This Is the Era of Radical Transparency

Historically, the animal rights movement has tried its best to keep its operational strategies confidential. This is particularly true within grassroots direct action. Wearing a mask, and adopting so-called security culture, are practically required to be a part of the “scene.”

This is a mistake. We are in the era of Big Data and AI. There are cameras on every street corner; data crawling algorithms on every phone and computer; and AI tools for analysis that are becoming astonishingly cheap. Any plan that depends on secrecy is likely to fail.

Moreover, secrecy hurts our ability to persuade the public. No one likes a cover-up. Take, for example, Zoe Rosenberg’s recent trial. The use of costumes to infiltrate the facility, and burner phones, were described by many observers as moments where the jury lost trust. In contrast, in the Foster Farms trial, no such measures were used—two women just ran up to a truck and rescued birds—and the defendants were acquitted. Interviews of jurors in that and other cases suggests that complete forthrightness has been a key element in winning over members of the jury. (One of the largest problems in my Sonoma case, ironically, was that the judge would not allow me to be forthright; by barring me from describing the basis for our rescue effort, she forced me to become a liar on the stand.)

Perhaps most importantly, engineering our activism around security prevents us from cultivating strategic capacity. We hide our strategies because we’re afraid that the industry will develop counter-measures. But in a world of transparency, they’ll eventually learn about our strategies anyways. Hiding them will just prevent us from quickly learning which strategies are actually robust.

We hide our faces and names because we’re afraid of being targeted by the industry. But this simply prevents us from developing the ability to respond effectively to repression—indeed, to make repression backfire.

And finally, we hide direct action because we are afraid the government will stop our mission. But if we believe our actions are just—if we truly believe that change is possible—we should see the government, not as an adversary, but a future ally. We should not, in the long run, fear their intervention. We should ask them to join us.

There’s a legendary story about Babe Ruth, the great American baseball player. He called his shot—promised he would swing for the fences and hit the ball out of the park. And despite knowing that was what he planned to do, his adversaries still couldn’t stop him. That is what we must shoot for as animal advocates. Let’s call our shot.

We have truth on our side. So why should we hide?