Leave your phone behind because of geofencing. Even a dumb phone with your name connected to the bill will be traced to you. Grab an e-waste phone, buy a sim with cash, and even hide your face in the store, because the cops will get that footage.
Once you have your burner with no paper trail, never let it connect while at home, work, or any other place connected to your identity. Phones with removable batteries are best for this. Use a faraday bag if you must bring it home with you. Don’t trust a phone to actually turn off.
The purpose of your burner phone is primarily to document events. You want to record the police instigating violence. However, avoid doxxing your fellow protestors. Don’t record their vehicles, don’t record their tattoos or other identifying marks. Keep the camera pointed at the cops. The media is captured by fascism, it will not report that the police are thugs. It’s up to citizen journalists.
Expect the police to gain access to your phone. They will be logged into everything through that. Don’t dox your friends by granting police access to your planning chat. Use a separate system for communicating during the event, and keep all accounts separate.
And there’s other concerns as well, but mostly just … don’t bring a phone unless you know what you’re doing. They’re snitches.
(I didn’t read the article yet. I expect I probably already did, years ago)
The purpose of your burner phone is primarily to document events.
If that’s your only goal, just get an actual camera.
I didn’t say it was the only goal, it is the PRIMARY goal. Secondary function is coordination of movement. As for camera functionality, it also serves to upload the images to the internet, or to live stream for awareness. An ordinary camera typically cannot serve that function
Anyone know how to train pigeons? 👀
Sad that this advice is necessary.
Unfortunately, if you go to a protest and use your phone to communicate, even with Signal, the phone’s connectivity might expose your location.
I wonder if there’s a way to use some sort of mesh network to get around this and avoid most people needing to transmit to cell towers
Briar.
Briar uses either: Internet (via Tor), Wifi (connects with every contact connected to the same wifi via local connection, does not require internet), or with Bluetooth
You can form a peer to peer connection if you have enough people connected to each other.
Your phone will only connect to users in your contacts, so its best to try sharing this app with everyone at the protest, and adding everyone at the protest as contacts. The more, the stronger the mesh.
Unfortunately, bluetooth is like 10 meters of range, so you need like a contact every 10 meters or so to continue the flow of information.
You just download the app, create a profile, set a password, and Voila. Everything stays on your device, all connections are encrypted.
Then go create a “Forum”, share the forum with everyone (do not use the “group chat” thing, that is unreliable).
Everyone in the Forum can also share the forum with more people. But the forum only syncs with contacts.
Example:
User A and User B have each other contacts
User B and User C have each other as contacts
But if User A and User C aren’t contacts, they have to relay information through User B.
But User B can also introduce each other, then sync that introduction with User A at Location One, sync with User B at location Two. Voila, now they are contacts.
User B could get arrested, but User A and C will have a connection if they meet later at a protest.
Get it? You have to add everyone to keep the information flowing.
(Also, even if both User A and User C added as contacts, and are on the same forum, they still need to “share” the forum with each other to make sure the connection works, because I think this is a bug)
For anti-tracking, turn on airplane mode, turn off all wireless connections except bluetooth before heading to the protest. Turn off Locations, turn off Location Accuract, Wifi Scanning, Bluetooth Scanning.
You have an off-grid communication system.
Keep in mind, they can still jam bluetooth connections.
Also, bluetooth MAC addresses are not randomized unlike with wifi connections. Its not foul proof.
Also, Briar is Android only.
And, this is all assuming you phone doesn’t have a backdoor that tracks you.
You could also use a radio and talk in code, and they’ll know someone is transmitting at the protest, but as long as you don’t transmit at home, you’re safe.
Don’t let them find the radio tho.
Edit: Feel free to ask questions, I’m not a security expert, just some nerd digging around the internet often.
President Musk’s behavior is really boosting the opposition sentiment.
Privacy is the back bone of civil society!
