office, sabotage, strike against vivisection
alf_cl...@yahoo.com
Before you get to the target office, agree on the aim. Is it to simply
make your presence felt, to gather information or designed for maximum
disruption? Everyone should agree on what to do inside and how long to
stay for - and stick to it.
Reconnaissance is important. Look for ways in, such as open ground
floor windows, fire escapes, and side doors, and ensure everyone knows
the basic layout.
The best way in is usually the front door! Anyone who doesn't want to
go in could picket the entrance, and leaflet cars in the workers' car
park. Make a simple plan to get in. Entrances often have security
locks, swipe-card readers, or intercoms. One smartly dressed person
going in and opening doors and windows for everyone else often works.
It helps if this person has an excuse such as courier delivery, an
employment inquiry or a pre-booked appointment with a named worker.
This person must be prepared to react quickly and sometimes
decisively, for example, to push past employees to get doors open when
the rabble arrive. If the only door is a revolving one then windows
will be a better bet. Alternatively, you can sneak in behind employees
going in, or catch the door as one leaves. Ensure that you aren't
spotted beforehand.
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Once in, the fun starts! You might all look for specific offices or
scatter through the building to cause chaos, but stay in pairs at
least, as office workers can defend their space assertively. In the
past it has often worked for groups to barricade themselves into
unoccupied offices thus ensuring an uninterrupted search/
reorganisation. In open plan offices, or when barricading options are
limited, there is a tendency for activists to drift to one place after
the initial rush. Try to avoid this as it makes it easier for staff/
police to contain you and get you out. Keep it calm and non-
confrontational, especially as most workers you come across will not
be the decision makers; seek out the bosses! Reassure workers who seem
frightened by our invasion that you intend no violence, and distribute
leaflets explaining your case to them.
If your goal is disruption, rearrange paper and cabinets, lock doors
and hide keys, unplug, barricade yourself into empty offices, play
with computers (see facing page). Keep it tidy, and they might not
discover what you've been up to until later; obvious criminal damage
or theft on these type of actions may lead to everyone being arrested
especially if you are few in number. That said, some occupations have
involved smashing up as much as possible.
If your goal is info-gathering, get in and out quickly, there is
nothing to be gained and a lot to be lost by hanging around because a
30 minute action seems too short. Rummage through filing cabinets, go
through desk diaries, look at notice boards, search through computers
and photograph or photocopy anything interesting. Alternatively, you
could fax documents to someone on the outside, who should be briefed
to keep their fax line free. You may want to borrow some documents or
computer disks to study at your leisure. Chuck them out of a window to
waiting colleagues who can spirit them away immediately. Don't hang
around waiting to be arrested. Leave a pre-printed disclaimer in their
place, stating that anything removed will be returned undamaged within
24 hours. This gives time to read files and copy useful stuff you can
return the files either to the office doorstep in the middle of the
night, or (anonymously) to a police station lost property office in a
different town. It is essential to return everything if any one does
get nicked for theft; although the disclaimer has no actual legal
weight, charges should be dropped if files are returned as promised.
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Everyone should leave together, and make sure no-one is left inside.
Be aware that police often search everyone before they leave the
office, especially if anything appears to have been removed or
damaged.
Office occupations generally don't lead to arrest. However, there is
the possibility of arrest, most likely for breach of the peace,
burglary or section 241 of the Trade Unions Act 1994. Burglary is
often used as an excuse to arrest. Don't openly eat food or use
electrical equipment or they may indiscriminately make arrests.
Most arrests will not lead to a court case. People have sometimes gone
in with a list of demands such as a meeting senior management. These
demands are generally not worth winning and negotiation for them may
make a court conviction more likely. This happened to the 20 'Opencast
Defendants' in 1998, when it was taken as evidence of coercion, to
secure a conviction for section 241. This case was exceptional however
as £350 000 worth of damage had been done to a nearby mine earlier in
the day.
While some of your mates are going through the desk diary, the filing
cabinets and the drawers it may be worth you taking a look at the
beige box with a telly on it in the corner of the desk.
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Before you decide what best action to take you have to have a browse
around the PC. If the computer is off switch it on. The computer may
appear to end its starting procedure with a logon box. Many systems
save the last username to be used in this box, write this name down
because if the user has e-mail it can probably be worked out using
this user...@whatever.co.uk (alternatively find the person's calling
card). E-mail addresses are handy to have as viruses and hacking tools
can be sent to the unwitting user at a later date. You may try a
couple of passwords (look for obscure things written on post-it
notes). This probably won't work and after a few tries it will tell
you that you are locked out of the network. Just accept this and click
cancel until the computer seems to be running.
If the computer is already on then open the windows explorer and check
out how many drives there are. If there are more than 4 drives then
you are probably already attached to the network. The following
assumes that Windows 95 or 98 is installed but probably applies to
Windows NT too.
RE-FORMATTING: This is quite un-subtle and may cause the least damage
of all. In any fair sized company most data will be either stored on a
file server or backed up nightly. Having said that most users are crap
at doing this (especially those at the top of organisations). If there
appears to be no network attachment then this may well be your best
option. To format the disk select Start menu
- shutdown - restart computer in MS-DOS mode. When you get the C:\>
Prompt type format C: /u
Repartitioning. If you're going to re-format a disk then you may as
well repartition it. Repartitioning a drive just makes it a bit harder
recover any data than a simple format. Get to C:\> prompt. Stick a
floppy disk in and type a: then type copy c:\windows\command\fdisk.*
a: - if no file is found then type copy c:\dos\fdisk.* a: . Then
format as above. Reboot the PC with floppy disk in the machine. Type
fdisk, delete all partitions, reboot again, type fdisk and create 2 or
3 new partitions.
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DELETE FILES: Deleting files on the hard drive in the machine is
pretty simple. Highlight the files you want to delete. Select lots by
holding the shift or control key down as you click (experiment with
this). Before you press the delete key hold down the shift key. Do not
release the shift key - until the confirm file delete box comes up. If
you don't hold shift down the files will only go to the recycle bin.
After deleting you may as well empty the recycle bin (click on the
recycle and choose empty recycle bin from the menu). To make
absolutely sure that the data cannot be recovered install the Disk
cleanup (www.execpc.com/~sbd/CleanUp.html) and totally wipe the free
space. This is a really small utility that will easily fit on a floppy
disk. Using this utility will make it almost impossible to restore
data and is much more effective than simply reformatting a disk.
Deleting files from a network drive is pretty similar. Once you've
deleted something go to menu - Run, type command, then change to the
drive that you have deleted from by typing the drive letter followed
by a colon (e.g. u:) then cd/ and then type purge * /a: on most
networks this will ensure that files are completely deleted.
CHANGING FILES: This is pretty obvious really: rather than deleting
files that will probably be restored from backup, try changing files
instead. The best thing to do is probably to do search for spreadsheet
files (*.xls or *.wk*). Find them using the Start menu-Find, stick
*.xls, *.wk* in the 'Named' box. Then sort them by modified date by
clicking on the modified label, double click on the most recently
modified file or one that looks like it contains important financial
information (big files are best). Then simply change the odd number
here and there. It may be a long time before they realise the error,
and it will mean that they have to do a lot of checking through out
that file to look for other errors. They probably won't be able to
restore from back-up as they may not know when the change occurred (it
may not be discovered for months) and even if they know when the
changes were made other parts of the spreadsheet may have been updated
since then making a restore from backup impractical.
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INSERTING A VIRUS: Before inserting a virus take a look at the
properties of any running virus detection program. Next to the clock
on the bottom right of the screen there will probably be small icon
indicating that an anti-virus programme is running. Double click on it
and take a look at the properties. What you have to try and to stop
the anti-virus program from scanning files but not stop it running.
Uncheck any boxes like scan files on Run, copy etc. You may be able to
stop it from scanning (exclude) whole drives. Any viruses that you
have brought in will probably be detected so you want to stop the
computer from scanning for files but give the impression that it is
still running. If you can't do this then you have to disable the virus
protection. This will probably be discovered earlier.
MACRO VIRUSES: If your virus is a Word virus then before you insert it
you must disable Word's own virus protection. Open Word, open Tools -
options and click on the General tab. Uncheck the macro virus
protection box (do the same in Excel if your virus is in an .xls
file). Now try inserting your virus by either running the program or
opening the document. If the virus proctection on the machine finds it
and you have the option to exclude this virus from the virus list then
do so. If not then you will have to disable the anti-virus program.
First simply close down the icon near the clock in the bottom right of
the screen. Next open Windows Explorer and check out what is in C:
\windows\start menu\program startup. If there is an icon there that
looks like it is an anti-virus program delete it. Next go to Start
menu - Run. Type sysedit. Look at the win.ini file (within the sysedit
box), right near the top of this file there should be two lines that
start Load= & Run=, delete anything that looks like it is anti-virus
related on these lines. Next look at the autoexec.bat file (again in
the sysedit box) and again delete anything that looks virus related.
Now close the sysedit window. Viruses are available for download
(zipped up) from www.geocities.com/Baja/28461 (do a web search for
others Hacking Tools - for the more computer literate occupier Back
Orifice is a tool that can be downloaded from www.toxyn.org or
www.cultdeadcow.com. This program will give you remote control of the
computer if it is attached to the internet. You will be able to
change, read and delete files remotely and even randomly make their
computer play .wav files or shut down from the comfort of your local
internet cafe. Back Orifice is detected by most anti-virus programs so
the host computer must be prepared following the instructions above
and the IP address must be noted.