Informants

An informant (or snitch) is someone from inside a network recruited by an adversary to provide information on the network.

There are several different recruitment strategies: targeting people on the periphery of a network who are less committed, people who may face deportation if they don't cooperate, people who have been charged with another crime and are offered leniency or immunity in exchange, people who are no longer in a network and harbor feelings of resentment, people who prioritize money over dignity, etc. Informants are useful for network mapping.

Informants recruited by the State are often referred to as “confidential sources” in court proceedings.

See the informants topic.

Used in tactics: Incrimination

Mitigations

NameDescription
Attack

You can attack informants when uncovered or years later to discourage others from cooperating.

Background checks

Background checks can help ensure that someone in your network is not an informant.

Need-to-know principle

The need-to-know principle controls the flow of information through networks to make them more opaque and difficult to disrupt. If an informant isn't involved in an action, they shouldn't know who was involved even if it's their own roommate.

Network map exercise

A critical examination of the links in your network can be a safeguard against placing your trust in people who could become informants.

Prisoner support

Beyond the ethical imperative to support our prisoners, people are less likely to turn informant if they feel supported and connected to the movements for which they risked their freedom.

Used in repressive operations

NameDescription
Case against Marius Mason

The main evidence against Marius Mason was provided to investigators by his former husband, Frank Ambrose, who had participated in some of the actions with him[1]. Frank Ambrose became an informant after his arrest in 2007 (which was triggered by him throwing incriminating material in a garbage can)[2]. For several months, the snitch collaborated extensively with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), secretly recording 178 phone conversations and face-to-face meetings, and providing information on 15 people[3].