From communications security and physical stealth, to penetration tactics for getting inside factory farms and slaughterhouses, the 'manual' is a rare glimpse into the detailed tech and tactics of a group that carries out sophisticated and often illegal acts of intrusion and espionage, turning a playbook that might otherwise be used by spies or thieves into one for grassroots activism.
ANDY GREENBERG: In recent years, the animal liberation group Direct Action Everywhere has carried out some of the most brazen and tech-savvy operations and investigations to ever target the animal agriculture industry. It has rescued pigs, goats, ducks, and chickens from factory farms and slaughterhouses in midnight intrusions; captured virtual reality footage with custom-built 360-degree video rigs inside massive pig barns; and used hidden cameras to record some of the meat industry’s most disturbing practices, from the carbon dioxide gas chambers that are increasingly used in pig slaughterhouses to the “ventilation shutdowns” designed to cull thousands of farm animals through overheating and suffocation.
To pull off all those revelatory and often highly controversial actions, Direct Action Everywhere (which uses the abbreviation DxE) has also spent years evolving its toolkit and operational rigor — from communications security and physical stealth, to penetration tactics for getting inside factory farms and slaughterhouses. It has also long maintained a manual of its own methods for those operations. Now, for the first time, it’s publicly releasing that guide.
The document is a rare glimpse into the detailed tech and tactics of a group that carries out sophisticated and often illegal acts of intrusion and espionage, turning a playbook that might otherwise be used by spies or thieves into one for grassroots activism. “To spend so much time thinking about the vulnerabilities in these facilities, how to get in, avenues of approach,” says Lewis Bernier, a longtime investigator at DxE who has led or participated in hundreds of operations inside farms and slaughterhouses around the country, “I think it’s really changed the way I see security as a whole”…
DxE goes as far as to welcome those criminal charges, often willingly identifying themselves after an investigation’s findings are released in an effort to draw more attention to their revelations and argue the justice of their cause. In fact, the group’s cofounder, Wayne Hsiung, was convicted just last week on a felony charge of conspiracy to commit trespassing related to the removal of ducks and chickens from a California poultry farm. He now potentially faces years in prison.
Bernier says that DxE decided to publicly release its guide, even in the wake of Hsiung’s conviction, to help activists who are already committed to carrying out covert investigations do their work more safely and effectively. “More and more people around the world want to do this stuff, or at least are just interested in how it works,” he says. “I think this guide will offer an opportunity for people to understand what’s really involved”…
DxE’s release of its investigation manual will no doubt raise new criticisms that DxE is encouraging dangerous actions or even enabling other kinds of illegal actors like thieves or terrorists. To those potential critics, Bernier points out that the manual omits specific intrusion techniques that might be abused, and is entirely nonviolent in its recommendations—even if the operations it describes are illegal in many cases. “I think this guide is very clearly aimed at people with the intention of nonviolently exposing injustice,” Bernier argues.
Just as much as encouraging others to join DxE’s mission, he says that releasing the guide is an acknowledgement that groups around the world, from Europe to Australia to South America, are already carrying out investigations similar to DxE’s. He says the guide is an attempt to create an information hub across those groups. SOURCE…
RELATED VIDEO: