One vulnerability of small printing operations is electricity. One solution is to have reserve power through generators. Another is manual typewriters and hand-operated copiers using specially-prepared originals, which were quite common until the 1980s.
In rich countries, photocopiers are found in almost every office and in a number of homes. Their role as a basis for community resistance to aggression could be fostered by setting up communal printing facilities in every street or apartment block, with access to a number of means of producing and copying leaflets and newsletters. The more people who have used equipment to produce information for local use, the more difficult it becomes for any aggressor to control communication centrally.
In highly authoritarian states, such as the old Soviet Union, freely available photocopying was a mortal danger to the state. Guards were posted over photocopiers to ensure that no unauthorised copying occurred. This sort of control inhibited free communication and consequently prevented development in a number of fields, from science to the economy. By making production and distribution of information a part of everyday life — whether to produce a leaflet for a political meeting, a sports event or a sale of goods — the community is very well prepared to continue communicating in a crisis.
To aid nonviolent struggle, cheap, durable and reliable copiers could be designed for use in poor countries. In the case of countries under repressive rule, such copiers could be smuggled into the country in various ways, by tourists or through commercial trade. Copiers could be developed that can be operated even without mains electricity. This might be through batteries or through an optional muscle-powered system.
Some governments and companies, concerned about the leaking of vital documents, have sought the development and introduction of photocopiers that leave some mark on each copied page indicating its source. Generally speaking, such technology is far more useful to an aggressor than to the nonviolent resistance.
Telephone and Fax
The telephone is, in many respects, an ideal communication medium for nonviolent struggle. It cannot be used by a single person to send messages to a large number of passive recipients, but rather it is most suited for conversations between two people. True, it’s possible to have conference calls, but these become unwieldly with more than a handful of people.
Since telephone is so useful for communication in a nonviolent struggle, the general aim should be to keep the system going. Aggressors are unlikely to shut down an entire telephone system because society depends on it so much — including the aggressors. There are some important vulnerabilities in telephone systems that deserve attention.
First, it is possible to cut off certain phones, either an individual phone or all those in a whole building or suburb. Aggressors might want to cut off telephones used by the resistance, and the resistance might want to cut off telephones used by the aggressors. In most cases, it would not be so difficult to get around this problem: people can find other phones. Furthermore, with mobile phones the lines become less important. Generally, resisters seek to keep open lines of communication, including communication with the aggressor, so it is not desirable to cut off telephones. It would be important to keep in contact with technicians to encourage them to oppose attempts to shut down phones.
Second, and more important, is the possibility of telephone surveillance.[16] This is quite easy to do, especially with new electronic switching systems. Surveillance of conversations, however it is done, is labour-intensive: someone has to listen to the conversations long enough to make sense of them. This applies even when there are computer systems with voice recognition that are programmed to keep track of conversations only when certain key words are mentioned. Furthermore, the system can be easily foiled if people know the key words and agree not to use them — or to use them all the time! — in their conversations.
If there are only a few resisters, surveillance can be used to keep track of them. If, on the other hand, large numbers of people join the resistance, mass surveillance becomes impossible.
Surveillance becomes even less useful if the resistance operates without secrecy, as many nonviolent activists recommend. If rallies and civil disobedience actions are announced to the authorities beforehand, surveillance is rather pointless.
Nevertheless, telephone surveillance, even when it is quite infrequent and gains little useful information, is very important psychologically. Many people are frightened enough to reduce their activism. Therefore, antisurveillance measures are important. Cordless and cellular phones should be avoided, since their transmissions can easily be picked up by radio scanners, as some public figures have discovered to their embarrassment.[17] One easy method is to use other telephones, especially public telephones. Another is to use the “call forward” mechanism on some phones, to bounce a call to a different phone and thus hide the location or identity of the caller.
As well as such practical on-the-spot techniques, there are a number of technological approaches worthy of investigation. Secure methods of putting telephone messages into code — encryption — would make surveillance more difficult. Telephone systems could be designed so that taps are impossible without alerting the callers. They might also be designed so that, in an emergency, no single person could cut off phones. (In ordinary times, technicians often need to cut off phones for quite legitimate purposes.)
Another issue is caller number identification: the ability of the person called to see and capture electronically the phone number of the caller. Arguably, in some cases in an emergency it is useful for people to be able to make anonymous phone calls. On the other hand, the aggressor may try to disrupt the resistance by feeding lots of misleading information into the resistance networks, in which case caller number identification would be useful to the resistance. More investigation and the running of simulations would help in deciding in what circumstances caller number identification would be an advantage for a nonviolent resistance.[18]
Fax machines run on telephone lines, but are different in two ways: they transmit a printed document rather than sounds, and the recipient does not need to be there for the transmission to occur. Fax is a decentralised communication system and has many similarities to both the post and computer networks. Generally speaking, fax is quite useful to the resistance. “Secure” transmissions — sending a fax that can only be printed when the receiver puts in a code — are now possible with some fax machines. The main improvement for fax would be encryption, so that messages cannot be intercepted en route.
The Post
The postal system is a global communication network which is generally quite useful for nonviolent activists. A government seeking to monitor the post cannot hope to open and inspect every piece of mail without large amounts of labour and considerable disruption of everyday life. Therefore the usual procedure is selective monitoring of maiclass="underline" intercepting, reading and sometimes confiscating mail sent by or to particular targeted individuals or organisations. In order to achieve this, it is helpful for all mail in a country or region to be routed through a single central post office.
To get around monitoring of the post mostly requires organisational rather than technological means. The more that collection, sorting and distribution of mail are done locally, the more difficult it is for any group to monitor or intercept the post. Also, the more decentralised are the authority structures within the postal service, the more difficult it is for an aggressor to take control using only a few trusted staff. If there are several, rather than just one, postal services — such as competing private carriers — then it becomes more difficult to take central control.
16.
Patrick Fitzgerald and Mark Leopold,
17.
Thomas Icom, “Cellular interception techniques,”
18.
Caller number identification also raises issues concerning protection of personal data. Thus, it is possible that there could be friction between priorities on privacy and on nonviolent resistance. For a discussion of potential problems with surveillance in a social defence system, see Brian Martin, “Possible pathologies of future social defence systems,”