Mass surveillance: Civilian snitches

You can dress anonymously to prevent civilians from providing a description of you that would be valuable to an adversary.

If a civilian follows you after an action, you can scare them off with threats or pepper spray. If a civilian tries to call the police, you can destroy their phone.

Civilians can observe you during an action and report their observations to an adversary. To mitigate this, you can carry out actions at night or in areas with minimal foot traffic to minimize witnesses, and use a lookout to report the presence of any witnesses as soon as they are noticed. Beware of balconies and windows overlooking the action site.

Several civilians helped investigators. In particular:^[1]

• After hearing Louna make an appointment with a doctor through an intercepted phone call, investigators contacted the doctor, who provided them with Louna's personal information, including her address and phone number.
• The pharmacist at a pharmacy where Louna obtained medication provided a physical description of Louna, confirmed recognizing her from a photograph, and provided personal documents of hers, including copies of prescriptions.
• The director of a higher education institution where a person studied provided the person's class schedule and information about the transportation they used to get to the institution.

In the weeks following the train bombing, investigators interrogated many citizens in a large area surrounding the bombing site.^[2]

In particular, investigators interrogated a shop clerk in a village. The clerk told investigators that, before the bombing, someone wearing a camouflage jacket and carrying a backpack had passed by the shop. The clerk provided a description of the person, which investigators used to create a composite sketch. Three weeks after the bombing, Ruslan Siddiqi encountered a local cop who compared him with the composite sketch and arrested him.

While trying to cross the Belarusian-Ukrainian border, the people stopped at a shop about 10 kilometers from the border.^[1] A shopkeeper called the border guards on them, which led directly to their arrest.

The saleswoman of the cell phone store where Mónica bought a phone that was used as part of the 2020 action, when questioned by investigators, gave a description of a person that the investigators matched to Mónica.^[3]

After arresting Stecco, investigators showed his picture and asked questions to many people living around the arrest site, which allowed them to find the house where Stecco allegedly lived.^[4]

When Lukáš Borl was in clandestinity his photo and personal information were published on the national police website to encourage civilians to send information about him to the police.^[5]

When the explosive device exploded prematurely and severely wounded Mbedzi, a civilian was traveling by car on a nearby road.^[6] The civilian stopped near the bombing site, saw another car stop, and saw Mbedzi shout “Hospital! Hospital!” and get into the other car. The civilian stayed at the site and informed the first cops who arrived that a man wounded in the explosion had gotten into a car towards a hospital. This seemingly led to Mbedzi's arrest at the hospital one hour later.

Additionally, three civilians provided investigators with visual descriptions of Mbedzi: the aforementioned civilian, the driver of the car that took Mbedzi to the hospital, and the hospital security guard. This helped investigators reconstruct Mbedzi's movements and prove that he was at the bombing site.

Several civilians helped investigators.^[7] In particular:

• Journalists told investigators that they had noticed similarities between action claims published by Direct Action and articles in a local quarterly publication called Resistance.
• A hunter, presumably by chance, discovered two wooden structures where members of Direct Action stored the stolen explosives they used in bombings, and alerted the police to the discovery.^[8]
• The landlords of the house where four members of Direct Action lived gave investigators the key to the house so they could enter and install hidden microphones.