“Assert your rights—we’ve got your back.” Since CLDC 2003 has defended activists’ constitutional rights in the courts and—through our Dissent & Democracy trainings—in the streets. While our core mission to provide activist legal education and support remains important as ever, our world is very different from the one fought for up to the 1990s by forest defenders and human and non-human animal liberation activists.
Activist groups today are equipped with widespread and affordable digital cameras, satellite navigation, and instantaneous global communications and social networking. These technologies provide significant organizing advantages. At the same time State and corporate opponents will turn these complex tools against activists, enabling systematic surveillance and sophisticated infiltration and disruption.
In a world where millions of digital communications are silently intercepted, collected, and stored every day, how do activists effectively say “I do not consent to this search?” As in a physical encounter with law enforcement, we must be proactive. Online, this means using encryption along with other privacy-protecting and autonomy-preserving tools.
Our choice of tools is of vital importance—corporate digital infrastructure that may be convenient to use can be relied upon to snitch on anyone accused of making trouble for racist, neocolonial and patriarchal government agencies and exploitative or toxic industries.
Community-driven, trustworthy, and proven digital security tools exist, but can require a sometimes steep learning curve. Also, all technologies have certain limitations. Knowing exactly what these are is crucial to using them safely and effectively. Finally, technology changes faster than the law. New backdoors and security flaws are discovered by researchers—or leaked to journalists by inside dissenters—every week.
CLDC is committed to educating our activist communities on the tools that can be used with confidence by dissident organizers to resist surveillance and remain free to take action. We’ll post updated recommendations for different levels of risk and tolerance for complexity.
On our security blog, we will document surveillance tactics as they are exposed by journalists, security researchers, and Freedom of Information Act requests, and provide activists with regular updates on surveillance methods.
Through trainings, workshops, and ongoing outreach to activist groups, radical online service providers, and privacy tech developers, we’ll help build resources to assist political movements in keeping their communications secure to empower grassroots organizing. This will include working with partners on platforms that can be rapidly deployed to protect communications within large, spontaneous movements.
Please contact us for comments, suggestions, or questions at and, as always, you can donate to support this work.
ProtonMail Developments: ProtonMail provides strong message privacy, but activists need to take extra steps to ensure anonymity
Ever since the broadly-trusted, Switzerland-based encrypted email service ProtonMail acknowledged that it helped identify a young French climate activist, organizers have been pondering whether they should continue using ProtonMail accounts.
For the sake of solidarity, the strength of our movements, and the safety of our people, activists must never cooperate […]
Expect the Unexpected: Secure Your Phone Against Confiscation or Loss
In an ideal world you never lose your phone or have it on you when risking arrest. Of course this isn’t always practical. Keeping your phone locked at all times is great protection, but some of your data could still be at risk if the cops get their hands on it. Here’s […]
Digital Security Recommendations for 2021
TLDR: Just look for the –> arrows and do some of these things. If you only have capacity to do a few things, do one from each category, starting from the top.
Why are you making me read this?
As a movement, we’ve all been working hard together to adopt strong encryption […]
Keybase, Zoom, and the Future of Dissident Crypto
“I bet that wasn’t in your threat model.” So the future of Keybase, perhaps CLDC’s most capable and secure recommendation for dissident organizers, is now in doubt, because of COVID-19. Thanks, coronavirus! The story so far: Zoom became very, very popular in a very, very short time […]
Digital Security Checklist for Political Activists!
Looking to make some quick security upgrades? Make strong passwords (at least one to protect your computer or password manager) and browse our lists of recommendations!
Tap here for a brief checklist to make a strong password! — and here is our strong password zine, all […]
Direct Encryption
End-to-End Encryption is the best security model for communications or online document storage, but the term is a bit of a mouthful that isn't always clear ("the ends are me and the server, right?" -- wrong!). So let's try using a new term -- Direct Encryption -- meaning: the only people who can decrypt and read messages are those directly involved in a private conversation or project.
What tech can we trust?
For reasons, we can't say that any digital technology could ever be considered 100% trustworthy. At the same time, most people can't do all their organizing in person on backcountry camping trips, so we won't say "just don’t use phones or computers." What we will do is try to give you a way to decide how much to trust each of your devices and apps.
ProtonMail Developments: ProtonMail provides strong message privacy, but activists need to take extra steps to ensure anonymity
Ever since the broadly-trusted, Switzerland-based encrypted email service ProtonMail acknowledged that it helped identify a young French climate activist, organizers have been pondering whether they should continue using ProtonMail accounts.
For the sake of solidarity, the strength of our movements, and the safety of our people, activists must never cooperate […]
Digital Security Recommendations for 2021
TLDR: Just look for the –> arrows and do some of these things. If you only have capacity to do a few things, do one from each category, starting from the top.
Why are you making me read this?
As a movement, we’ve all been working hard together to adopt strong encryption […]
Does ProtonMail Snitch?
Since this Register article was recently published, some activists are concerned about whether or not ProtonMail can be trusted.
The CLDC has expressed reservations that ProtonMail may not be the best choice for activists. Despite the worrisome recent news, ProtonMail is nevertheless a reasonable choice for encrypted email. As […]
Google and Facebook give your data to cops
We dislike G**gle and F*c*book. Here is one reason.
Every year, Google and Facebook hand over data from roughly one hundred thousand user accounts to law enforcement and other requesters. Many of these requests come in the form of subpoenas, which do not require probable cause, can originate out of criminal […]
Choose Wire for conference calls
Here's what we look for in trustworthy technology: end-to-end encryption, open source code, and cross-platform support.
Signal: Activist Best Practices
Signal isn’t perfect and we’re not certain it’s designed with activists in mind–for instance, you and your friends can’t use it without all using real phone numbers. But still, Signal takes almost zero time or training and equips activists with 5-star end-to-end text, voice and video encryption with an […]
Dress for the Northwest: Use Layers of Encryption to Stay Safe from Unknown Vulnerabilities and Exploits
Vulnerabilities and exploits to Internet-enabled devices are constantly being discovered (and stockpiled). This is one reason why you’ll hear us say “there is no such thing as perfect digital security” and “don’t bet your life and liberty on this [digital security] tool”. That said, there is a lot you […]
What is Doxing? Can it Be Prevented?
Doxing is the practice of collecting personal info (public or private) and publishing it online. It has been used as a means of intimidation and harassment and CLDC has been asked more than once "what if it happens to me?"
How to Browse the Web Anonymously
DreamHost, a web-host, has revealed that they are fighting the US government warrant requesting all information about every person who has visited the website www.disruptj20.org. Such information could include all subpages of disruptj20 that you surfed, how often you did so and the complete text of anything you might […]