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this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2024
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I think it would be funny to normalize wearing bloc in order to retain privacy. It’s why some people might wear accessories they normally don’t wear, such as beanies and sunglasses at protests, even if they aren’t in full bloc, covering hair and eyes (in addition to a surgical mask) can make it really hard to doxx someone.
I mean, you definitely want to wear a mask and some goggles at a protest. If only for the purpose of pepper spray. I totally don't have a thin gaiter, goggles ,and a beanie and have definitely not heard great things about mountain biking helmets (the ones with faceguards) and totally am not considering grabbing one next time I do an REI run.
But also be aware that, with protests, you are almost always up against the groups who have access to all those "traffic" cameras and the like. And computer vision makes it fairly trivial to identify when a bunch of unmasked people walked into a dark alley and came out with their faces fully covered by tracking them back from the 4th street protest. It isn't Enemy Of The State levels of asking Baby Busey and Jamie Kennedy to generate a 3d model from a single shot of Big Willy Style ogling some ta-tas, but most of the ways surveillance is used during that sequence are shockingly realistic and feasible.
In most cases there isn’t much you can do to fool the government without a lot of prep time such as scouting routes to find cameras, destroying them, or being really good at changing into bloc in the middle of a crowd and not getting caught.
But the important thing is threat modeling. The past dozen or so protests I’ve been at haven’t had the government as a big threat, it has had fascists as the primary threat. While a fascist cop would be a problem, it is much less likely than fascists combing through protest footage to try and doxx people, or a fascist at said action trying to get good photographs. That’s why I masked up.
The last real dicey action that I went to I still masked up, even knowing that the government could still try to track me if needed because I knew it would be time consuming to do so, and that they would only go through the process of doing that if I make it worth their while. Bloc is still effective, but quite hard under this heavily surveillanced police state.
The thing is? Ignoring the apparent void that black skin creates on all cameras (oy), it doesn't take much time. It takes computing power.
As poops and giggles a few friends and I took the public (rumble...) traffic camera feeds that a nearby county has online. Set up a simple python script to scrape those and then configured an off the shelf tool to track a buddy's general car (green hatchback) and told him to just drive around for an hour.
We were able to map his route with about 70% accuracy with about two hours of scripting and reading documentation. And there are companies that provide MUCH better products for the people who have access to the direct feeds and all the cameras we don't have access to.