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
Just an aside that Paddy wagons is pretty racist.
That’s so old-school racist it doesn’t count anymore, like Irish_Americans give a shit in 2025. You’re diluting the word, making it worth less.
This is what people mean when they say, “You can’t say anything anymore!” They’re not mad they can’t say n*****, they’re mad because of silly shit like this. If everything is racist, language becomes a minefield, impossible to keep up with and navigate.
Every sourcing I have seen comes more from the UK as a way to shorten patrol and the argument that it is an ethnic slur against predominantly Irish police forces is similar to “cracker” in that… can you REALLY be that racist against the oppressors?
But tweaked anyway. Thanks.
Irish people were actually considered “non-white” throughout most of the history of race as a concept. They were only recently recategorized by racists when they felt their numbers dwindling and decided to expand the tent a little.
Irish people have suffered from a history of explicitly racist oppression; calling them “the oppressors” flies directly in the face of history. Their skin colour may be white, but the history of their relationship with race as a power structure is far more complex.
This does not mean that it’s impossible for Irish people to be racist themselves, or for Irish people to embrace “white” as an identity. Race is complicated; that’s exactly why trying to adopt simplistic attitudes to it never works.
Yes, the Irish were (and kind of still are) looked down upon by “Whites”.
They historically chose to address that by becoming cops. Oppressors. The idea being that if they were useful they would at least be better than the brown and yellow people. And irish cops have caused untold horrors amongst labor and minorities.
So while I disagree that “paddy wagon” is an Irish slur so much as MAYBE it is a cop slur, it is close enough that I’ll refrain from using it. But it is still the same issue as with “cracker” where… you are gonna have to try a whole hell of a lot harder for me to care if people’s feelings are hurt that folk don’t appreciate how many skulls they cracked in the name of impressing the crackers.
But you do see how you’re very much engaging in stereotyping by saying that “They historically chose to address that by becoming cops” as if somehow a) all Irish people in America became cops, and b) the experiences of the Irish diaspora in America are somehow representative of all Irish people… Right?
Like, seriously, go ask some Irish people in Northern Ireland how they feel about cops some time. Depending on who you ask you’re guaranteed to get some wildly different answers.
Again. IF we decide that “paddy wagon” is a slur toward the Irish, it is specifically a slur toward Irish cops. And fuck the police.
Simple as that.
Like I said, I’ll try to avoid it in the future because even though there is very little evidence that it is even a slur toward Irish cops, it sounds enough like one that I would rather avoid it. But I am not gonna lose ANY sleep over oppressors getting their fee fees hurt because people don’t like them.
Irish people were actually considered “non-white” throughout most of the history of race as a concept.
That’s a myth. I’ve seen the Ellis Island records of my Irish ancestors’ arrival in the US. There’s a Race box, and what was filled in for them (and others with Irish surnames that I noticed) was WHITE.
Note that Irish immigrants could own property, get bank accounts and credit, and could vote. They held public office from early in the wave of immigration. In the Western US, the earliest English-speaking settlers included a large percentage of Irish-Americans (including several of my ancestors). There was prejudice in hiring, and in boarding houses. But these were informal, at a time when there were formal legal barriers against Black Americans and Chinese immigrants.
It’s perfectly possible to be classified as white but still oppressed for other reasons. In the US in the 19th and early 20th century, that reason was mainly anti-Catholic prejudice, followed by classism. The KKK were against the Irish because of their Catholicism, as is shown by contemporary pamphlets and records of speeches. And those were the same reasons the English were so virulently anti-Irish-- those and the fact that the Irish were living on some land that they wanted to steal.
This does not mean that it’s impossible for Irish people to be racist themselves
The Draft Riots in New York city during the Civil War provides an illustrative example of that. Also memoirs of some of my ancestors (one was quite proud of his role in making his town in New Mexico a sunset town). Anti-Chinese racism was also widespread and violent in the West.
You need to read up on the history of the Irish in the UK and how they were treated by the English very much as a distinct race, and one that they thought it was very much OK to abuse.
Here’s a quote from the Rev. Charles Kingsley, a Victorian theologian and defender of Darwinism;
I am haunted by the human chimpanzees I saw [in Ireland] . . . I don’t believe they are our fault. . . . But to see white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black, one would not feel it so much. . . ."
Literally describing Irish people as subhuman. This attitude was wildly popular in England. Even in the eighties and nineties it was still common for occupation troops in Northern Ireland to refer to the Irish as “white n****rs”. This attitude, that the Irish are subhuman, justified horrific acts of racial violence that happened in my lifetime, and probably yours.
The Irish have been the targets of military occupation, police abuse, disenfranchisement and genocide, all on the basis of what the English very much considered to be their “race.”
Again, America is not the world. There are whole layers of complex interactions of identity happening out there beyond your borders.
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!
deleted by creator
how to secure your phone for a protest.
don’t fucking bring it
This so much!
Leave all Bluetooth devices at home as well as they have unique IDs that can be tied back to you as well.
And if you’re worried about your stereo you can always pull the fuse so it gets no power then put the fuse back when you get home.
Need directions? Print them and DO NOT LOSE THE PAPER!
I wouldn’t bring paper directions unless they lead to and from a place that ISN’T related to you. Somewhere you know you can get to and from by heart but is a public place, for instance. Don’t give away a beautiful map from your home address To the protest.
I heard prints are unique and have a hidden pattern which can be mapped to a single printer. Not sure if this is true.
if the government is using printer tracking dots or your phone to track you down for participating in a legal, democratic protest, then the time for protest is long over.
Print at a public library?
LAAAND OF THE FREEEEEEEE
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.
Not much better.
They let you reduce it to 540 partners they somehow deem “essential” most of which are ad networks.
ever heard of Microsoft?
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
Also any other personal electronics like your watch or fitness tracker.
Restart it before you leave but don’t log in when the restart completes. That’ll make it harder to break into.
Not buy one?
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.
I was going to complain in the comments that the article doesn’t mention anything about lockdown mode on iOS, but thankfully this eff one does. Thanks for sharing a superior article!
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
No offense but obeying in advance is fucking pathetic and it is what your last comment is doing.
Any civil disobedience does matter and changes alot more than you think. They also want you to think it doesnt matter, it does.
It is also dangerous to tell others protesting wont do anything, you are spreading fascist fears and you dont even know it.
There are forms of protest beyond just going on a parade through town
I disagree about saving numbers, you should add your emergency contacts and anyone you went with in case you get separated or shit goes down
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.
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.
I’ve been using my old(cleaned installed) pixel 1 & 3 with my R1 meshtastics during this recent protests. Very helpful.
I’ll have to look into this. I have an old Pixel 4a I use occasionally, and it’d be nice to make it more useful
Clean install that bad boi (those 4a were done really well), update everything possible and then turn off as much settings/features as possible. It’s like reviving a 7 year old PC with Ubuntu 24.04.1(coming from an emotional standpoint than logical),the thing is badass again. It’s a great offline device. Meshtastic, music player, eReader, remote, (use local non-two-way VPN) GPS, etc etc. to keep that device living longer for another 7-10 years, buy a replacement battery sooner than later.
Yeah the battery is pretty well shot, but it’s otherwise in perfect condition.
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.
Please accept this cookie before learning how to not be tracked :/
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.
Got a specific video you could suggest from them?
How To be Anonymous In A Protest | Burner Phone Tutorial
I think this one is pretty good. Pretty good explanation of how a protester might leave digital information and what to do about it.
Remember, when iPhones are off, they just become Airtags. Most modern phones are sending/receiving BLE signals even if you don’t expressly intend them to. I wouldn’t go anywhere near a protest with anything besides degoogled Android, because its the only OS where you can actually disable the radios. Even then I would probably opt for a Faraday bag.
Other considerations… Apple (and probably Google) devices are doing client side scanning of images and turning on GPS to geotag images unless you specifically disabled that features. In other words, there are ways you can be correlated to locations and activities after the fact. Just ask all those J6 rioters.
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.
Not to mention sometimes a protest starts peaceful and then goes to shit.
That usually means there are infiltrated agitators.
I participated in plenty of protests but haven’t made any acquaintances. I think internet is a better space for meeting people.
Not to mention sometimes a protest starts peaceful and then goes to shit.
Taking a look at the Tesla protests it’s just no-impact feel-good thing. Liberals have too much of disdain for non-economic violence.
I think internet is a better space for meeting people.
You have no idea who you’re “meeting” online. F2F isn’t perfectly safe, but connecting with people you know, or who are at least known by people you know, is far better than some rando online. Even then, you need to learn to compartmentalize and operate on a need-to-know basis. If you want your group to be infiltrated, at least make them work for it. I wouldn’t enter into a financial transaction with someone who approached me on the internet, so why would I bet my freedom or even my life on such a person?
I’m not exchanging financial information with strangers regardless of whether it is online or offline. You’re not IRA, you don’t need this kind of precautions anyway.
I’ve been involved in peaceful protests and in other actions. Get out there and attend peaceful protests. It helps develop your situational awareness, you learn what it’s like being at a protest, and often you’ll get to find out what happens when the police and/or counter-protestors run amok. And even when the corporate media suppresses reports of protests, there are other ways of getting that information out.
As for non-pacifistic direct action, operational security and comms security are even more critical. This thread is probably not the place to discuss it in detail. Just be aware that the few normal constraints on the behavior of the authorities have been relaxed or lifted entirely.
I participated in the biggest protests since the fall of Russian occupation in my country. I helped people organise and prepare, I joined a political party and ran in local elections. Results? None, because there was no path to those and leadership up top is mostly concerned about their position. It was actual virtue signalling even though I hate everyone who uses this term.
What is your plan exactly? There is raising awareness but are you actually convincing anyone? Is someone unaware of what’s happening? What I’m seeing is that libs assume everything Trump supporters say is wrong and vice versa, there’s no discussion so how can any of you convince each other? It was similar here and we’re still stuck with this setup. In a polarised world people picked their sides based on criteria that were important to them and then pulled into a boxing match between liberals and fascists. You could have even agreed on some things but you hate each others guts to the point where you assume all positions of your political football team. If you engage in those ineffective ways of political activism you’re just going to have people run out of steam for nothing.
I want to see articles about attending revolts!
