Report: Some Capitol Invaders Used Walkie-Talkie App Zello To Coordinate Assault - Forbes

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Topline

Members of one of the militia groups which participated in the violent insurrection at the Capitol last week used the walkie-talkie app Zello to organize and coordinate the attack, The Guardian reported, highlighting the rising presence of far-right users on smaller and less-moderated social media platforms. N.B.: Profane language quoted below.

Key Facts

According to audio and chat logs accessed by The Guardian, at least two right-wing militia members who participated in the insurrection used Zello to communicate with members in a separate location.

Several of these conversations took place in a public Zello channel called “STOP THE STEAL J6” on the afternoon of January 6, just after the mob of Trump supporters broke into the Capitol building.

A female militia member is reportedly heard saying “we are in the main dome right now,” after which she’s instructed by an offsite member to “Keep going” who adds that this is what “we fucking trained for.”

In response to the report, Zello has acknowledged that their platform has been “misused by some individuals” while storming the Capitol adding that it has initiated action to ban all militia-related channels.

The platform said that it has deleted more than 2,000 channels associated with militias and other militarized social movements hours after the report was published.

Crucial Quote

In its public statement following the report, Zello said: “There are no obvious and easy answers to the question of preventing misuse,” noting that all situations are not black and white. Citing the New York Times’ podcast “The Daily”, the statement added that “blocked groups retreat and use progressively more obscure aliases or even platforms… persons of interest are often hiding in plain sight, with absolutely no recognizable mark of affiliation with any of the movements often discussed.”

Key Background

As major social media platforms have begun to crack down on hate speech and violence, various far-right groups and militias have either migrated to more obscure platforms or new platforms that promise unmoderated free speech. After the election, various platforms like Parler, Gab and Rumble emerged as the platform of choice for people looking to spread conspiracies about the election process and Democratic party leaders, among many other things. Things came to a head after last week’s insurrection at the Capitol which led to a major purge of far-right and QAnon-linked accounts on mainstream social media, along with President Donald Trump’s own accounts. Apple and Google kicked Parler off their mobile app stores. Amazon’s cloud arm Amazon Web Services then refused to host the social media app, effectively shutting it down overnight.

Tangent

The online crackdowns have pushed far-right actors further underground. According to Axios, many of them may be moving to encrypted messaging apps like Signal and Telegram, both of which have seen a boost in downloads since the start of this year. While most new users on Signal and Telegram are those who have migrated from Facebook-owned WhatsApp over privacy concerns, some far-right groups and channels have also moved in. Apps like Signal offer end-to-end encryption that protects user chats from being snooped on by government agencies or even the platform itself. This could make tracking communications by such actors much harder in the future.