Why you should conceal your face at protests and demonstrations

Guest post by A. Nonymous

The use of balaclavas and scarves has been branded in the mainstream press as anything from a signal of thuggish criminality, to a pathetic aspirational-revolutionary fashion statement. This kind of ‘analysis’ exposes the distance between so-called journalists and demonstrators. They really have no idea about the social movement taking place before their eyes.

Concealments such as balaclavas, scarves, and notably ‘V for Vendetta’ masks, are being used as political constructions – wearing them at demonstrations indicates a concerted meaning, not simply a by-product of criminality. We are intentionally striving to remain anonymous, and we have very good reasons why.

‘Journalists’ such as Janice Turner of The Times spout the typically arrogant and myopic view of face covering.

Turner confidently declares that:

“… the increased use of masks by (UK) Uncut members is symptomatic of its drift from the mainstream. Covering the face manifests your social separation, your rejection of the rule of law for your own value system (…) A mask makes you an outlaw, bandit, fugitive, a rebel waging war against the State.”

(‘We must look each other in the eyes as equals’ – Janice Turner, The Times, p.27: Saturday 2nd April, 2011)

Right on, Janice - one mustn’t possibly drift from the mainstream! That would be ‘symptomatic’ of some strain of politically progressive disease, threatening your poor psychological immune system. The disenchanted mainstream, characterised by acquiescence, apathy, arrogance and ignorance is doing such a great job right now – well, at funding perpetual war, poverty, and destruction worldwide.

Although I contest the bias of Turner’s mask decoding, many of the mask wearers are indeed ‘rebel(s) waging war against the State’, and do indeed have their ‘own value system(s)’. And too right. Is this not something to be congratulated, in a ‘democracy’? If more people in the world took a similar interest in politics and values, the world would be a more beautiful and progressive place to live in.

Rather than masks being purely an indicator of identity or criminality, as writers such as Turner suggest, it is in fact an entirely practical decision, as well as a pre-meditated political statement, to wear one. Not an accident of thuggery.

For practical reasons, I advocate that all protestors/demonstrators conceal their faces and wear fairly unidentifiable clothing. This is a response to the encroaching police state that we find ourselves in. The highly controversial (yet lacking adequate public discussion) ‘FIT team’ (Forward Intelligence Team) is watching you unnervingly closely when you protest. Even if you manage to evade their shadowy surveillance, approximately 300 CCTV cameras will capture you on any given day. 

Here are some excerpts from ‘Fitwatch’ (fitwatch.org.uk) describing the roles of FIT teams.

• ‘Spotting’ or identifying people they know from previous events. These people are sometimes then targeted for increased police surveillance, a stop and search or are ‘accompanied’
• Gaining intelligence on people they decide they have an interest in. FIT officers have testified in court they gain intelligence on people who have committed no offences and have done nothing wrong. They will focus on people who may frequently attend political protest, or who associate with someone already ‘known’. (…)
• Directing photographers or evidence gatherers to take photographs and footage of individuals or groups. (…) they have been known to follow a group of people for half an hour or more to obtain front, back, side and close up shots of each subject. They do NOT need to have suspicion that any offence has occurred, or will occur.
• Obtaining personal details of people they are interested in. This is frequently done by carrying out a stop and search to obtain people’s details, but other methods have also been used. They frequently misuse S60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, which gives them a blanket power to stop and search everyone, without need for suspicion.
• Writing intelligence reports including descriptions, names and any other intelligence obtained for inclusion onto a police database. In London these are entered onto the CRIMINT (criminal intelligence) database
  • ‘Accompanying’ activists they are interested in. This is supposedly carried out to prevent crimes taking place, although it often resembles harassment. They have been known to ‘accompany’ protesters for many hours, and this has included following them to their places of work, their homes, into pubs and shops, on trains and buses, even tailing their cars as they drive home.
  • Gaining pre-event intelligence. This usually involves surveillance of meetings, and the identification of individuals thought to be organisers.

(FIT – The Role accessed 2nd April 2011. Omissions and emphases added).

I can testify that the FIT teams do indeed fulfil this role as Big Brother’s slavishly mobile employees. I have been at gatherings when a van full of ‘FIT’ (clearly working on pre-event intelligence) has sidled up, silently captured all of ‘our’ faces (as if public groups are that easily discernable), and then crept off again. These kinds of gatherings are political, often hobbyist as much as activist. There is no suggestion of criminality or mal intent attached, and therefore they can have no intelligence suggesting anything of the like – these are just free political assemblies which, er, are supposed to be a pillar of any democracy. But it seems in modern Britain, political assembly is a dangerous act to be documented, harassed, and infiltrated.

Unfortunately, FIT’s photos and videos are not destined for the dustbin. They go onto databases and spotter cards, so that perfectly innocent people – or ‘dissenters’ – like you and I, can be ‘kept an eye on’: i.e., spied on, harassed, and targeted next time. FIT teams cast a worrying shadow over habeas corpus, treating the political public as guilty until proven innocent and with a total lack of respect, in the hope of catching a tiny minority of protesters who commit violent acts. My experience from protests is that whilst acts of political destruction are often well organised, violence, a totally different ball game, is primarily by the Police, and secondarily by drunk, rogue, or occasionally provoked/kettled protesters. Not something particularly preventable or curable with FIT teams, and certainly not warranting such a sacrifice of our civil liberties.

‘Nothing to hide, nothing to fear’, is the shrill retort of the naïve. This statement overlooks philosophies of privacy, anonymity, and liberty. In the same way that people wearing Burkas are wearing a construction of meaning, many people wearing balaclavas also a wearing a construction of meaning very important to them, and there is no reason that a religious philosophy should be regarded higher than a political philosophy in the system of law. But nevertheless, let’s address the terms.  I am not ashamed to say today, that yes, I am ‘hiding’ something, but that is not a crime (unless Theresa May has her way). I hide my face from CCTV cameras and FIT teams because I do not agree with the unlawful, persecutory way that they will use my identity, and I refuse to enable it. The Love Police is all about lowering fear and raising love – I do not wish to increase fear, but the reality of our situation is that we are being targeted. As

The Love Police walked away from 10 Downing Street on March 26th 2011, people in and around the group were ambushed by a van-full of police officers: one thrown to the floor, many with balaclavas forcibly ripped off, many subjected to a search. Those who are really in fear are the employees of the State. They see that elements are rebelling, and they are scared. The State is not built by us, it is built over us, and our right to make it crumble when it becomes diseased is being, and will be, vehemently opposed by its system justifying employees. 

The Forward Intelligence Team is a particularly grotesque tentacle of the State, mutating the colourful environment of protest and demonstration into an intimidating, intelligence gathering operation that treats democratic processes with utmost suspicion. So I advise you all to cover your faces, unless you feel it is acceptable to risk your innocent and unknowing mug-shot being kept on a police database, and potentially being targeted in the future. If you disagree with this level of surveillance, take the simple step of concealing your face and disable their tactic. If Theresa May is successful and the police are granted increased rights to use force to remove our concealment, then we shall outwit them. If it means I have to demonstrate in a full morph suit that would require me to be totally stripped in order to identify me, I’ll do it, and I’ll have a really great time.

Comments

[NeverSurrender]

An excellent article A. Nonymous. The innocent must be allowed to protect themselves from the abuse of surveillance. We should not have to conceal our identities when lawfully protesting but not doing so is to risk being marked for 'special attention' by the police making it very difficult to protest in the future. In the Arab world they put snipers on the roofs to take out protesters and to induce fear. In the UK they don't need to because the overwhelming surveillance is the perfect tool for stifling legitimate protest.

[Richard Craven]

@NeverSurrender
Well said, as usual; although it's still rather unpleasant to find oneself sticking up for the rights of yobs as part of the bargain.

[NeverSurrender]

@Richard
I don't see any problem with the police asking people who are damaging property or being violent to uncover their faces but, I don't think that they should be allowed to do so if a person is not behaving like a yob. Let's not forget that apart from not wanting to be marked out by the police, some people just don't like to be filmed and photographed without their consent. That is another perfectly good reason for covering one's face.

[Purlieu]

What a state we are in, when we fear our own police.

[Richard Craven]

@NeverSurrender

I completely agree. I am one of those very people who does not like being filmed without their consent.

[Richard Craven]

@NS

I've thought about this some more. I reckon my point is just that criminals and "anarchists" will inevitably abuse the utterly legitimate aspiration many people have to live a private life free of unwarranted surveillance. In theory it's absolutely fine to require the police to distinguish between the former and the latter. But it's hard to see how at a practical level this distinction is going to be enforced.

[Richard Craven]

@Purlieu
For some reason, I fear the police less under the Tories than I did under Labour. I felt that, under Labour, the State's functionaries generally exceeded their roles, and the Police Service was no exception in this respect. For all its flaws of conception and implementation, the Tory civil liberties agenda has improved things markedly, and I hope to see this process extended to the Police.

[True Religion Outlet]

Don‘t waste your time on a man/woman, who isn‘t willing to waste their time on you.

[peter Martin]

There is a much more sinister agenda behind FIT watch. The photo`s they take are fed into a computor that is linked to satelight and mobile phone masts. It`s an electronic warefare programme, yes that means they are going to cook you with microwave weapons. Go to a blog by Paul Baird entitled surveillance issues. He has wrote a book called Sattelite Tyranny. They cooked the Greenham Common protestors. Go to Power Watch website. Read blog by Professor Claude Fischer: A crime puzzle; violent crime declines in America Then go to my blog: ciaandbritainssecretdeathsquads.blogspot.com See how the two accounts mirror each other. This is the assasination branch of the CIA that Obama just discovered. I disrupted the programme Oct 12, 1999 in the UK, this has had a domino effect.

[Rwolf]

Compare U.S.

DHS Scanners To Secretly Search Your Body, Vehicle and Home—X-ray Deaths Next?

Department Homeland Security and Police intend to use hundreds of new X-ray Back Scatter Vans and other scanners with long-distance capability to secretly scan and search lawful persons’ bodies—when driving, walking and X-ray Citizens in their homes. DHS plans to mount X-ray scanners on buildings and utility poles to monitor groups of pedestrians. Citizens that drive or walk to work or lunch in monitored areas may be radiated several times a day.

There is nothing to stop U.S. Government Agencies and police repeatedly targeting (persons of interest) on the street and in their homes with X-ray scans that may cause cancer or induce other medical problems—including individuals afflicted by poor health. DHS new scanning will record eye and facial features of pedestrians, so subjects can be identified for covert X-ray scanning. Consequently some Americans may be X-ray scanned every time they set foot on the street.

How could anyone prove his or her cancer was caused by repeated government X-ray scans? Can you think of one U.S. Government agency you would trust to limit the number of times and duration secret Government scanners can penetrate a person’s body with X-ray radiation, when walking, driving; inside their home? Citizens driving or walking to work, that must pass DHS X-ray scanners on buildings and utility poles, could be exposed to radiation several times a day. The press recently reported that X-ray scanners now used at airports are 10-times greater that what U.S. Government told the American People.

Currently Citizens can purchase small sensitive radiation detectors on key chains that set off different sounding alarms for each radiation level detected. Key Chain radiation detectors sell for about $160.00 and some appear capable of detecting government X-ray scanners penetrating their home, or their body when walking or vehicle when driving. It should be expected more pedestrians might start carrying radiation key chain detectors to learn if X-ray scanners on buildings and utility poles are targeting their neighborhood, the streets they drive or walk. Radiated pedestrians and drivers should protest, especially if they are being hit everyday with X-ray scanners.

The U.S. can’t become a total Police State until the 4th Amendment is either terminated or so watered down it has no legal effect. That will be the result if government / police are allowed (without probable cause or warrants) to expose the public to covert X-ray scans and scans at airports; train and bus stops and other check points.

One can’t help wonder if today’s outspoken Americans that lawfully defend the Constitution, e.g., writers and bloggers will be deemed combatants by U.S. Government; constantly stopped, searched, and questioned by TSA and police; forced to endure no warrant searches of their car, body and forced cancer causing X-ray scans. The Nazi Military and Police repeatedly searched and delayed Citizens labeled politically undesirable boarding trains and buses and driving to work to cause targeted Citizens to lose their jobs. Citizens were placed on (Nazi do not hire lists) similar to the lists U.S. Homeland Security started in 2010.

See: TSA, DHS plan massive rollout of mobile surveillance vans with long-distance X-ray capability, eye movement tracking and more at:
http://www.naturalnews.com/031603_surveillance_police_state.html#ixzz1GGDd24RG

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The U.S. can’t become a total Police State until the 4th Amendment is either terminated or so watered down it has no legal effect.

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That will be the result if government / police are allowed (without probable cause or warrants) to expose the public to covert X-ray scans and scans at airports; train and bus stops and other check points.