I’ve been thinking about how to organise in the current era of the complete panopticon we live under.
Anything and everything digital is compromised and is collecting data on you. The surveillance industries have completely captured social media and all forms of digital communication.
Encryption doesn’t mean shit and it’s not feasible to have to teach every person in your org how PGP and public/private keys work.
But how about going back to pen and paper? Instead of sending online messages which can be logged and read by any cop and informant, members of an organisation would use letters or pure paper media and use each other to send information through a chain of other comrades.
Imagine an organisation that has 10 members. Each member is expected to move a distance of 2 km to deliver the mail to the drop-off point, or hand it over to the next comrade who will hand it to the next comrade in the post chain.
That’s <30 minutes of walking, by the way.
With ten members, able to walk 2km each, a letter could reach around 20 km, which is quite a big chunk of any city.
If I wanted to send a letter to a comrade who was a bit of a distance away, say 6 km, the letter would maybe exchange hands 5-6 times to reach its destination.
And if your comrades have a car, your covered area multiplies.
I’m drunk and high, but I think what I’m trying to say here, is what if radical organisation came with an underlying postal service, where trusted comrades would be expected to act as mail men for the organisation, as to avoid the surveillance state?
I like the idea but really we can achieve security and private organizing digitally. Just not with the standard closed source big tech services people gravitate towards, or many device types either. It does require digital literacy and security training, but physical delivery would also require a good deal of training and understanding of the system to work. It could be cheaper materials-wise though