We, your friendly neighbourhood anarchists from Minneapolis, Los Angeles, New York City, Akron, Atlanta, Baltimore, Winston-Salem, and Montreal, linked together by a common mission, implore you to join us in dismantling the surveillance apparatus and, from its remains, creating new tools which facilitate learning, art-making, life saving, and liberation.
In light of current events and recent reporting, it has become clear the surveillance apparatus is expanding at a rate that may soon lead us to cross the point of no return. Every camera puts each and every one of us at risk. From baby monitors to metro cameras to bird feeder cams, internet-connected cameras vulnerable to nonconsensual access allow our whereabouts to be within reach of anyone with a keyboard and are already being leveraged by agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Our private conversations are recorded by every doorbell camera as we move down each block in our neighbourhoods. License plate readers log locations of our vehicles, filling in a map of our travel habits for police and feds alike. Facial recognition paired with gait recognition paves the way for each of us to be identified & monitored anywhere there is a live feed. Artificial intelligence systems supercharge data scraping and analysis of footage captured from both protest livestreams and videos shared on social media, exponentially increasing the repression the state is able to deploy at any given time. Drones used for warfare are being utilized to surveil our cities and our acts of dissent.
Now, more than ever, and with no end in sight, we are vulnerable to racist stop-and-frisks, abductions, deportations, arrests for engaging in sex work, prosecutions for seeking healthcare like abortions or gender-affirming treatments, and more.
Reading the news about the ever-increasing potential of the surveillance apparatus quickly leads one to despair and that's an understandable response. It is overwhelming and far too much for a singular person to take in much less take on. We, a humble syndicate of anarchists, have come to remind each other that it is not too late if we take action now. We intend to spearhead a mission which mobilizes each and every one of us to fight back. After all, collective action is made up of innumerable individual actions.
We ask: What art can be made from scrap silicon boards or infrared LEDs? What lifesaving equipment can be made from waterproof housings? What music can be listened to with leftover transistors and wires? What music videos will be shot on DIY camcorders? What can we do in honour of our liberation when we know we aren't living in a panopticon?
Like the legend of Argos Panoptes of ancient Greek mythology, we intend to fight in the name of Hermes to slay the giant. Together, as a faction, we can reclaim our privacy and autonomy. Together, we can Blind The Beast.
Operation Hermes begins July 2025.
Found on Anarchist News