Welcome to Surveillance Resistance Quarterly, a newsletter that focuses on challenging the technologies that fuel state and corporate power. Alongside others, Surveillance Resistance Lab seeks to strengthen our collective analysis of these technologies of violence and control. We also aim to build, nurture and accumulate the power of organizing and resistance—locally and transnationally— against these technologies and the powers behind them. Follow us on IG or head to our website to learn more.

This century has been defined by a perpetual state of emergency, where our communities have had to confront ongoing crises. In this new political context, we must simultaneously meet our basic needs, defend our communities, and also rebuild towards a better future. Now more than ever, we need to understand and challenge the Everywhere Border—an all-encompassing tech-enabled infrastructure that enables cops and corporations to track, categorize and criminalize people. The Surveillance Resistance Lab was founded to build domestic and transnational solidarity for this fight. We do this through collaborative research, analysis, education and identifying interventions.

Projects like Digital Cop City, Digital Migration Control in the Americas, Digital Driver’s Licenses, the Resisting Borders and Technologies of Violence anthology, and the new Homeland Security: Myths and Monsters zine, make visible the often hidden ways in technology increases state control and corporate power, so that we can fight back more effectively. 

We are convening with movement partners to reflect and reassess. Register here to sign up for a panel of prolific organizers and thinkers in this political moment. Topics will include:

• Project 2025 blueprint from a surveillance lens
• Bodily freedom and digital identity
• Digital cop cities, smart cities and access to services and benefits

In solidarity,

The Surveillance Resistance Lab team

Note: The Lab is shifting to quarterly rather than monthly newsletters in anticipation of a busy 2025 ahead.

WHAT’S ON AT THE LAB?

OUR PUBLICATIONS

Homeland Security: Myths and Monsters — This new zine published by Common Notions and the Surveillance Resistance Lab visually depicts the rise of a federal government created monster: Department of Homeland Security (DHS). It is the only new department the United States has spawned in this century. Issues that were previously separate—immigration control, policing, and counter-terrorism—were brought into a single, sprawling entity. Today it has a budget of over $100 billion. Every danger is now conceived of as a threat to “homeland security,” and as the 9/11 Commission said in 2003, “the American homeland is the planet.”

UPCOMING EVENTS

Be Informed: what is ICE, how do they operate, and what are your rights during an encounter with them? — Immigrant Defense Project (IDP), Surveillance Resistance Lab, and Make the Road New York (MRNY) are giving a virtual Train-the-Trainer workshop on Tuesday December 17, 2024 1-3pm ET. This is an updated version of this 2023 workshop, and will be focused on how ICE operates and collects information as well as provide Know Your Rights information during encounters with ICE. The training aims to prepare advocates, organizers and allies nationally to give Know Your Right information to clients and community members. Registration is required and space is limited. Spanish interpretation will be available. For questions, contact training@immdefense.org.

The Future of AI: Taking on Big Tech in the Workplace & Ballot Box  — Surveillance Resistance Lab Director of Research and Policy, Cynthia Conti-Cook will join SiX, Kairos, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and the Economic Security Project for this panel at the State Innovation Exchange National Conference in Atlanta, GA on December 12, 2024. Tech companies and employers are taking advantage of the emergent nature of technologies to dictate regulatory frameworks. Yet the proliferation of these abusive tools isn’t inevitable. They can and should be regulated, including prohibited, to safeguard our rights. This workshop focuses on a series of reports released by SiX, Kairos, and Economic Security Project—centering the work of legislators and organizers to hold Big Tech accountable and center people as well as equity in AI. 

EVENTS BY OUR PARTNER ORGANIZATIONS

Deportation Defense Training: Expanding our Skills and Support Systems Mijente is hosting the Deportation Defense Series: Skill Up + Crew Up, a 3-part virtual series on deportation defense on December 10th, 13th, and 16th. RSVP here.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES FOR NOURISHING AND GROUNDING 

LEGACIES OF INDIGENOUS RESISTANCE

• Red Nation Rising: From Bordertown Violence to Native Liberation — this book investigates the violent dynamics of bordertowns [towns at the borders of current-day reservation boundaries, which separate the territory of sovereign Native nations from lands claimed by the United States]. This book explains how some of the most important Native-led rebellions in US history originated in bordertowns and why they are zones of ongoing confrontation between Native nations and their colonial occupier, the United States. 
• The Flirtation of Girls / Ghazal el-Banat by Sara M Saleh — this poetry collection includes multilayered conversations and meditations amongst three generations of women in Sara’s family as they come into being amidst war, colonial and patriarchal violence, and exile and migration. Sara is a community organiser, refugee campaigner and the daughter of Palestinian, Lebanese and Egyptian migrants living on Gadigal country in Sydney. 

IMAGINING ALTERNATIVE REALITIES AND FUTURES

• Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind  — this 1984 Japanese animated film, written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, is set in a post-nuclear future, after an apocalyptic conflict has devastated much of the world's ecosystem. It tells the story of Nausicaä (Shimamoto), the teenage princess of the Valley of the Wind, who can communicate with the massive insects that populate the dangerous jungle, works to restore balance to the ravaged planet.

From our archive: 

• Artist Chitra Ganesh’s representation of cities from “Sultana’s Dream” — In 1905 Bengali Muslim feminist and activist Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain wrote a feminist utopian short story, “Sultana’s Dream”, that posits a world (LadyLand) where women use scientific prowess to eradicate disease, end war nonviolently and restore health and beauty to the world. In a 2018 installation, artist Chitra Ganesh, created a series of linocuts representing the story, including the piece below titled ‘City in Broad Daylight’. 

• Fantasmas — Julio Torres’ HBO series is a surrealist comedy about attempting to opt out of a ubiquitous new form of identification called Proof of Existence. This system collects every imaginable variety of personal data, charges a monthly subscription fee, and is a requirement for obtaining everything from employment to housing.