In his 2005 published book, State of Exception, Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben (who, I feel moved to say, was an idiot on the topic of Covid 19, declaring the virus to be nonexistent) wrote:

“The state of exception is the political point at which the juridical stops, and a sovereign unaccountability begins; it is where the dam of individual liberties breaks and a society is flooded with the sovereign power of the state.”

The (apparently, merely delayed by four years) re-election of Donald Trump is certain to usher in a sustained period of domestic emergency in the United States, a state of exception when even the pretense of bourgeois democracy is dropped and state power is exercised with few restraints.

What does this mean for information technology usage by activist groups or really, anyone?

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In Feb of 2024, I published the essay, Information Technology for Activists – What is To Be Done? In this essay, I provided an overview of the current information technology landscape, with the needs and requirements of activist groups in mind. When conditions change, our understanding should keep pace. As we enter the state of exception, the information technology practices of groups who can expect harassment, or worse, from the US state should be radically updated for a more aggressively defensive posture.

Abandon Cloud

The computer and software technology industry is the command and control apparatus of corporate and state entities. As such, its products and services should be considered enemy territory. Under the capitalist system, we are compelled to operate on this territory to live. This harsh necessity should not be confused with acceptance and is certainly not a reason to celebrate, like dupes, the system that is killing the world. 

The use of operating systems and platforms from the tech industry’s primary powers – Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta, X/Twitter, Apple, Oracle – and lesser known entities, creates a threat vector through which identities, data and activities can be tracked and recorded. Moving off these platforms will be very difficult but is essential. What are the alternatives? 

There are three main areas of concern:

• Services and platforms such as social media, cloud and related services
• Personal computers (for example, laptops)
• Phones

In this essay, cloud and computer usage are the focus.

By ‘cloud’, I’m referring to the platforms owned by Microsoft (Azure), Amazon (Amazon Web Services or, AWS) and Google (Google Cloud Platform or GCP) and services such as Microsoft 365 and Google’s G Suite. These services are not secure for the purposes of activist groups and individuals who can expect heightened surveillance and harassment from the state.  There are technical reasons (Azure, for example, is known for various vulnerabilities) but these are of a distant, secondary concern to the fact that, regardless of each platform’s infrastructural qualities or deficits, the corporations owning them are elements of the state apparatus.

Your data and communications are not secure. If you are using these platforms, your top priority should be abandoning usage and moving your computational resources to what are called on-premises facilities and use the Linux operating system, rather than MacOS or Microsoft Windows.  

On Computers

In brief, operating systems are a specialized type of software that makes computers useful. When you open Microsoft Excel on your computer, it’s the Microsoft Windows operating system that enables the Excel program to utilize computer hardware, such as memory and storage. You can learn more about operating systems by reading this Wikipedia article. This relationship – between software and computing machinery – applies to all the systems you use: whether it’s Windows, Mac or others.

Microsoft Windows (particularly the newest versions which include the insecure by design ‘Co-pilot plus PC’ feature) and Apple’s MacOS should be abandoned. Why? The tech industry, as outlined in Yasha Levine’s book, Surveillance Valley, works hand in glove with the surveillance state (and has done so since the industry’s infancy). If you or your organization are using computers for work that challenges the US state – for example, pro-Palestinian activism or indeed, work in support of any marginalized community, there is a possibility vital information will be compromised – either through seizure, or remote access that takes advantage of backdoors and vulnerabilities.

This was always a possibility (and for some, a harsh experience) but as the state’s apparatus is directed towards coordinated, targeted suppression, vague possibility turns into high probability (see, for example, UK police raid home, seize devices of EI’s Asa Winstanley).

The Linux operating system should be used instead, specifically, the Debian distribution, well known for its secure design. Secure by design does not mean invulnerable to attack; best practices such as those described in the article, Securing Debian Manual 3.19, on the Debian website, must be followed to make a machine a harder target.

Switching and Migration

Switching from Microsoft Windows to Debian Linux can be done in stages as described in the document ‘From Windows to Debian’. Replacing MacOS with Debian on Mac Pro computers is described in the document, ‘Macbook Pro’ on the Debian website. More recent Mac hardware (M1 Silicon) is being addressed via Debian’s Project Banana.

On software

If you’re using Microsoft Windows, it’s likely you’re also using the MS Office suite. You may also be using Microsoft’s cloud ‘productivity’ platform, Microsoft 365. Perhaps you’re using Google’s Workspace platform instead or in addition to Microsoft 365. In the section on ‘Services and Platforms’, I discuss the problems of these products from a security perspective. For now, let’s review replacements for commercial ‘productivity’ suites that are used to create documents, spreadsheets and other types of work files.

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In the second installment of this essay series I will provide greater detail regarding each of the topics discussed and guidance about the use of phones which are spy devices and social media, which is insecure by design.