Be mindful of local risks. In trying to end the Stop Cop City protests, the Georgia attorney general has declared all of these self-protection tactics to be criminal intent. Not bringing your phone to be tracked at the protest, or bringing a burner, is enough to get arrested in Georgia.
https://georgiarecorder.com/2024/02/12/georgia-ag-claims-not-having-a-phone-makes-you-a-criminal/
Granted, it’s just a scare tactic, and I don’t think any of this would hold up in court. But simply being arrested for something like this is enough to ruin some people’s lives.
I’m not trying to dissuade anyone at all, but I think people should know what they’re getting into. This AG has his eyes on the governor’s mansion, and he’s going completely off the rails to make a name for himself.
If you are detained and questioned by police, you have a right to remain silent, and to speak with an attorney before and during any questioning. It is best to say “I want my attorney and I choose to remain silent” and then refuse to answer questions until you have a chance to talk to a lawyer.
It should be noted that failure to identify does not fall within your right to remain silent. You will be arrested if you don’t ID yourself with name and DOB. They have to be able to figure out if you’re wanted to conduct their investigation. But that’s the most that is required and you should probably shut up after that.
Should really be prefaced by: Don’t bring your phone. Write the phone number you plan to call if arrested on your lower arm in sharpie. If for some reason you have to bring your phone, read the following.
Even if your phone is OFF, it can still track you from the towers and transmit your audio (this is documented in court cases bringing down the mob). It’s built into the chips themselves, at a lower level than the operating system. Do not bring your phones to protests.
holy shit, what court cases?
I’m not sure of the specific case numbers but searching brings up many sources, e.g. https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/fbi-taps-cell-phone-mic-as-eavesdropping-tool/ (2006)
Matrix and XMPP don’t hide metadata (who you’re talking to, when, and how often). This is OK if your users are all on the same private server that you self-host/trust. But in practice most users will be on the Matrix equivalent of Gmail, and you’ll be sending this metadata to the largest server in plaintext for every conversation involving one of those users.
I also have trouble where iOS “instant” notifications in SimpleX aren’t delivered–hopefully this gets fixed.
In this case, I think it matters that you can selfhost a server under your control. And to potentially have redundant servers. Maybe even disabling federation to be sure the big ones don’t get the metadata.
Also while the court ordrs have shown that Signal doesn’t collect much metadata now, it does not mean it is not capable of it - which is what matters in a life-threatening situation. Like, all the traffic goes through a single point - there is still trust involved.
Some of this is good advice but I recommend evaluating every protest, having a real plan for transportation and a buddy system, and trying to be as secure as possible by default and only making exceptions when necessary.
Most of the guide is about phones and how they can leak information. The only surefire way to prevent your phone from leaking location information to show you were at a protest is to leave it at home. That should be your default. The next option is to use a burner, but you must be very careful about when you charge your burner and turn it on, as you never want it to be on near where you live or work. Cell signals can be triangulated to a few block radius. The next option is put your phone in airplane mode and turn it off. Your phone is now an emergency device, you won’t turn it in at the protest unless a safety critical situation develops, such as being separated from your group by police or other right wing violence. Under no circumstances should you use your main phone to coordinate day-of at any event. If you are an organizer, use a burner to do this. This is also a reason to not use Signal for day-of coordination, as it will pressure you to either turn your burner on at home so that you can coordinate or associate your signal account with other devices traceable to your home or work. Walky talkies are best but Signal alternatives like davel suggested are also better.
Also, cover your face and wear sunglasses.
😀 signal? sure??? 🤣 🤣 🤣
What valuable criticism. 👍
More trustworthy than WhatsApp.
A lot of people are still coordinating their protest activities through Facebook. Recommending signal or matrix is a step up, full stop.
Don’t bring anything with a modem and you’re good to go.
There is a lot of valuable info in TFA beyond that: how to dress, interact with others, etc. Would be good to read the whole thing if interested.
Thank you. I don’t know what I was thinking, posting this (edit:
on lemmy.mlanywhere on the internet) where any useful advice will immediately be countered with “no no don’t pay attention to that, I just thought about it for 3 seconds and I’m pretty sure I have a better answer than whatever the people whose whole job and organization is this.” I won’t repeat the mistake.Edit: You know what, it’s really unfair of me to single out lemmy.ml for this. People who are convinced they don’t need to read the article and are experts already because they figured out not to bring their phone to a protest, and need to share their wisdom in the comments instead of reading the article and learning things, are common in every corner of the internet’s globe I think.
lemm.ml is “a community of privacy […] enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers,” and, after over a century of US state propaganda, repressions, purges, and assassinations upon us, communists might know a thing or two about militancy against US state power, including protests.
The EFF might know a thing or two about OPSEC as pertains to activities against US state power. They know more than you do.
You don’t automatically absorb all the knowledge of “communists” and a century of real-world experience simply because you’re on lemmy.ml. Again: EFF knows more than you do, on this topic. If that kind of thing is a confusing concept, you need to get out more, and stop looking at lemmy.ml as conferring a special type of power that the EFF isn’t privy to.
I didn’t say the EFF isn’t also knowledgeable, nor that we are more knowledgeable than them in all areas.
But we also didn’t just pull things out of our asses 3 seconds ago.
The guy certainly did, who said “Don’t bring anything with a modem and you’re good to go,” ignoring quite a bit of additional advice that the article gives that could really help some people out and explicitly implying that they don’t need to read it as long as they don’t bring their phone.
Maybe it’s not fair for me to ascribe that to all of lemmy.ml just because that one person did it. There are plenty of people in all corners of the internet who are sure they’re instant experts on everything, y’all don’t have a monopoly. What I was actually trying to say was that “being a community of privacy enthuiasts” and a history of communism doesn’t give anyone a pass on ignoring advice from the EFF and instead offering their own 2-second take on it as an expert opinion. I think that’s a foolish habit of thought to get into.
If you had responded with, “Hey, don’t blame this guy on lemmy.ml, we’re concerned with US state power and of course we take seriously what the EFF has to say about this topic” then I probably wouldn’t have been snarky about it. But I do apologize about being snarky about it, I think it was a little un called for.
All good 👍 and the EFF link you posted is a good jumping off point as well.
I bought my transit ticket with a credit card, and they picked me up. Can I give them your number, will you be my lawyer now?
