The right to assemble and protest is enshrined in American law, but it can still be dangerous to hit the streets to make your voice heard. Your devices are a treasure trove of information about you, and you may not always know who’s collecting that data. Take a few minutes before you go to assess your digital and physical safety. Even if you have nothing to hide, you don’t want to accidentally give law enforcement officials any information you didn’t intend to share. Follow these tips to lock down your phone before a protest or other peaceful assembly.
IMO just having your personal device on you in the presence of a protest puts you in danger. They have ample tools to track cellular devices that basically cannot be guarded against without disabling the function altogether, such as with a Faraday bag. They will catch and log that you were at a protest, and use that against you later.
don’t leave out the fact that they’ll just shoot you in the face for no reason, and then get “absolute immunity”
This might be relevant for following ICE around or direct action, but at this point there’s almost zero personal risk from attending something like a rally or a march.
My relatives and even friends my age are afraid to go to protests. They read stuff like this, and it acts as demobilization messaging. In my experience, once you get them to go once they’re no longer afraid to engage, but there’s an initial fear and anticipatory obedience that has to be overcome.
inb4 protests do nothing: getting people to stick their toe in the water helps build commitment that will one day be necessary to gain critical mass for more organized disobedience.
I go to protests without my phone, and I’m afraid every time.
I get that nothing is likely to happen to me, but it could. I get that this is am irrational fear. But idk strategically what to do.
ICE has told the press that they are “at war.” It’s not an irrational fear.
ICE has literally started going door to door in Minnesota looking for immigrants and activists. It’s already starting, people need to be protecting their privacy now.
This might be relevant for following ICE around or direct action, but at this point there’s almost zero personal risk from attending something like a rally or a march.
No. If the data exists at any point, then a future threat will be able to exploit it, so full on nazi style fascism might not be here yet, but when it is, you’ll be in danger. Data can sleep forever before it becomes a threat.
It already is, with taking a digital device!
Just don’t bring it. Bring a digital pocket camera instead to document stuff.
Nowadays, you can’t use a mobile phone without signing in to some Google service or Apple. It’s mandatory. Giving them access to every data you own.
That and cell towers….
But a cheap burner. Don’t activate it. Keep it in a faraday pouch. In an emergency remove from faraday pouch and call 911. You can do that on phones you don’t activate.
But everything else, like you said, document with a digital camera.
GrapheneOS or KaiOS?
Shut off and leave your phone at home, buy a pay-as-you-go to bring with you for emergency contact/coordination
Shut off and leave your phone at home, buy a pay-as-you-go to bring with you for emergency contact
/coordinationLeave the pay-as-you-go phone powered off too, and only power it up if you actually have to use it. If you have to use it once, you need to get a replacement for a future event.
I’m thinking perhaps something like Meshtastic transmitters and receivers should be used for coordination instead.
Meshtastic is exactly what needs to be implemented
I ran across that instance the other day and immediately thought about coordination.
It’s like sneaker net for piracy.
Fuck yeah, hack the planet
Meshtastic is just as susceptible to listening and isn’t perfect at encryption or anonymity but should be another tool to consider when cellphone towers are down or otherwise unusable.
leave your primary phone ON at home.
Right? It’s like these guys have never seen The Wire.
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I believe there are Bluetooth network protocols that mesh that would work for messaging and not require cell service. It would be smart to organize using something like that and just use any cell phone without cell service turned on. That still gives you the ability to call 911 in case of emergencies as well.
Cell service is always turned on on a phone, even with no SIM card and the phone in airplane mode, and for most phones, even when the phone is “off”. They still ping the local towers semi regularly; they just don’t ramp up transmission power ir try to establish a full connection.
Anyone got a list of Bluetooth devices without a cell antenna where the BT MAC is regularly scrambled?
Does it matter if that cell service isn’t connected to a name?
No, because it will spend most of its time after leaving the store in your home.
First, don’t buy it from a store. Second, turn that sucker off before you go home.
It’s connected to your name when you go home
So, turn it off before you go home?
They still talk to the tower when turned off
You can use Briar, BitChat, or Bridgefy to communicate, without having internet connections. I’ve only tried Briar, which works with cell networks, wifi, also bluetooth.
Shitty article. Doesnt even contain the words SIM card or IMEI so it has no business advising people on whats safe to bring to a protest. There is no such thing as cop-proofing a mobile phone unless all wireless modules have been removed. The cops can and do track peoples cell tower signal derived locations and they can log active Wifi/Bluetooth MAC addresses in their vicinity.
As others have said, just dont bring it if you are scared. Consider just using a bodycam or gopro style camera.
Modern phones rotate random MAC addresses. For WiFi, capturing SSID probes can be enough to track somebody though (some phones also have some mitigation for that too, like not probing for an SSID after it hasn’t been seen for some amount of time). Even when turned off, many phones, including iPhones, turn into BLE beacons similar to AirTags, which can be used to track you.
Good additions, thanks.
Modern phones rotate random MAC addresses
My phone does, but im not sure if normal google/apple phones do by default.
iPhones do by default, you need to specifically turn on fixed IP at home to identify the damn phone reliably
Thank you, I have been saying this. Use a regular camera and be sure to delete meta data off images and videos when uploading!
I bring my phone, and my wallet, and my keys, and a $7,000 camera, and my lawyer’s phone number in my head.
they can suck my balls
always film cops
If it makes you feel better, go nuts.
But they have Face ID, gait ID, they have the signal from your cellular-equipped car, on and on. Even if your phone is “off” it’s transmitting an ID for antitheft purposes. Your smartwatch is leaking your location, and your smart tags.
Leave the car at home? They can track your public transit card via the credit card you used to fill it.
Stay home and post online? Palantir has Reddit posts from deleted accounts they will dig up to torpedo your future political ambitions as they did with Graham Platner.
We are all on the regime’s naughty list. Might as well make the most of it and demonstrate peacefully. And without a mask so you don’t look like an agent provocateur.
It’s Spartacus time.
there are less antagonistic looking ways to mask yourself, such as cute inflatable animal suits.
100%. Love the frog suits.
Even if your phone is “off” it’s transmitting an ID for antitheft purposes.
Faraday bags!
- Get a cheap mobile specifically for protests, especially using it for pictures and video.
- Set it up to livestream everything, so that any video evidence gained can’t be taken away.
- Get a faraday bag for when you need to put that mobile away and not be tracked.
Maybe I’m missing something though?
Cripes all of that and not even, “Buy a burner SIM card”, “Use a VPN at all time if you have to use data”, “For the love of god don’t use biometrics as authorization, use a alphanumeric password to unlock”, “Use the damn encryption solution provided by your phone’s OS”.
Burner sim won’t help, you need a burner phone too.
I turned off biometrics for unlocking the phone. Still works for downloads, passwords, everything but unlocking the phone. I’ve barely noticed a change.
I would like to bring the attention to LoRa.
Meshtastic is a good example of leveraging LoRa.
I really really hope that this takes off.
Haven’t used my client in almost a year, but my repeater is still running strong.
Would an old school walkie talkie be a better solution? You want to be able to communicate within a group in case shit happen
I think FRS is the only thing legally available without a license. You can buy GMRS radios on Amazon that will communicate with FRS radios on all of the FRS channels, see here:
https://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/FRS/GMRS_combined_channel_chart
However, these radios are VERY limited in an urban area with lots of concrete towers. In my experience the GMRS radios on “high power” really only go one little valley over out in the woods. In the city you might get two or three blocks because of all the concrete. You are required to have a license to use GMRS and identify your station every 15 minutes but almost nobody does it. Hell, I listen to the local walmart using GMRS and you’re not even supposed to use it for commercial purposes.
Maybe Meshtastic? That’s a radio I haven’t messed with and I don’t know about it’s performance in an urban environment.
Ear piece highly recommended. The audio is not like a phone call and in a loud environment you will not be able to copy. Practice beforehand because radio is not like a phone call, you need to have some experience.
Yes. You can get them cheap online and they have a built in “encryption” function that isn’t well protected but might prevent people from listening in realtime.
Buy a used phone on eBay. Activate with phreeli at a library. Only turn on phone at protests. Turn off when you leave.
Faraday bag all electronic items; phone, smartwatch; hell, I’d even bag my car keys. Cover your face, especially the eye area. Make your voice heard, but don’t be a data point.
Yeah. I see so many protesters with their face not covered. Cover your face!!!
Also, dress like them. You want to create as much confusion as possible.
That works too. The point is to hide your identity as well as create as much confusion as you can.
Cant u just use encrypted messaging services like whatsapp signal telegram? SMS isn’t encrypted. And this is also why you shouldn’t give tech billionaire companies so much power as a nation lol they abuse ur privacy thats why I love how EU is still trying to protect our rights at least
Not relevant. Unless you use airplane mode, it will be visible that your phone was at the place.
oooooo but thats not enough evidence right? or is it? If your phone was in some area doesnt mean you attended a protest per se
Tell that to the “nontechnical” brick walls that hate you.
whatsapp signal telegram
Telegram isn’t encrypted, and honestly you shouldn’t use it.[1] Whatsapp and Signal are US-based, which means that they will give up your data on the first request.
Use actually secure messengers, like Delta Chat, SimpleX, or Matrix with end-to-end encryption.
Whatsapp and Signal are US-based, which means that they will give up your data on the first request.
This is true. In regards to Signal, they do always comply with the governments request for data. The things is, Signal has next to no data on you. So when they comply, they give them everything they have (which is next to nothing). You can see everything they have given up here: https://signal.org/bigbrother/
You can turn secret chats on on telegram that do use encryption, I thought?
I like fluffycat :3
edit: (its just matrix)
Signal have published several times when they receive a request for data and their response.
Due to the mechanisms they employ, all they can actually give is if there’s an account associated with a phone number and the last time it logged in, if even that last bit. There’s some fairly detailed articles diving into how this works so well under the hood from a cryptographic standpoint, but it basically amounts to even addresses of users being able to be secret to minimize shared metadata to a bare minimum.
Also the software is entirely open-source – app and server both – and are frequently audited on this. The server never has an opportunity to receive any plain-text data to store.
The weak spot is always just having access to your device.
You can buy faraday wallets for like $20.
