Composting the mess of digital security in activism – We need to talk about this, offline

The online tools we common sense rely on for organising and campaigning are genuinely dangerous, and I find that paralysing. This isn’t paranoia, it’s a practical reality that urgently needs addressing. Until we do, offline working groups are one of the few reliable ways to unblock the mess. Where we actually are now… Disappearing, encrypted chat outside the #dotcons is one of the few spaces that feels even marginally safe. But even then, safety depends entirely on who’s in the room, which means those spaces need to stay small, focused, and constantly tended. The moment trust becomes uncertain, the space becomes a liability. The result, for me personally, is that I currently have no viable online tools left for outreach. Everything leaves traces, so all that remains is slow, word-of-mouth. The legal reality we need to talks about offline. Almost everything posted on #dotcons platforms leaves a digital fingerprint – metadata, timestamps, IP addresses, connection logs, account linkages.…