If you can, leave your phone at home
That's it! There's the answer!
Its a balancing act. You shouldn't be recording tiktoks and doing the carlton.
But there is a lot of value in organizers being able to communicate. If you see a fat white kid with an assault rifle, you let people know. Same with when the patrol wagons roll in.
And there is a LOT of value in being able to make it clear to the cops that you are recording before they decide to "teach some people a lesson".
I chat about this with my activist buddies a lot. And one thing we are increasingly realizing is that there is a LOT of value in convincing even a mid-tier IRL streamer to come out. Yeah, they are fucking obnoxious when they are trying to yell to chat. But it is someone who is high enough profile that they won't immediately have their gear destroyed AND privileged enough that they won't even realize that is an option until it is too late. At which point the decision as to how to handle the escalation is already happening.
The guide seems to be aimed at attendees, rather than organizers and media. If someone is showing up to add their voice to the protest, then leaving their phone at home is an ideal way to minimize their footprint.
You shouldn’t be recording tiktoks and doing the carlton.
Then why even GO to a protest??? To stand up for our freedoms? Pssshhhh!!!!
does the carlton
If you aren't communicating that a protest happened, then it didn't happen.
It's quite literally the entire point.
"But how will I livestream my protest against Elon on X with out my phone?"
Ideally also leave your car at home and take public transit while paying with cash or walk. CCTV and facial recognition are still issues, but you would be reducing your fingerprint a ton.
Of course! It's so obvious!
Start protecting your privacy by not visiting the Verge and the 876 partners they share your personal data with.
What happens if you click manage settings?
You get to choose even more companies to share with.
how to secure your phone: leave it at home. Done
Stil secure it, in case the pigs search your home after arresting you. But don't take it to a protest
Restart it before you leave but don't log in when the restart completes. That'll make it harder to break into.
Also any other personal electronics like your watch or fitness tracker.
The EFF also has an article: https://ssd.eff.org/module/attending-protest
Back when I had Amazon smile, the donations went to the EFF. This makes me happy it went to a worthy cause.
Smile only existed to bleed referral revenues away from search engines. Once enough people started using their app directly they no longer needed smile to make them skip referrers.
Buy a burner, keep the battery out until you arrive at the protest, remove the battery when you leave the protest. Don't store any phone numbers in that phone.
Not that protesting will do anything anymore, that time has come and gone
remove the battery
Don't forget a portable heat gun, suction cup and prying tools. /j
Please execute in a dust and static free environment.
What, you don't have a portable clean room with you all the time? Amateurs...
This is the answer.
There's just no fucking way you should go to a protest with your daily driver, secure or not.
I also wouldn't go without any form of communication. You need to be able to receive information from organisers. Maybe go with a buddy who has a burner and not take anything yourself, but expect to get separated if you're in a larger group.
I personally wouldn't be too spooked beyond that, but of course it depends on the level of "activism" you're going to be involved in. As in I wouldn't dick around taking the battery out, and I'd save relevant contacts in the phone.
They're not going to go all CSI miami on your device and your contacts. If they ask you to unlock your phone they will just be looking for selfies of you doing something incriminating.
Don't take your phone to a protest
Bring an old point and shoot digital camera though. Pics and video might keep you from getting locked up.
What a boring dystopian article. It’s sad, but necessary.
purchase and use a burner phone instead, and only turn it on when you’re at the site of the demonstration
This should be the de facto response. In addition, I’d suggest not using your personal phone for any protest related communications and stick with burners no matter how much you may trust the organizers.
Do not bring your phone with you to a protest.
If you really need a phone on you, get a burner phone with a prepaid card not linked to your person. But remember, MITM attacks are possible and the police can intercept your traffic and in some cases even compromise your E2EE services (if the key exchange takes place on a compromised spoofed network, see stingrays [1]).
If communication is necessary, get a meshtastic device. It's not the most reliable, and the channels can be jammed, but no one will bother with that. Because they work on usual IoT/smart home appliances frequencies, there is so much interference in cities that triangulating your position in a crowd of people isn't very realistic.
[1] https://theintercept.com/2020/07/31/protests-surveillance-stingrays-dirtboxes-phone-tracking/
Bringing extra meshtastic nodes to a protest could be really helpful. Extra nodes would allow information to more easily find a clear path out of a hot zone to routers in safer locations, and it’d do so without using any telecom infrastructure. The encryption’s pretty good too.
Yes the article says to leave your phone if you can, and to use a burner phone otherwise.
Burners
The Hated One is another good resource on these topics. The guy is a paranoid and has an extreme threat model, but the information is still on point. Worth watching and sharing.
Please accept this cookie before learning how to not be tracked :/
Write down your name and ICE information with a sharpie on your body. Use a rugged phone case.
Don’t bother going to peaceful protests, they don’t work against post-truth authoritarian governments.
Going to peaceful protests are useful because it can help you meet some more like-minded folks.
Not to mention sometimes a protest starts peaceful and then goes to shit.
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