connection. It is comparable to a house’s street address. An unobscured IP will lead investigators directly to your connection.] that can be logged by websites that are visited, and which reveals the connection that was used. An IP address can be traced to the internet subscriber it’s assigned to, whether an individual or a business like a café.

Every computer has a MAC address[3. The Media Access Controller address specifically identifies your computer. If you access the internet, the router may log your MAC address and maintain that log. If investigators were to read the logs of a router you accessed (say, a public wifi from which a communiqué was sent), and then compare that address with the MAC address of your computer’s wireless card (say, confiscated in a raid), you’d be connected to your activity while using that router’s connection. If the MAC address is not changed, there is the possibility of your activity being traced back to you if investigators are persistent or lucky enough.] , which can identify the specific computer that connected to a site via the IP address.

Tails automatically conceals the IP address by using the TOR network, and automatically gives the user a fake MAC address upon starting.

1. Download and install Tails
Tails can be downloaded at tails.boum.org. See ‘Tails Installation Assistant’ on the site for instructions on how to download and verify the file, install it on a USB or CD, and boot it on your computer.

2. Boot Tails
Depending on how risky your activity is, it might be best to use a computer that isn’t connected to your identity (in case Tails, for whatever reason, does leave a trace). This could be a public computer out of sight of surveillance cameras, or a laptop used specifically for this purpose.

If you start the computer with the USB plugged in, and Tails doesn’t start automatically, you might have to access the ‘boot menu’ of your computer. On most computers, you can press a boot menu key to display a list of possible devices to start from (identify the potential boot menu keys for the computer depending on the computer manufacturer in the list below). In the boot menu, choose your USB. For troubleshooting, see ‘Start Tails’ at tails.boum.org. You may need to edit the BIOS settings.

3. Connect to internet
If using a laptop, you can access many wifi networks with prior knowledge of the password from outside the building, even at night if they leave the wifi on. Use wifi that doesn’t have a ‘captive portal’ (that makes you accept terms and conditions).

4. Submit Communique
Open TOR browser, and verify TOR is functional by going to check.torproject.org. Change your TOR Security Level in ‘Privacy and Security’ preferences from Standard (default) to Safest. Visit https://mtlcontreinfo.org/publish/ to send us your communique! If submitting any images, video, etc., remove identifying information (metadata) with the Metadata Anonymization Toolkit (MAT) on Tails.

More In-depth Resources:
• Surveillance Self-Defense: Tips, Tools and How-tos for Safer Online Communications
• Anonymity/Security zine
• Surveillance and Counter-surveillance Guide

8.5 x 14″ | PDF

September 9th Prisoner Strike across the US

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Aug 082016

From Anti-State STL, modified for distribution in Canada

“We are not beasts and we do not intend to be beaten or driven as such… What has happened here is but the sound before the fury of those who are oppressed.”
– L. D. Barkley, participant in Attica rebellion

On September 9, 1971, the inmates of Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York seized control of the prison. The Attica uprising, which lasted for five days, was not the first and certainly not the last prison rebellion. And yet its importance is indelibly marked within the history of the struggle against white supremacy and the prison society we still inhabit today.

In the forty-five years since Attica, prisons have swelled to bursting with the tragedies of disrupted lives, fractured families, and broken communities. In the last decade, resistance movements have steadily grown behind the prison walls. From the statewide work stoppage in Georgia prisons of 2010 to the hunger strike that spread throughout the California prison system in 2013; from fires lit in I.C.E. detention centers in Texas to riots and prison takeovers in Nebraska and Alabama, prisoners across the US are wide awake and on the move. Revolt against prisons is also present on this side of the border; in Lindsay, Ontario, detainees held by CBSA in the Central East Correctional Centre have been on strike for two years demanding an end to immigration detention.

This September, prisoners, their families, and supporters on the outside are coordinating a prisoner strike across the US to take place on the 45th anniversary of the Attica rebellion. This historic effort holds within it the potential to expand and embolden the movement against the horrific conditions of confinement, the prisons themselves and the society that creates them.

Towards the destruction of all prisons and the creation of a free and genuine human community!

supportprisonerresistance.noblogs.org
iwoc.noblogs.org
itsgoingdown.org

For more information about the strike and the ongoing wave of prison rebellions across the US, check out these articles:

Strike Against White Supremacy

Incarcerated Workers Take the Lead

Call To End Prison Slavery

11 x 17″ | PDF

Graffiti in St-Henri, St-Remi tunnel

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Aug 082016

Arson attack at a luxury car dealership in solidarity with imprisoned anarchists

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Jul 262016

11 x 17″ | PDF

For the end of prisons

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Jul 222016

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Friday, March 18, 2016

a few individuals crossed the fences surrounding Leclerc penitentiary to make an action in solidarity with the prisoners who had just been transferred to Tanguay.

The eastern facade of the old prison was redecorated with yellow, blue and pink paint eggs and the inscription «Feu aux prisons, Fin aux systèmes d’oppressions!» (Fire to the prisons, end to the systems of oppression!) was written with spray cans.

The action was a call to multiply actions of vandalism and sabotage against the infrastructures of oppression and to show solidarity with people undergoing them.

«In modern republics, the function of prison is said to be correction. When individuals break laws that uphold the common good, the conventional wisdom goes, they need to be punished or otherwise taught to be more socially cooperative and generous. In my experience with incarceration, however, the only thing that prison teaches is obedience. A “corrected” citizen is one who internalizes prison bars even on the streets.» -Gelderloos-

Legal fees for attacking cops

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Jul 082016

On June 13, 2016 in Montreal, a judge sentenced me to 3 years of probation and 125 hours of community service for a memorable event that took place during the 2015 May Day in Montreal. I also have $600 of judicial fees to pay in 45 days. For this, I need your help. But in addition, I’ll offer you the delicious testimony of the cop who got beat while arresting me!

Your contribution can be deposited in the La Solide Solidarity fund Paypal account.

First, here’s an introduction of the facts. During the 2015 May Day demonstration, several among us were masked in black bloc. When the demonstration which left from Hochelaga reached downtown, we turned off towards the parking lot of the general headquarters of the SPVM to smash the cop cars parked there. Caught in a blatant crime, a large cop of 6 feet and four inches ran and jumped on me from behind to arrest me. The other comrades attempted to liberate me from his grip. Two other cops came to join him, and all three were violently attacked. The declaration from the first cop in the court document is hilarious, here’s an excerpt:

« (…) While I was still running in the direction of the cars that were being broken, other ”black bloc” joined this initial group of vandals. I fixated on a completely masked individual who was dressed in black who I saw break a window of a Laval cop car, and I didn’t let them out of my sight from then on. My decision was taken to physically subdue this person and proceed to their arrest (…)

When I reached this person who didn’t see me running at them, I firstly grabbed them by their backpack and I tried to bring them to the ground to subdue them. It was in trying to subdue them that I realized that this person is a woman, because I felt that she was less physically strong than me, and gradually, I saw that her outline corresponded to that of a woman’s. She tried to liberate herself and physically resisted her arrest by struggling and trying to flee. In just a few seconds, the black bloc demonstrators who accompanied her and who ran away with my arrival came back to help the accused liberate herself from my grip, as well as several others who came from the crowd. Some grabbed her by the hands to pull her towards them so that she could “slide” from my grasp, while the others attacked me in all the ways that they could. All those who I saw attacking me were completely masked and dressed in black.

I watched as these demonstrators try to smash my face with their six feet batons, tried to throw projectiles at my face with all their force just several feet from me. From this point, my goal was to protect my head and above all my face from serious injury. I particularly feared for my eyes due to not having any protective equipment and because the demonstrators tried to hit me in the face with the ends of their batons. However, I received several blows to the head and the back from the assailants who were behind me and whose blows I couldn`t see coming. With each blow I received, I saw a black thunderbolt pass in my vision. I know that I fell to the ground at one point, and I remember having avoided several blows that were directly aimed at my face by moving my face right to left, like a boxer.

Finally, after several seconds, other police in uniform came to my aid. The demonstrator who I held in arrest from the start was finally subdued by the officers in uniform and I. The police in uniform lowered the mask of the arrested demonstrator at this moment (…) When the police reinforcement arrived, all the black bloc demonstrators who assaulted me escaped and none were arrested. Several police came to see me immediately after the aggression and told me that there were at least twelve people encircling and hitting me. According to them, they threw projectiles at me, kicked me, and threw a fire extinguisher at my back (it was the blow that hurt me the most, but at the moment when I received it, I didn`t know what had hit me). I could see on my uniform traces of boots and soil, lots of pieces of a set of porcelain dishes, material that vandals and thieves use to easily break the windows of vehicles and hit in the inside corner of the window. I believe that these pieces were part of the projectiles I received, and there was also an extinguisher on the ground. (…)»

Finally, they nonetheless arrested me and accused me of armed assault, mischief over $5000 and disguise with the intention of committing a crime. I was let out on bail after a week at Tanguay prison, with a curfew of 11 pm.

In this account, I would like to emphasize the courage of the people who, rather than continuing to run and escape, showed themselves to be extremely solid and trustworthy comrades, in turning back to wildly attack the cop who arrested me.

More than a year passed, and on June 13, 2016, I was sentenced to mischief over $5000, obstructing arrest, disguise with the intention of committing a crime and carrying a weapon (porcelain); 3 years of probation, and 125 hours of community service. The judicial fees to pay in 45 days is $600! Your contribution would be appreciated.

Amélie

Theft, direct action, solidarity

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Jul 042016

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Today is July 1st, the day when the founding of the state of Canada is celebrated. We have chosen this day to announce that over the past months we have stolen and freely redistributed a number of quality objects and food obtained from bourgeois stores to marginalized individuals and families from oppressed communities in Montreal, occupied Kanien’kehá:ka territory. This text is to explain why we have done this, to express solidarity with related actions, and to encourage others to continue taking similar initiatives.

We publish this text on Canada Day because we are against all states, and in particular, against the violence of settler colonial states like Canada that are founded on genocide of indigenous nations, and on racist exclusion and exploitation of non-white people. We believe the well being of the majority of the world depends on fighting against industrial and imperial states like Canada that are the main promoters and beneficiaries of global capitalism. This is why we are breaking the laws of this state, stealing from capitalist businesses, and redistributing goods to communities who are being actively oppressed by this system. Theft is a direct action that so many of us carry out in our daily lives, to get what we need and want from a system that refuses to share. This time we have done it collectively and intentionally, as part of a broader struggle against oppression, and for freedom and self-determination for everyone.

We have been inspired by recent struggles that are both politically and geographically near to us, and we would like to express our solidarity with the brave actions we see all around. First, from Indigenous nations and communities continuing their centuries long struggles of for survival and defence of water, land and life. Algonquins against condo development along the Ottawa river, Innus against the hydroelectric damming of Muskrat Falls, Ojibway for the cleanup of mercury contamination at Grassy Narrows, and Mohawks of Kanehsatà:ke continuing to prevent any niobium mining in their community. There have been numerous occupations in recent months of government offices by those fighting state killing and complicity in the deaths and violence against oppressed communities. The Black Lives Matter occupation in front of the Toronto police headquarters, the indigenous occupations of numerous INAC (Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada) offices in solidarity with Attawapiskat, and the Solidarity Across Borders occupation of CBSA offices here in Montreal against the violence of immigrant deportation and detention.

We are equally inspired by the daily resistance of those struggling for dignity and survival in less visible ways without a ‘legal identity’, such as those who are undocumented, criminalized, homeless.

Finally, we applaud the impressive direct action by anti-gentrification looters in the Montreal neighbourhood of Saint-Henri who collectively expropriated thousands of dollars of food from a gentrifying grocery store. They are close to us not just in terms of their politics and geography, but also their choice of tactics. The forced displacement and marginalization of neighbourhood residents by gentrification is the direct result of the capitalism of urban real estate markets. Looting and attacks on gentrifying businesses is an important way of fighting back, alongside the numerous campaigns, actions, and organizing that have been challenging gentrification across Montreal for many years.

The Saint-Henri action was successful at drawing a large amount of media attention and public discussion to the issue of gentrification. Throughout this discussion, there have been arguments made to which we would like to respond. Some argue that gentrification is caused by big real estate developments, therefore small businesses should not be targeted. This stubbornly ignores the reality that although the condos are the driving force behind gentrification, the process is also facilitated and reinforced by the expensive new stores catering to the condo dwellers, the police that protect them, and the city government that gives their stamp of approval in exchange for a cut of the profits.

Others agree with opposing gentrification, but do not support illegal tactics like the looting of a gentrifying business. In response, we argue that the connected systems that we are struggling against, including gentrification, Canada, and global capitalism, inflict terrible violence and misery around the world every day, and have been doing so for hundreds of years. To survive means to stop and destroy these systems. It is a massive undertaking, one that is carried out daily by so many, and it is one of the most important things we can do on this planet. You say we have gone too far with our illegal actions? We say that we have not gone nearly far enough. Breaking a few laws is the least we can do. We hope for everyone’s sake that together we are able to do so much more, using whatever means are required.

In love and solidarity with all those in struggle!

Politician attacked during vigil for queers killed in Orlando

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Jun 252016

Submitted to MTL Counter-info

On the afternoon of Thursday, June 16, some respectable gay organizations held a ‘vigil’ in Montreal’s Gay Village for the victims of the recent shooting at a gay club in Orlando. The Collectif carré rose (CCR), which campaigns for more cops and security in the Village to counter ‘homophobic attacks’ (read: rich people getting mugged), disgustingly invited a slew of local and provincial politicians to speak to the crowd, including Quebec premier Philippe Couillard. While the politicians pretended to not be complicit in violence against queer and trans people, mining the crowd’s grief for political capital, the CCR and their buddies salivated at the promise of new lobbying possibilities for their pro-cop bullshit.

So we were thrilled to hear that a member of the crowd, trans activist Esteban Torres according to prosecutors and media, physically attacked Couillard when he began speaking, forcing the premier to be evacuated from the event. It was reported that Esteban’s ‘weapon’ was a simple ball of paper, thrown from a few feet away and hitting its target – seemingly an intelligent choice for an individual act in which one is unlikely to avoid arrest, as one imagines few other methods, acting alone, of forcing a political leader’s evacuation that won’t likely bring jail time.

We wish we could have been there to follow up with a few bricks.

No cop, no politician should feel protected in the Village.

Solidarity with Esteban!

Fuck the Collectif carré rose!

SPVM out of the Village!

– anarchists

After-party riot at Francofolies: fuck la police

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Jun 242016

Submitted to MTL Counter-info

Triggering fomo (fear of missing out) in anarchists across Montreal who aren’t francophone music fans, over a hundred Francofolies festival-goers rioted last friday night after a performance by french rapper MHD. The crowd, mostly under the age of 20, threw bricks, bottles, and traffic cones at police, smashed the windows of at least 20 businesses between St-Denis and Drummond street, overturned vending carts, and attacked the headquarters of the SPVM, breaking multiple windows along its Saint-Urbain street facade. Six cops were reported injured.

Accounts say that cops had mounted the stage to confront fans who had went on stage during an earlier performance. At this moment, chants of ‘fuck la police’ could be heard, and when the show ended, the crowd proved that even the smallest indignity, relatively speaking, at the hands of police in this city is grounds for a full-fledged riot. Unfortunately, there were two arrests, and few participants wore masks.

It seems that over the last few months in Montreal, events in which anarchists have participated have created a climate in which hostility towards the police is more widely shared and more readily translated into violence against our enemies, among not just anarchists but all people living in the city who have reason to hate the police.

Anarchists, though, could be more ready to intervene in those eruptions of revolt that are possible outside of political demonstrations and anarchist-initiated attacks. Let’s recognize and act on the potential of these moments to expand the space and time of lawlessness, to create breaks with normality unforeseen by power and therefore more likely to get out of control, to shake the faith of activists in their social movement calendars, and to link anarchists with others in unpredictable complicities.

One more time: Fuck the police!

Balade in Saint-Henri loots expensive grocery store

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Jun 082016

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

A balade for de-gentrification took to the streets of Saint-Henri on the evening of May 28, 2016. About 30 people, all in black bloc, strolled down rue Notre-Dame and looted the yuppie boutique grocery store “Le 3734”. As most of the crowd held down the street outside the store, a few people went inside and filled duffel bags with fresh and dry sausages, cheese, maple syrup, and other items. Meanwhile, the storefront was redecorated with graffiti reading ‘Fuck Empire’ and wheatpasted posters that communicated some of the intentions behind the action. After throwing smoke bombs ahead of and behind the crowd on Notre-Dame, people dispersed via the train tracks before police could arrive, and no arrests have been made. In the days that followed, we re-distributed the food to people in the neighborhood who wouldn’t regularly have had access to it. The poster left behind read as follows:

With the arrival of the condos in Saint-Henri, a multitude of expensive businesses, hipster restaurants, and bourgeois grocery stores followed. Nevertheless, despite this affluence of food, the neighborhood remains practically a food desert for people with little money. Such a paradox it is to live in a world that produces so much food, but that isn’t accessible for those who are hungry!

May 28^th, we tried to recalibrate things a bit, to the extent of our means. We put on masks to protect our identity, we entered one of these extravagant businesses, we took everything we could and we left to redistribute the goods joyously in the neighborhood. Inspired by the recent actions against the police in different neighborhoods and knowing that they were going to show up to protect the property owners, we brought what we needed to protect ourselves.

Everyone deserves to eat well and there is enough food for everyone! It is with great pleasure that we organized this pillaging, which is a slap in the face to the forces that impoverish and starve us. We invite everyone to do the same!

Long live de-gentrication!

Tonight is the great banquet, we celebrate complicity and abundance!

11 x 17″ | PDF

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