Anon – Alexa, take me to Prison!

We are under assault by an apparatus of technological counterinsurgency – it feels like the space in which we aren’t subject to an array of surveillance technology is shrinking out of existence. But you didn’t need me to tell you that. Especially since, outside state surveillance infrastructure, it’s the personal devices we deploy ourselves which are driving the expansion forward. We don’t even crack jokes about our phones listening any more, for the observation has become trite. The constant warfare against our privacy, our minds, our time, is just yet more background noise in the cacophony of sensory overload. That isn’t to say we’ve been completely helpless; anarchists and others are well versed in deploying countermeasures such as encryption or even cutting out our devices entirely at choice moments. Nevertheless, every day it seems another inch of our lives falls under observation, another ‘smart’ device appears on the market managing to pander the police even better than the last one. This assault cannot be allowed to continue with the apparent ease it has enjoyed so far – it’s long past time we found a wrench to throw into the machine.

“Perhaps taking the example of architecture can better illustrate something as complex as technology: let’s take an empty and disused prison, what should be done with this structure except to tear it down? Its very architecture, its walls, its watchtowers, its cells, already contain the purpose of this building: to imprison people and destroy them psychologically. It would be impossible for me to live there, simply because the building is oppressive.” – Against the Smartphone

The technology that surrounds us grows increasingly complex, increasingly out of our understanding and ability to control. Driven by the intersecting interests of the surveillance capitalist entities that manufacture and control these devices, and the counterinsurgent state, we find ourselves within a landscape of technology that is actively hostile toward us. It should be noted I am writing from a perspective situated in the Global North. The discussion regarding the danger of hostile technology might be more universal, but the exploration of countermeasures is especially rooted in the kinds of environments I am familiar with.

Many of our methods for resisting digital counterinsurgency are reliant upon hostile technologies. I’m sure a lot of us are familiar with the long lists of settings to tweak, the ‘secure’ software to use, and the often complex best practices which all reduce the chances that our technology use will turn back to bite us. While these can be critical in their potential to provide protection and increase the costs of repression, we remain stuck with the fundamental issue that none of these methods are capable of resolving: hostile technology is enemy territory. We have built a house upon sand, and the foundations have been sinking for a while. Our devices are becoming so extractive that we can’t even trust our phone keyboards not to snitch. Even if we choose open-source software, the hardware is closed, controlled by corporations who are only too happy to stand aside to any counterinsurgency efforts, or even throw their own weight behind them and assist. Software is vulnerable to being forcibly removed, or neutered of its value, as demonstrated by the removal of iCloud encryption for UK residents at the behest of the government. We might imagine utilising workarounds to access subversive software that finds itself banned in our regions, but it’s no longer difficult to imagine systems being locked down enough to make unauthorised applications a practical impossibility, not to mention the damage that could be done even with partial censorship.

The ability to utilise technology toward any of our own ends is being slowly removed by the manufacturers. In these synthetic environments, autonomy is a thing granted to us, and it can and will be taken away. The growing hostility of technology alongside the over-reliance upon it that we have fostered is a recipe for absolute disaster. The skills we need to get by without these devices have been dulled. We must develop methods of defence and resistance outside this tightening grip, before the rug is snatched out from under us.

“A safety minded carpenter might when presented with a board with exposed nails refuse utterly the reasoning that as they are both skillful and aware of the nails they may safely avoid an accident, rather by assuming they will be harmed and by hammering the nails flat, they render that assumed harm impossible.” – A Life of Lies

Despite our deepening dependency, anarchists have nevertheless long understood the dangers of hostile technology, engaging in some countermeasures independent of it from the beginning. Many of us still follow a sound strategy of compartmentalising any such devices from the activities they might expose, with common practices such as conducting meeting on walks without phones or any other such devices. While this compartmentalisation has undoubtedly provided a strong measure of immediate defence, it has not seemed to offer much of an impediment to the mass adoption and expansion of hostile technology. We leave our phones at home when we believe the situation requires it, but pay no mind to picking them back up again before every other kind of social encounter or routine activity. Some of us may make more permanent adjustments (or remain stalwart in our original ways) but the impact seems more and more akin to that of a small bucket bailing water from a foundering ship. We remain in a defensive posture, constantly losing ground outside the momentary and fragile shelter dug out by compartmentalisation.

Compartmentalisation as we currently employ it is a half measure. There is an unresolvable tension between what is deemed ‘risky’ and what is not. As ‘normal’ becomes characterised by near constant use of hostile technology, any interruptions stand out as glaring aberrations to surveillance actors. Compartmentalisation cannot protect us when we pick our phones back up, so what defence are we left with when under the eyes of surveillance? Are we to be actors, removing politics and resistance out of everyday life and into specialised moments? We play a dangerous game deciding when to employ countermeasures, attempting to differentiate the ‘malignant’ activities from the benign – does such a distinction even exist? With falling costs to processing and abstracting large amounts of information, how might our enemies be able to map our networks, to render us legible given enough information? It is often said one should assess their own threat model in the context of deciding whether to use common hostile technology like mobile phones, but in practice this can be overly individualising in the face of a what is ultimately a collective threat – it leaves those at high-risk to stand out as aberrations like a lone protestor in black bloc attire, and people currently tend to underestimate the threat surveillance may pose outside moments of characterised as political action.

Perhaps one reason we have struggled to find a better course of action is the collective incapacity that can result from attempting to understand and protect against a threat of an increasingly insurmountable complexity. This effect, which has been dubbed ‘Opsec fatigue’, conditions our behaviour in ways we may not even be conscious of – a constant awareness of the potential our ever-present devices have to surveil us, coupled with a lack of understanding of what to do about it, can freeze our capacity engage in action. Yet anarchists often escape this incapacity, finding empowerment in the rejection of security measures, throwing caution to the wind to remain unburdened against the perception of a seemingly indomitable adversary. This ‘security nihilism’ is liberating in the short term, but disastrous in the long run – so how do we break out of it? As long as the ubiquity of hostile technology continues unbarred, we will be suffocated under any attempts to manage the threat. There is only one realistic option, we must collectively attack and destroy this ubiquity.

“Until recently, the anarchist subculture was one of those pockets, where you could refuse to carry a smartphone and still socially exist. Now I’m less sure, and that’s fucking depressing.” – Signal Fails

It seems to me that we are developing a desperate awareness of just how deep the claws of hostile technology have sunk into our flesh, and are now searching for a way to pry them out without also ripping ourselves to shreds. We’re quite good at lamenting the replacement of face-to-face organising with the signal group chat, our addiction to social media, our unceasing obsession with the glowing rectangles. But though technology is the medium through which this assault is being carried out, it’d be a mistake to see it solely as a technical issue with a technical solution – we must adequately address those driving forces which are social and cultural. We have become prey to the attention economy, our relations have been hijacked by now indispensable mediator platforms which have set themselves up in between our social exchanges. In order to successfully halt and reverse the encroachment of hostile technology into our space, we must make it possible to break our dependency with solutions that have the potential to enrich and energise us, instead of solely inducing more costs and draining us. We must reach an understanding that a movement for security against digital counterinsurgency, and a movement against the attention hijacking, anxiety inducing, social hollowing of surveillance capitalism, are one and the same.

Our world has become comprised of non-places, dead liminal corridors to transport us between school, work, home, or commercial activities. Our compulsive retreat into the digital realm serves as sanctuary against those empty exterior surroundings, a replacement for a lack of public space and agency over our surroundings. For many of us, cutting out hostile technology would mean throwing ourselves out into a cold isolation. We could make a collective abandonment of it more viable by remaking our spaces to provide what we currently supplement with our digital activities. Spaces which would provide opportunities for open and equal social encounter, capable of delivering the deep texture of reality that our senses crave, contrasting the low-bandwidth flatness of a digital simulation. It is these spaces in which we might re-nurture the skills that have been dulled by our technological dependence, communicating with others face-to-face, finding our way around, even tolerating momentary boredom. We can prefigure lives independent of hostile technology.

We might recognise any radical space as a powerful site to engage in this action against hostile technology, forming a practice of conscious intervention into our dependence. Though I cannot imagine the full multitude of forms such action might take, the starting points could be simple, such as commitment to match any social media posts about an event with posters up on the side of the building, or pasted around the town. While it is often a struggle to sustain and breathe life into the few brick and mortar spaces we do have in the anarchist movement, we might also engage in more transient spaces, perhaps organising walks, or holding outdoor events and meetings, while explicitly excluding hostile technology. Struggles which engage with our relation to space, such as the anti-tresspass movement could be fertile ground to explore ways to agitate against hostile technology, and form connections between our alienation from our surroundings and our digital dependence.

Perhaps it must ultimately be acknowledged that those of us who wield these devices are collaborators in counterinsurgency, allowing policing to project itself deeper into our personal space much like a neighbourhood watch committee. We must bring the hidden tension of hostile technology to the surface, no longer maintaining silence in the face of this total warfare upon our safety. As it stands, it is too easy to view the benefits of, for example, bringing phones along to protests, as far more tangible and immediate than the risks, which are largely invisible and delayed. It’s no wonder people do not take the threat seriously. We need to visibilise the dangers through education and communication, from stickers, to zines, to conversations, to workshops. Ultimately we need to empower people to properly weigh up the risks of collective repression against the challenges that might arise without a phone.

If we are to bring the hidden tension of hostile technology into the forefront, we will need to treat surveillance devices as the counterinsurgent invasion that they are and strike back against them. We might more consistently denounce the presence of phones at protests or in our spaces. We might engage in physical intervention when certain lines are crossed, as per ‘In Defense of Smashing Streamer’s Cameras’: “if streamers and photographers are willing to put their egos above the movement. This is a call for people to smash their cameras and phones. Smash them, paint them, put umbrellas in their way, use make and distribute privacy shields, throw their phones/cameras in the fucking river.”

What will it take to build a capacity to strike against hostile technology with the ferocity it deserves? The campaign against Tesla is in part an attack against a surveillance device. Aside from mechanical sabotage, we also see a disincentive effect and a denormalisation of owning these cars where it went largely without question before. Might we bring the same disincentive and denormalising effect against the totality of citizen surveillance tech that have become background in our lives? We might imagine spaces without an unbroken doorbell camera in sight. Take out your phone, or drive a Tesla through it, and you’ll think better of it fast. The posters, stickers, and looks you get are warning, the rocks against your windscreen are consummation. When the new CCTV camera goes up to replace those painted and broken, it stands out as a shiny new target. The local store using facial recognition has increasingly rich window fitters.

“We will be safest from the right hand of repression and the left hand of recuperation when everyone is thoroughly confused as to whether we are frightening or loveable.” – Signals of Disorder

We will be perceived as awkward, paranoid, obstinate. Despite any efforts to create refuge against mandatory technology use, we will need to make sacrifices. Friendships will be lost, and some of that isolation and loneliness threatened by cutting out hostile technology will take effect. But we also need to shake the assumption that no one wants an alternative to this mess we have all found ourselves in. As everything becomes increasingly ‘enshittified’, and the mental health impact of these platforms gets worse, people do want out. We need to be the refuge for those willing to unplug from it all.

While I have found great value in the anti-tech theory expression by texts such as ‘Beyond the Screens, the Stars’ essential in formulating my perspectives against hostile technology. I would present the question of alternative technology as an open one which we are largely yet to explore. I think it’s important we push towards the possibilities, and decide for ourselves through careful and critical experimentation what such ventures might be capable of. Can we nurture a truly material international solidarity through communications technology? Sharing techniques, learning and forming bonds between people and struggles. Will we find ways to develop our own tools and technologies that are truly under our control with developments in open hardware and manufacturing?

But we need to deeply interrogate the design of our tools and how they might influence us for better or worse. As well as determine if they can be resourced without perpetuating extractive colonialism. Finding open-source alternatives to the current paradigm is not enough, we need a radical approach that critically evaluates tools all the way to their roots. As pointed out in ‘Signal Fails’: “just as ‘the medium is the message’ Signal is having profound effects on how anarchists relate and organize together that are too often overlooked.” I cannot say what the results of such experiments will be, we must ensure we also learn to operate without digital technology and build an independent capability of communication and collaboration.

The internet has often been a place of free expression, encounter and experimentation especially for those who have been locked out of such opportunities in the physical realm. I want to see the elements of the internet which I value protected from being threatened and stamped out by big tech and capitalism. As a black anarchist my experience of anarchism has been dependent on encountering other black anarchisms, and other black anarchists. The internet facilitated the process of encounter that raised my consciousness and gave me the power to conceptualise and articulate my own black anarchism. My primary experience with so-called anarchist and radical spaces has been one of dissatisfaction, and an alienating anti-blackness. So although I stress the importance of truly diverse and radical physical space, it has been an exercise of the imagination for me personally, while the internet has been a lived experience. This perspective is why I find the exploration of alternate technologies to be an important element of the struggle.

In any discussion of technological reliance, we must recognise the benefits that technology, hostile or otherwise, has brought to disabled people, and how it has augmented the ability for many engage in resistance. This includes safer communications and meetings in the face of pandemics. There is a line to walk between the power of technology to expand the possibilities of resistance, and it’s power to curtail them. We should never totally replace the face-to-face with poor substitutes, but we might supplement where necessary, and even just expand our capabilities altogether. If we seek freedom from the from hostile technology without alternatives to put in its place, we will leave disabled comrades behind if the benefits briefly granted by hostile technology are removed. I do not mean to suggest disabled people have no ability for resistance without digital technology, and of course ableism in physical spaces has had a massive effect on the ability for disabled people to participate in radical milieus. But even if better accessibility in physical space is achieved, it will not be able to grant those same benefits which are unique to digital technologies.

“How do we want to connect with the people we care about? With strangers? What type of relationships do we want to nurture? These considerations are paved right over with fear and threats – you’ll lose all connection, you’ll lose touch with what’s going on, you’ll become irrelevant – a parasitic and relational blackmail.” – Beyond the Screens, The Stars

We must build a strong security culture capable of not only shielding us from the dangers of hostile technology, but also intercepting its spread. To make effective challenge we need to adapt on two fronts. One is severing our dependency on technology, nurturing skills outside of it, and striving for its total destruction. The time of its free rein over our lives and communities must come to an end. We won’t take down the surveillance state overnight, but its smooth march must end before the smart-prison constructed around us finishes completion.

The other front involves exploring alternative technology. This does mean continuing to be diligent in using secure open-source application for communication and other tasks, and keeping an eye out for future developments. It also means ensuring our alternatives are actually viable and valuable by making regular use of them, posting on the Fediverse and a multitude of counter-info sites, even if we start out with low traffic. We must undermine reliance on hostile social media platforms.

My hope is to re-frame some of the ways in which we consider the issue of hostile technology so that we can make progress and experimentation in the right direction. Our current understanding is rooted in ‘common sense’ such as the sentiment “don’t put anything online you wouldn’t like to hear repeated in court”. But generations are being raised within an environment of technological ubiquity which challenges any notion of ‘common sense’ that might have seemed obvious to those before, some of us held phones and tablets before we could talk. The youth are not ignorant, in fact the millennial optimism for the liberating potential of the internet and technology is on its deathbed. But the cynicism that has supplanted that optimism is often externalised in defeatism, paired with a declining technical aptitude and control as devices become increasingly abstracted and locked-down. We might move away from a vague basis in ‘common sense’ toward a clearer rationale that we cannot trust technology which we cannot understand and control, which currently applies to nearly every complex digital technology we currently interact with. This ensures a solid ground to stand on when we are thinking through measures for protection against technological threats, while also not excluding any opportunities to carefully engage with alternative non-hostile technologies.

I hope this text invites further exploration and thought. This is an issue that touches every single one of us, I think we should all begin to develop our own positions on it, considering how it affects us personally. How do you wish to relate to these devices? How are you affected by other peoples use of them? How does your use affect other people? What interventions can you make to undermine hostile technology?

There are so many areas left under-explored or unaddressed in this text. One major shortcoming is a failure to analyse our dependence on hostile technology in relation the colonial resource extraction that sustains it, something that has been severely overlooked by the majority of anarchists in the global north. This is something that needs to be reckoned with, especially in the context of anarchist involvement in any future development of alternative technologies. Another problem to address is that while dependence of hostile technology is a social reality we can make or unmake, we might need to a way to check our emails before we manage to unmake work. We need to develop ways navigate those required usages and how to prevent them taking over our lives. This is where technical solutions can shine, the zine ‘Kill the Cop in Your Pocket’ makes a great starting point. Also, there is a lot more to say about anarchists explorations of alternative technology and the black experience online. Questions of safety tools and moderation, of the legibility/opacity of our lives online and how we have been exploited, and of black agency in the traditionally white and male dominated environment of the free and open-source software space.

A security culture is a collective inter-supportive effort to establish norms, leveraging social dynamics to our advantage. It may be important to clarify that this is not a replacement for more specific operational security for particular endeavors, though it can strike against collective threats where individual strategies and responses might struggle. We need both specific practice (operational security, personal security, whatever you’d like to call it), and collective practice. Individuals may make informed decisions as to when the costs may outweigh the benefits for the use of a digital device for risky activity, developing operational security to reduce that risk, and compartmentalising as well as possible to contain the risk. As long as any such strategies never assume a level of control over technology that only ever existed in our imaginations.