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.
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
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.
It’s alright for non-critical stuff. Ok for getting help, not the best for coordinating action.
Reticulum is an alternative network/protocol that focuses more on security and interconnection of different networks
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 SaiM 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.
It’s connected to your name when you go home
Unless you stop at a coffee shop, upload content to a secure server, ditch the SIM and power off the device.
Unless you stop at a coffee shop
Now they also have you on camera
What kind of garbage corporate coffee shops are you going to?
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.
True, but if surveillance is your concern, they are monitoring Bluetooth devices too.
Does that matter? If it’s a device that you bought used just for this? There is no name attached to that device at that point. Buy it used on Craigslist, use it for the event, throw it away. It can be any cheap, crappy phone.
leave your primary phone ON at home.
Right? It’s like these guys have never seen The Wire.
That show finished airing 18 years ago…
I do not think anything done to a protester’s/activist’s cellphone can make it safe to bring to protest/activism.
Yesterday, I posted a reply that said, just do not bring any cellphone with you. I do not own one & double check people using electronics around me during activists activities. Lat night, before I went to sleep, the obvious occurred to me, activists need to record evidence of what is going at the activism.
Thus, my updated answer/recommenation (as a veteran, own no cellphone & double checks people using electronics around me activist) go back to the ‘80s’ or maybe, even ‘90s’ recording technology to record evidence of what is going at the activism.
What’s the plan for having your phone at home? They’re going door to door and shooting innocent white American citizens.
What’s the plan for having your phone at home?
#00 inserts for my pump action wireless hole punch.
No no, you’ll need slugs if you want to hole-punch any body armor.
Not that I would know what you aim on using your wireless hole-punch for.
12ga slugs don’t reliably penetrate soft armor, and don’t penetrate hard armor. The proper tactic for armored assailants is to aim for the groin.
The proper tactic for armored assailants is to aim for the groin.
I mean, one to the chest will at least slow them down, but yea, I can get on board with blasting some dicks off. lol
Post-global war of terror, ceramic armor rifle plates are widely available and cheaper than guns.
Non-penetrating hits on hard armor have a felt impact an order of magnitude less that the recoil of the firearm that fired the round.
Hunh, good to know.
Head and dick shots only, then.
Thanks.
Lol, lmao even. That’s some careful word play for the sake of unneccesary hyperbole.
They have shot innocent white American citizens. In some other places they have gone door to door. Those are independent actions, not a combined reality. We can all agree they’re god awful as a massive understatement without lying about door to door murder squads.
Inb4 “if you have to make that kind of distinction you’re already fucked” yeah, we are, but accurate information about the ground situation is vital for any forward movement.
Man, that’s a Reddit-pedantic “you forgot PEDMAS” -like response to someone worrying about getting their home raided and asking a simple question.
You’re not fucked. You’re a dick. And being one isn’t “vital” to anything.
You can’t seriously be suggesting that lying to people about the sitaution is in any way helpful.
Fuck off and sow FUD elsewhere.
You can’t be so dense as to think that simple minded hair splitting is actually useful when people are being dragged from their homes at gunpoint by the US Gestapo right now?
Holy shit.
You might as well be a Fed.
Going to a protest? Don’t bring your phone
without doing this firstI’m skeptical of bringing your phone at all, either in airplane mode or off, because modern phones still broadcast location when it’s ‘dead’ in order for you to find it. But I don’t know enough about that to say for sure
Off should be off. Airplane mode often leaves WiFi and Bluetooth on because airplanes allow them. And GPS doesn’t transmit anything, but if it’s enabled it’s still recording your location.
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.
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.
Even if your phone is “off” it’s transmitting an ID for antitheft purposes.
Faraday bags!
there are less antagonistic looking ways to mask yourself, such as cute inflatable animal suits.
Good look running when you need to in that, the way it’s looking lately, the need will be there.
100%. Love the frog suits.
Going to a Protest? Don’t Bring Your Phone
FTFY
Someone’s gotta record the fascism.
Also calling help if/when they shoot you might be helpful.
cameras exist.
Camera’s can be easily confiscated and broken by fascists.
Instant uploads are much harder to suppress.
no bigger than a phone, no harder to destroy than a phone. just as easy to conceal as a phone.
SD cards are pretty resilient.
Someone will (and probably better). There are more cameras at protests than ever in history. What’s missing is mass action by complacent people.
Pretty easy to take video on an old phone without a SIM, or with a cheapo burner sim.
Are there “burner sims” you can get nowadays that don’t require online activation (i.e. they can easily trace the sim back to you)?
Phreeli, if you pay using crypto that can keep you anonymous
Then use… a camera??
Don’t bring your phone period. Any and all devices can be broken into by law enforcement. Buy a burner with cash if you need some kind of communication.
And bring a separate video camera
No, , this isn’t the 90s. You want a many copies as possible immediately, later might not happen.
Its not the device cracking that’s the problem; its the “your device was identified at the protest we have labeled a riot and has been tracked to your home, which we will now raid in the middle of the night”.
Has this regime already done this or are you just saying what the next steps might be if nothing changes?
For the “already done this”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
For the modern technology making it significantly easier:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMSI-catcher
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker
TL:DR, if you’re at a protest and your signal drops to 2G, your device is being monitored and tracked. Whether or not anyone acts on that data is a whole other thing.
Yep, ding ding ding, buy a burner phone, with cash, from a store that doesn’t have many or very good cameras.
Bringing your real main phone is you thinking you know more about cybersecurity and surveillance than Palantir, than all the cybersec and intel firms the US Mil and Police departments have been partnering with with over a decade now.
99.99999999% chance you don’t.
Yes a burner that you don’t activate. Keep it in a faraday bag. In an emergency you can take it out and call 911.
You can buy faraday wallets for like $20.
Others said not all work well though.
Wrapping in aluminum foil works. Thicker is better, more wraps is better. But one wrap stopped my test call.
I tested mine using my keyfob (which is what I bought it for). Test, for sure, but there are ones that work. Aluminum foil also works.
Buy a used phone on eBay. Activate with phreeli at a library. Only turn on phone at protests. Turn off when you leave.
Interesting, but $25 a month. Tello dot com has a cheap plan for $7.91 a month after taxes and fees. I use it on a $50 Amazon blu phone because I wanted something else for 2FA, and I have a phone ready if my main one breaks or gets lost.
- 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?
I got a body cam for about $50 amazon dot com/dp/B0BHZ4PRRG, currently unavailable. Makes a great dashcam too. When the usb charging cable is plugged in it turns on when you start your car and turns off when you turn off your car.
The only thing you’re missing is to put a piece of white tape on the sole of your shoe. When you are lying on the ground It’s a cop signal that you are an undercover agent.
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.
This is slightly false in an alarmist fashion. At least in the US, the police are not actively tracking anything without a subpoena to the cellular provider of the phone in question. They can look at the location data after the fact, using a court ordered subpoena. They can also use live location data in an emergency situation,also using a court ordered subpoena.
Cellular data from cell towers on cell networks are private property of the cellular provider companies. That’s not to say you are private while on them. Just that the police are not actively tracking your location through them without great effort for each individual they wish to track.
You’ve never heard of a stingray or cell site simulator?
They can also use live location data in an emergency situation,also using a court ordered subpoena.
What qualifies as an “emergency situation”? I imagine that definition could be stretched pretty thinly
Commercial location data, in this case acquired from hundreds of millions of phones via a company called Penlink, can be queried without a warrant, according to an internal ICE legal analysis shared with 404 Media.
https://www.404media.co/inside-ices-tool-to-monitor-phones-in-entire-neighborhoods/
I thought this was using SDKs embedded in apps and advertising platforms. This is a different threat model. You need to block ads and prefer using websites instead of apps which have more access to device info like the advertising ID.
If you’ve got an Android, go to Settings, search for ads, and find the advertising ID and delete the ID. It’s a stable identifier that can be used to identify your phone.
Switch to more private browsers like Firefox for Mobile and install uBlock Origin.
Yeah cell tower data is private just like your google search history is private. Which means absolutely not private. Also cops can (and do) use fake cell towers to make your phone connect to something that they have live access to.
Thank you, I have been saying this. Use a regular camera and be sure to delete meta data off images and videos when uploading!
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
almost worthless. I just learned that the android 13 xiaomi phone of a family member broadcasts some of the wifi AP names it knows when scanning for available networks! constantly! why the fuck it does I don’t know because neither are hidden networks that would need this, and there’s no setting for it
Yeah, I’m guessing it’s so if you “hide” the network, it will still connect to it. Anyone can scan these advertisements, then go to wigle.net and likely get a good idea of where you live/work.
Are those networks marked as hidden SSID networks? Hidden networks require the client STA to broadcast them to find them.
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”.
A VPN does not stop location data for your physical device when looking at cellular data from the carrier. Your location can and is always triangulated using cell towers. VPNs only ever protect your IP address from being geolocated and encrypting the data downloaded and uploaded while connected. Bit streams are still sent and received from a physical place in the world before the VPN hides your traffic and that is recorded by the cell provider.
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.
These articles mean nothing. You have 2 options.
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Leave ALL electronics at home and do not bring anything to the protest that connects to a tower or the internet.
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Just deal with the fact you are being tracked and deal with it.
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