Technology

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info On the night of Wednesday, August 5, the windows and door of a residence were broken, and a Microsoft office was targeted with Molotov cocktails. This action targeted the official residence of the founder and the headquarters of Munera Intelligence. Munera develops AI-powered drones that will watch over our streets with AI technology following an agreement with the City of Montreal announced in June. The windows and door of Dominic MacDuff-Auger were destroyed. ...

2026 We’re Back! The Montreal Anarchist Tech Convergence is a yearly gathering on the intersection of anarchism and technology. You zoom towards the edges of the sprawling machine that farms our attention, past the conveyor belts of neatly packaged preferences in glittering boxes. From this distance the network of twisting cables takes on a sinister shape. The outward uniqueness of content belies the conditioned experiences they contain. Upon reaching the fringe of augmented reality, you find that behind every blinking cursor and LCD glow sits an individual with dreams and desires. ...

The following are lesser-known problems with Signal that anarchists and other targets of state repression should know about. These issues are known to the Signal developers. Potentially sensitive information is permanently saved in account databases. Despite being hidden, the following information is permanently saved. All visible phone numbers: Most Signal users still have the phone numbers of all other chat members from before March 2024, when they could first change their phone number visibility to “no one.” ...

In the spirit of all those May Day expropriations that came before, we entered Mamie Clafoutis’ St. Denis location and filled our bags this morning in total rejection of the encroaching gaze of surveillance and and the false gods of capitalism. Partnering with retail tech startup Leav, Mamie Clafoutis boasts that it is “pioneering a new era of automated smart stores.” This is the beginning of the same Amazon Go model that has already infected other cities, praised by media as innovation. Registering with a facial scan on their app can get you the ‘privilege’ of buying bread 24/7 in these automated, cashless bakeries. ...

As crises multiply, technology companies continue to take advantage of them to reap record profits — not only contribute to the proliferation of crises, but also to profit from them. Last night, an autonomous group sabotaged Microsoft’s Montreal facilities located in the artificial intelligence cluster in the Marconi-Alexandra sector. Let’s not kid ourselves. Microsoft is complicit in numerous crimes against humanity. From its collaboration with the Israeli government in the genocide of the Palestinian people to its impact on gentrification and the displacement of tenants in the Parc-Extension neighborhood, to its significant contribution to climate change in the frantic race for artificial intelligence, its active participation in the technological arms race of surveillance, and its numerous partnerships with police services, the American multinational represents the new enemy to be defeated. ...

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. ...

This May Day, Montreal’s annual anti-capitalist demonstration organized by the CLAC gathered in Jarry Park under the theme “No old normal, no new normal”. It was a sunny late afternoon, and the energy was high amid the banners and black flags as the demo began to snake through the residential streets of Villeray. Heading west on De Castelnau, fireworks were set off, and construction cones were used to block the road behind us. The cops seemed confused about the route we were taking, which meant that there were less of them in our near vicinity. Dropping south onto Jean-Talon, the demo continued west through the viaduct beneath the St-Jérôme commuter rail line. ...

PDF – Print (11 x 17) Poster text: Fire to the Cybernetic Prison It’s never too late to resist Artificial Intelligence AI labs, recipients of several $100M in government funding, are working to put “machine learning” algorithms in the service of a long list of industries. Under an “ethical” facade, some applications will simply allow well-placed capitalists to further enrich themselves. Others aim to reinforce repression, whether detecting shoplifters at the supermarket with automated video surveillance, developing facial recognition tools that work even on partly covered faces, or “predicting” crime or the probability of a prisoner re-offending. ...