Bits of Resistance
Just a couple of bits that I've caught recently around tech resistance...
A new app that uses Bluetooth identifiers to detect Meta glasses and the like in your immediate vicinity. How effective it is I can't say but the intent is definitely positive. How you react if you do detect Meta glasses being used around you is obviously a question but as general knowledge it's good to know and in specific settings it may be an increasingly important thing to keep an eye out for when it comes to safety and security.
It's also one of those minor tech side interventions that I think do the most good. I've seen generally resistance supportive tech projects which take the 'if you have a hammer' approach and assume that enthusiastic new products and platforms are the best way to support people. Understandable if that's what your skill set lends itself to but something like this, which looks to an already expressed aversion to smart glasses without trying to create a use case along with the tech, is certainly on the more helpful side I think.
There's been a spate of destruction going on recently as people in the US are knocking out Flock's surveillance infrastructure. Little movements like this are always interesting as they tend to crop up all over the place - Berlin has a long history of it and London's Blade Runners have spent years waging their (often questionable) campaign primarily against traffic cameras and surveillance - as just two examples.
It's an odd one insofar as these tactics, while effective in their own way, come from a lot of different political angles. There's usually a consistent anti-surveillance intent in there but, to continue with the London example, it's also heavily geared against the ULEZ (Ultra-Low Emission Zone) program which, in theory, is designed to limit traffic pollution in the inner city. While I wouldn't judge their intent as a whole (because they aren't one, really) I've also seen them lean into conspiracism and, with regard to London mayor Sadiq Khan, some predictable bigotries. That all makes for a fairly routine story, the Far Right poking at some legitimate concerns (depending on your views of traffic surveillance) and then using it as a tool for radicalisation. Compare that to what's happening in the US right now and you have the same tactics varyingly applied, although how either is read from the average observer is hard to judge.
All that said - you can take tactical inspiration* without buying into the romanticisation of any random act that seems resistance related.
*Something I obviously wouldn't endorse.