Good stuff. I've been hearing stuff about laser pointer at demos popularised by Japan protests. Me and some anarchist comrades did some research and found that unless you have a steady arm, and a large £300 laser pointer then there is little point. The cheaper pointer can only slightly damage camera sensors and that's with a steady prolonged beam at a distance too close for comfort. However obfuscation for short moments is possible. With the larger more expensive pointer with a prolonged beam you will break the sensor.
However obfuscation for short moments is possible.
The reason it was so effective in Asia is that everyone was doing it. Even if you’re only effective for brief moments, so is everyone else. One person’s “short moment” of obfuscation isn’t effective, but a hundred peoples’ “short moments” stacked on top of each other equate to complete obfuscation.
Bonus points if you buy your Bloc no more than 2 items at a time, from multiple stores, including thrifting, and using cash for at least half of it.
If you don't already know of a sufficient number of people doing black bloc, go with grey bloc. By that I mean dull clothes, able to blend in, cap and a face mask, ideally something you wouldn't usually wear. If cops spot someone in a bally and ski goggles, not in a group, before things get too heated, a snatch squad will fly towards you before you know what hits you.
I can see this working particularly well in Mexico where everyone is wearing black all the time. (at least the parts of Mexico I've been to)
You dress as black bloc, you get away, change clothes, but they're still in your backpack. Police searches and finds the black clothing. Now what?
If you're that paranoid, or there's an actual crackdown happening, stash the backback and retrieve later.
Around here (Brazil), during manifestations, the police will search every bag they can see. While the clothes alone are obviously "nothing", I wouldn't be surprised if they came up with bullshit reasons to take you away or keep a very close eye on you, or if some damning evidence "magically" appeared.
They will know you were probably at a protest, but they hopefully won't be able to tell you apart from other protestors. Hopefully they won't be able to tell who did what. If police know you were at the protest you may get a visit later or watched though
Wear the other clothes on top of the black ones.
Sounds nice until someone decides to abuse it.
Some years ago here in Brazil there were widespread protests against president Dilma and in the middle there were Black Bloc groups doing vandalism and looting.That's called false flag operation. Police or shock groups dress in the target group way to cause and instigate vandal behavior then justify a more violent counter action.
Police and the fucking army abused that a lot during those times, btw. There are a number of videos of police detaining, then releasing specific black blocs, or being suspiciously non-violent. Not to mention the many times cops were caught planting evidence, one I recall seeing was with 3 cops searching a backpack, one of them turned it upside down to see if anything would fall out of it, meanwhile another cop stealthily dropped a bunch of fireworks and used that as proof to arrest the person.
I've actually been stopped by uniformed officers minutes after spotting the absolute most obvious undercover cop in the world in Ohio.
My crime? I said "Good Morning OFFICER!" really loud as I passed him at the park. There were a lot of people walking around for an art festival and supposedly the local PD got a "tip" it was being used to hide "illegal liberal activities"
Dude was wearing preshly pressed clothing that looks like he literally bought it from Abercrombie that morning. Basically the whole outfit says "I am trying to fit in, this is what we see you people as, look at how hip and cool I am fellow kids" and the haircut was so out of place I literally did a double take.
COPS don't know how to not be cops, even when they're trying their hardest to pretend so they can catch people doing mysterious and vague criminal things.
In Seattle they've unfortunately usually been cops AND looters
