Discord?
PSSRA’s primary communication platform is Discord.
We often get asked, Why Discord? Why not something more secure? The simple answer is: it’s secure enough for us.
When you get into the vetting pipeline, you’ll first be invited to join a Discord server with our vetting team and other prospective members waiting for vetting, and the vetting session will be held on Discord video chat. After successful vetting, you’ll be invited to the main chapter Discord.
(Note: We do not have any public Discords.)
Our use of Discord is the result of balancing ease of use and familiarity to many people with keeping things secure enough for our threat model. Our largest vulnerability will always be the large number of people in the server, not surveillance from Discord or state actors.
While the server is private to user accounts who join, all server messages are not peer to peer encrypted and should be treated like public posting. We do not engage or endorse any illegal behaviors or actions so this is not a problem for our org.
Our primary line of defense is keeping all chapter discussion “above-board”, i.e. never discussing anything illegal or possible to be construed as illegal. We are a firearms education organization; we don’t allow discussion of sales/trading of firearms or firearms parts (also violates Discord ToS), and we don’t discuss collaboration on direct action or protests. Threats against anyone, no matter how implicit or memey or joking, are not allowed on our Discord.