In the past few years there have been a lot of actions, mainly occupations and blockades, where online arrestee forms (also called RST forms) have been spread around. I think this is a bad development and here I’m going to tell you why.
As a child growing up on the internet in the early 2000s I was taught not to share personal information with strangers on the internet. I still think this is good advice.
Why is this a problem?
Arrestee forms are typically used when people expect to get into a situation where they can be arrested or be exposed to police violence. The forms typically request personally identifiable information and contact information for someone close to you to be filled out. You should not share this information with strangers on the internet.
It increases your workload and responsibility
For the people doing arrestee support it potentially creates a lot of extra administration and organisational work. It also creates a lot of responsibility because suddenly you’re in charge of processing people’s personal information and destroying it at the right time. You have a better use of your time and energy, use it effectively. If you love doing administration, go become a bureaucrat or something.
Imagine your mobilisation goes really well and your occupation lasts multiple days or weeks. Over a thousand people fill out your forms. You are going to need a serious team of people to manage all these forms and to keep track of who is where and in what situation they are. You should seriously consider whether you and your comrades are prepared to take on all this extra work and responsibility. You should also consider whether all this extra work is worth it. Ask yourself the following questions:
– What is your purpose as arrestee support?
– Will all this extra administration allow you to do things that you otherwise couldn’t?
– How are you going to maintain any semblance of order?
– How are you going to make sure you keep track of whomever is arrested or released, or whether they are still in the occupation?
– How are you going to make sure the data is destroyed at the right time?
Spoiler alert: you will probably be overwhelmed and overwork yourself and this does not help in providing effective support for arrestees that trust you to support them.
It encourages sharing of sensitive information
Online arrestee forms perpetuates a culture where people are encouraged to share personally identifiable information to strangers over the internet. Most arrestee forms also request contact information for someone who is close to you. This is not a good development. I’m not saying that strangers are inherently up to no good, but that you should be careful about whom you share your personal information with. So much of the internet, especially social media, already urge people to share a lot of information about themselves and it mostly benefits the companies that run them. We should not encourage comrades to share personally identifiable information over the internet.
For participants in an action with online arrestee forms, ask yourself the following questions:
– Do you know all the people doing arrestee support?
– Do you trust all the people doing arrestee support with your personal information?
– Do you trust all of them to have taken adequate security measures on their computers?
For organizers, ask yourself: do you trust the online service you use to keep sensitive information safe from adversaries? Note that these adversaries very likely consist of the police and intelligence services. These organisations are interested in information about activists and their networks. Intelligence services also have serious capabilities in terms of hacking and social engineering. This is a large part of their job.
It creates a false sense of security
Encouraging people to fill out arrestee forms en-masse creates a false sense of security. Filling out an arrestee form and joining an action supposes that you will be taken care of when you join an action and something bad happens, i.e. you get arrested. Arrestee forms typically do not provide information on what your rights are when you get arrested. They also do not prepare you for an interrogation by the police.
It is susceptible to hacking and social engineering
Suppose your action is going really well and the arrestee form is spread around widely, both between individuals and in large signal groups. There is no way to keep track of where the URL of your form ends up. There is also no way to know whether the URL has been tampered with, unless you know the people doing arrestee support and they can personally verify that the link you received was correct.
There might be a police informant who forwards your message with a different link, pointing to a form controlled by the police. Now two things have happened. One: you will miss information about people in the action for which you have made yourself responsible. Two: the police will obtain information about your fellow activists and their networks. As far as I’m aware, this has not happened yet, but I consider it a serious possibility. The police love collecting information and building profiles on people. They also do a lot of things that they are not allowed or supposed to do.
What is the alternative?
For organizers
Think about whether you need arrestee forms for everyone attending your action. You should limit the use of arrestee forms for smaller groups of people doing higher risk activities. The kind of activities where arrest is a big risk and the potential charges can get serious. You want to reserve your time and energy to focus on these situations instead of getting bogged down in maintaining a shitload of administration for people who might be arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
You can also put time and energy in spreading information about people’s rights and what they can expect when they get arrested. Your action might attract people who do not have a lot of experience as activists. They might have never been arrested before. These people probably don’t know what to expect. You can inform people about their rights as well as contact information of you and the lawyers through bust cards.
Between actions you can organise trainings on what arrestee support does and what to expect when someone gets arrested. These trainings might even happen during an occupation if it is particularly successful.
For participants
Don’t fill out online arrestee forms. Think about the risk you want to take and whether you are equipped to deal with the consequences.
Get educated by reading up on your rights or by attending a workshop or training from other arrestee support groups.
Resources
arrestantengroep.org/downloads has legal information in multiple languages and other resources about arrestee support. The website itself is in Dutch, but feel free to use your favourite online translation service. They also give workshops. The green and black cross is a group doing similar work in England and Wales.
activisthandbook.org/tools/security and stateofsurveillance.org/guides/basic/opsec-basics contain information about operational and digital security, and how to think about it.
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