portlandvalentine:

From a wise friend:

Sex worker friends here are some things you can do to reduce your risks of arrest, maintain your online presence to connect with clients and each other, and facilitate collective safety and support:

1. review your current technology safety practices and implement accessible and appropriate protocols.

-Stop using gmail, hotmail, wordpress to host your work email. Create a protonmail account which is offshore and secure and wont get shut down.

-Burner phones are best practice for work phones, if you can afford it.

-Encrypted file sharing can be done by downloading TOR and using OnionShare.

-SpiderOak is a secure alternative to Google Docs. (Download all your Google docs and delete it online if you haven’t already.)

-*****Download signal! **** Create a group thread with VETTED and TRUSTED sex workers you know. Start with some basic security rules. For example: everyone needs to password protect their phone to participate, be vouched for, don’t allow notifications on the home screen to include the actual messages, delete the app when doing international travel, and the thread needs to be killed and a new one created if someone’s phone is compromised (like if someone loses their phone or the phone is seized by law enforcement.)

-Get offshore and secure hosting and domain registries. I use OrangeWebsite.com for everything.

-Use formsite.com instead of Google forms if you need to collect info or do surveys, they’ve got security options.

-Banks are required by federal law to report cash deposits of $5,000 or more just fyi.

2. Plan for worse case scenarios, no matter how unlikely or remote the risk, for yourselves and each other:

-make arrest plans (Red Light Legal is doing an online workshop Thursday, March 29 (https://www.eventbrite.com/e/arrest-plan-workshop-tickets-44228098433)

-create bail funds and/or relief funds. (Ex: get 10 people together and make a vow to each put $20 into it each month just in case shit hits the fan for one of you and you can’t cover it on your own.)

-brush up on your legal rights when interacting with law enforcement.

3. Don’t do the work of our oppressors!

I’m seeing a lot of sex workers preemptively closing sex work related Facebook groups, folks are talking about taking down bad date lists, etc. We’ve got to keep these safety tools alive as much as we can, though of course keeping risks in mind. In the event that SESTA gets enacted and Facebook does change its terms of service to get rid of sex work related content the highly likely outcome will include: Facebook removing the content or closing the groups, maybe suspending individuals accounts. Its extremelllllllly unlikely that sex workers participating in those groups will face any legal risk (again, LE isn’t going to spend resources going after every sex worker.)

These federal agencies are banking on sex workers and businesses that facilitate sex work reacting out of fear to end sex work just as much as they are on doing that repression themselves.

-download any and all bad date lists that exist and put it on your computer

-make sure that you have alternatives means of communication with folks you know via the internet (like signal), especially with folks who work in isolation. Don’t let anyone get left behind.