Security Culture
---------- What Is Security Culture? ----------
Security culture is a set of practices used to avoid, or mitigate the effects of, police surveillance, harassment and state control.
One of the best detailed definitions of security culture was provided by Crimethinc in 2004, and begins: “A security culture is a set of customs shared by a community whose members may be targeted by the government, designed to minimize risk. Having a security culture in place saves everyone the trouble of having to work out safety measures over and over from scratch, and can help offset paranoia and panic in stressful situations—hell, it might keep you out of prison, too. The difference between protocol and culture is that culture becomes unconscious, instinctive, and thus effortless; once the safest possible behavior has become habitual for everyone in the circles in which you travel, you can spend less time and energy emphasizing the need for it, or suffering the consequences of not having it, or worrying about how much danger you’re in, as you’ll know you’re already doing everything you can to be careful. If you’re in the habit of not giving away anything sensitive about yourself, you can collaborate with strangers without having to agonize about whether or not they are informers; if everyone knows what not to talk about over the telephone, your enemies can tap the line all they want and it won’t get them anywhere.” (https://crimethinc.com/2004/11/01/what-is-security-culture)
The Ruckus Society says “A security culture is a set of customs and measures shared by a community whose members may engage in sensitive or illegal activities. Security culture practices minimize the risks of members getting arrested or their actions being foiled.” (https://ruckus.org/training-manuals/security-tips-resources/)
The Civil Liberties Defense Center (CLDC) stated: “Good security culture is one of the first and most important things a serious activist should learn. The idea is to minimize the effects of infiltration, disruption, and surveillance through practices that help keep activists, groups, and networks safer. Importantly, it helps political activists prevent paranoia and dispels the unfortunate idea that they should just give up any effort to maintain confidentiality against State and corporate surveillance.” (https://cldc.org/digital-security-culture-post/)
The Deep Green Resistance News Service wrote: “The modern surveillance state is unparalleled. Many people are legitimately afraid of state repression. But this fear can easily become paranoia and paralysis. As a result, some people will not get involved in radical organizing at all. Others will stay involved, but their paranoia will drive people away. The result? Our movements die. How do we combat this? By creating a “security culture” in our groups. Security culture is a set of practices and attitudes designed to increase the safety of political communities. These guidelines are created based on recent and historic state repression, and help to reduce paranoia and increase effectiveness.” (https://dgrnewsservice.org/civilization/repression/an-introduction-to-security-for-activists-organizers-and-revolutionaries/)
Security is important as we live in a world where upsetting the status quo to change the world for the better is generally met by a backlash. Governments, law enforcement agencies and corporations all have vested interests in criminalizing, disrupting and suppressing activist groups of all persuasions. Security is needed to ensure our continued success. We also have a basic right to protect your privacy and anonymity from unwarranted intrusion... Security is not a single thing; it is a process and a state of mind. You cannot put down and pick up security at whim. For security to be effective and worth the time and effort put into it, it has to be built into your life. Ideally, it becomes second nature; that is, you automatically go through the processes that keep you secure. This creates a mindset that helps you avoid errors of judgement you may regret later. (https://www.mtlcontreinfo.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/booklet-2.7final.pdf)
Security Culture applies to more than just activists. The CPJ Journalist Security Guide (https://cpj.org/reports/2012/04/journalist-security-guide/)states: The world is an increasingly dangerous place. Authoritarian regimes have sought to limit freedom of speech by introducing repressive media laws, shutting down telecommunications at crucial moments, and through intimidation and imprisonment of journalists. Digital technology enables nearly everyone to follow not only events in real time, but also reporting by specific journalists and media outlets. Violent and corrupt actors worldwide understand not only how information shapes perceptions, but how the work of individual journalists can threaten their activities. In some countries, an unprecedented level of partisanship on cable, broadcast, and internet news outlets has blurred the lines between reporters and advocates, putting even more stress on the notion that journalists are neutral or professional observers. The result is a more hostile environment for the press in places from sleepy small towns to international war zones. Journalists everywhere need to watch their own and each other’s backs now more than ever before.
---------- Why Is Security Culture Necessary? ----------
“Because even if you’re not doing anything wrong, you’re being watched and recorded. And the storage capability of these systems increases every year consistently, by orders of magnitude, to where it’s getting to the point you don’t have to have done anything wrong. You simply have to eventually fall under suspicion from somebody, even by a wrong call, and then they can use the system to go back in time and scrutinize every decision you’ve ever made, every friend you’ve ever discussed something with, and attack you on that basis, to sort of derive suspicion from an innocent life and paint anyone in the context of a wrongdoer.” – Edward Snowden, 2013 Interview with Glen Greenwald in Hong Kong.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, writing in Rubin v. United States 524 U.S. 1301 (1998) expressed a similar sentiment when he said: “The complexity of modern federal criminal law, codified in several thousand sections of the United States Code and the virtually infinite variety of factual circumstances that might trigger an investigation into a possible violation of the law, make it difficult for anyone to know, in advance, just when a particular set of statements might later appear (to a prosecutor) to be relevant to some such investigation.”
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