The first idea is distributed control and the associated concealment of the organisers. (The 'armchair general' - a flood of plans so that no RingLeader? exists)
The second is the potential for rapidly altering the intent of an event and concealing 'real' guerrillas. (PlausibleDeniability?)
The strengths of a flashmob:
(FlashMobs have shown that) people can be organised (or self organised), en masse, at least as rapidly than a counter arrangement can be made. The best most police forces can do is turn up at the same time and see how the various elements interact, if at all. --Vitenka
The requirements of Guerrilla Warfare:
GuerrillaWarfare? relies on tiny groups who all trust and can rely on each other striking fast and disappearing. This is not the way flash crowds work. --ChiarkPerson
Discussion (Heavily trimmed)
The feint:
The only way it might work is to use the alleged 'big demo' as a feint, while your actual group of conspirators take advantage of the reduced police presence in neighbouring areas to do something there. But that'll only work once because people will get wise and won't like being used as a distraction. --ChiarkPerson
I'm visualising something whereby simultaneously a whole bunch of different actions are organised. Some of them the police attend - the people going to those, naturally, don't cause any trouble. But when an event happens that is less well covered, as some of them must be, then things happen. You can also arrange for multiple innocuous events to happen - which, when combined, present an environment in which a few people are able to cause a lot of damage.
For example, I dunno - one flash mob forms a parade with lit torches, and another decides to whitewash a wall. Combine to blow something up - but will the connection be spotted in time? And if it is - just don't do anything.
The whole thing would only work in the same environments guerilla action does - when you have at least the tacit support of the populous. --Vitenka
If a whole bunch of actions are organised simultaneously, then how do people know which ones to attend? Either you hope that they somehow guess which ones are important, or you tell them through other channels, in which case we're back to the feint and the infiltration. Besides which, you're further diluting the pool of people, so the police need fewer resources at each site, so they can still cover everywhere you've told people to meet and turn them away as they arrive. And then there's the fact that blowing something up requires either making, or importing, and then transporting, a fair amount of explosives, which isn't easy to do without being noticed, especially because if you're the type of person to go making explosives they are probably already watching you. --ChiarkPerson
Every event 'succeeds' by causing a small amount of irritation - but only a few are used as cover for 'real' sabotage events. I also disagree with the 'milling around' bit. --Vitenka
Communications:
If it starts to be used for any really disruptive purpose, you can bet that the channels through which they are organised will be monitored. To get an amount of people capable of causing real problems the waiting mob will at least have to be expecting the call to come through in a certain window, so the police can organise mobile cover for that window even if the exact target isn't known. --ChiarkPerson
Jamming (having so many plots at once, but only very few self-organise into actual action) would be very effective. No central agency would be responsible for organising the attacks, so there is nothing to stop. --Vitenka
The current way of forming FlashMobs has included periods of nothing happenning, staging areas and so forth - but that's not a required part of the system. And if the police start preventing a group of people from turning up to play football in a park (for example) then you've got exactly the kind of PR and public resentment that you (the saboteurs) are looking for. Albeit, true, there's no chance you'll get to do something worse. --Vitenka
There may not be high quality pictures available immediately, but the news gets out. You can't exactly transmit lots of high quality pictures over a mobile phone either, so I don't see what relevance this has. The point is that TV and radio news reaches thousands if not millions instantly. How many numbers do you (would you) have in your mobile? --ChiarkPerson
The entire world. It's not direct broadcast. The message is spread by FriendOfAFriend? methods. Thus the entire world can hear it quickly. No, not as quickly as a broadcast - but a broadcast does not typically interrupt someone's day (a friend has interrupt priority) and it takes some time for a TV station ot hear of an event and get pictures - whilst the mobile networks can start broadcasting immediately. --Vitenka
Either you try to ensure that only those who are supposed to hear do, or you tell everyone. The former and you lose the whole advantage, which is that lots and lots of people can hear so that even if only 0.005% turn up that's a fair few people. The latter and you can't stop the police hearing about it, turning up and breaking it up. --ChiarkPerson
Oh sure - the police can get there at the same time - they just can't get there first. --Vitenka
Why do the police need to get there first? They can get there before it's organised, when there are just maybe a hundred people milling around. They send them home, then deal with the rest as the arrive in dribs and drabs. No problem. --ChiarkPerson
[Big section on a misunderstanding about central control and pondering the discussion of how much of this is just a fad snipped, summary in root page]
Heavy editing done whilst the page was Refactored by Vitenka. For original text, see revision history of root page. If you dislike the way I have edited your text, well, change it back! I've tried to keep the sense the same. I cut a lot of paragraphs that didn't seem to be valuable. Again, if anyone thinks anything good is missing, put it back!
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FlashMobs/GuerrillaWarfareDiscussion