There seems to be a lot of opinions floating around, and PSL members seem particularly vocal though I’ve heard some rumblings of SA from leadership.
Because of the constant risk of CIA infiltration I know all orgs need to be justifiably paranoid, though I’ve no idea if any are completely CIA captured. If any are I’d assume it’s CPUSA because of their prominence.
At first glance the RCA seems interesting (Edit: misread something earlier, fuck them Trots) but I don’t know enough about their OpSec yet. That’s why this seems a really valuable question to bring to the community. In theory I’d want to join one I can join under an alias in case of infiltration.
The org I work with encourages aliases as op sec and it has helped many of us from getting doxxed and attacked by reactionaries. I guess if you have some idea that everyone has to use their names and not an alias, one person doing that is breaking that rule and someone disharmonious, but I don’t understand how using aliases is somehow a trust issue if it’s something your comrades are aware of.
We need to be able to be public facing. In order to grow the revolutionary movement, we have to display the courage to be open with our names and faces. We give public speeches, go door to door and introduce ourselves, we advance our politics among our neighbors and coworkers. That just doesn’t work if you’re anonymous. There are some exceptions, of course - cases where a member’s specific circumstances require their involvement to be much less public for security or strategic reasons. But they aren’t secret to their comrades.
We also have a far better understanding of what people can bring to the struggle. If you know where someone lives, what their job is, where they went to school, etc, you know all of the levers they have available to advance the struggle.
Because how do you know who they really are? How do you know they’re not misrepresenting themselves in order to infiltrate? Maybe someone with great skill and patience could slip through PSL’s systems, but in an internally anonymous org, all it takes is walking in the door and saying everyone should call you Lizard. Anonymity is a gift to the state’s disruptive apparatus (under the current circumstances in the US) because it protects them from us much more than the inverse.
All the work we do is public facing and works directly with the community.
From a very brief surface view: First there is an onboarding process where the new person answers a lot of questions which include class background, work history, etc. they don’t need to give details of exactly where they worked or who they are related to but this process typically reveals a lot.
Then they will be volunteering with the org doing entry level stuff, this is hours of time spent with them where more sussing out happens.
Additionally there is a cadre program where each new recruit goes through mandatory internal education in a cohort of other new members and led by a couple of cadre mentors.
These things combined mean that within the first year, a newer person is spending dozens of hours with cadre who are all evaluating them and paying close attention, while the new recruit is never really given any responsibility or access to anything they could misuse.
All of those later systems are very similar to how PSL operates and that’s definitely the most important level of security.
Yeah it all works out if you have that. Over time trust builds from working and studying together and people become friends and there becomes an extra level of vouching at a certain point.