I think the approach is very important. If you're outwardly focused on activism and being secretive, that will draw their attention. But if you focus on community and other positive things, there really isn't anything to do for feds. Take Why Files, for example, who makes conspiracy realism something hip and ends his videos with a collage of selfies taken by people with tinfoil hats on. This shows everyone that these are just regular people. It does make sense to have private communications and that's your right. For online communication, use SimpleX, where you don't even have a permanent identifier, which protects you from an XKeyScore query that lists every instance where you've shared your ID with others on unsafe networks (which is normally necessary to introduce establish the connection with a new user). If you want groups and message boards, use Retroshare. When it comes to meeting with people in person: make appointments through private communications, and ask people to keep their phones at home so that the meeting isn't detected by triangulation.