I’m conflicted here. I’m familiar enough with online “leftist” (especially of the supposed anti-colonial stripe) spaces to know how many bad, often highly illegal things are coordinated there. But I’m familiar enough with the FBI to know that their actual activities often consist of terrorizing political dissidents for no other reason than to neutralize their opinions. Without more information, it’s sensible to to default to innocent until proven guilty and push the FBI to justify themselves.
More recently, focus narrowed from violent extremism to RMVE, racially-motivated violent extremism, focusing on white supremacist groups--the definition of "white supremacist" being interpreted so broadly as to include explicitly anti-racist libertarian groups.
Given that the FBI officially considers "violent extremism" something to be extirpated, and defines it so broadly that the majority of the activity falling under that umbrella is legal political activity, I don't really see how you can possibly make the case that the FBI isn't trying to quash dissent. FBI raids have a chilling effect on political activity, they know this, and they use it.
> personal PC
Is this intentional?
0. Never use Signal (tied to a phone number), iMessage, email, or text messaging. Use Sessions, the fork of Signal without a phone number for anonymous group chats.
1. Never give out personal phone numbers. They are real-time traceable with ease.
2. Email if you must self-hosted on a VPS in Iceland or Sweden paid in BTC/LTC crypto.
3. Never use real names. Have a nom de guerre.
4. Leave your cellphone in a signal blocking bag in airplane mode.
5. Buy a gopro (in cash) and a chesty or head mount.
6. Never upload media directly to any site. Remove metadata and lower the resolution. Wipe source material and store it on encrypted media such as in a VeraCrypt volume.
7. Anyone who refuses to follow privacy procedures is either a naïve liability or a cop.
8. Anyone agitating for violence against specific or unspecified actual people is either a crazy fool, a dumb fool, or a dumb cop.
9. Hygiene is important, so do your part with an anti facial recognition surgical mask. Down with COVID!
10. That random person you met may actually be on a terror watch list. Being connected to them in any way, including being seen together on social media (now deep fakeable) is enough to put you on the radar of the security apparatus. This isn't speculative paranoia but what occurs routinely from on or before 2009. Friend of mine received a call from his boss who allegedly received a call from an intelligence service advising that a group picture on Facebook from an afterparty included someone "who's known as a Bad Dude(tm) from a foreign intelligence service." There's still a long game cold war just beneath the surface being played by ~10k people as rare as encountering a real Navy SEAL but you probably don't want extra airline checkpoint screenings and questions for the rest of your life.
https://ips-dc.org/three-felonies-day/ <-- People commit felonies unwittingly without intent and lack the resources to defend themselves. This makes them easy targets for DAs and investigators to pad their stats.
"In the world’s most incarcerated country, some high-profile sex offenders walk free [because they're rich]." - John Kiriakou (June 10, 2015)