How to secure your phone before attending a protest
How to secure your phone before attending a protest
Here are some privacy measures you can take
Leave. Your. Phone. At. Home.
Another easy tip to remember: if you have your device on you and you think it's going to be confiscated, TURN IT OFF.
LE has a very limited toolset when it comes to unlocking a device before it's first unlock when you boot it up.
Source: I work in this field
Yup. For the unaware, your phone is likely encrypted at startup, and uses your PIN/password as a key. So if you turn it off, they’ll have a hell of a time breaking into it.
At the very least, initiate an emergency mode. On iOS, this can be done by holding the lock and volume down buttons for a few seconds. It will show the “Emergency Dial” option, along with the power down option and the medical ID option. Once you have seen that screen, the phone is locked until the PIN is used. It disables all biometrics, so they can’t just use your face or thumb print to unlock it. And this makes it significantly harder for them to access your phone.
Android has an equivilent mode called "Lockdown mode", where you activate it by holding the power button and pressing "Lockdown".
For both devices, though, I would still recommend either shutting down or rebooting (and not unlocking) the device.
This is also an important note for airports. I always fully power off my phone before going through security and/or border control (when flying out of YVR they're one and the same). The last time you'll be asked for your bordering pass is when queueing for security, so you can turn it off (assuming you've got a digital boarding pass) after that point and only power it back on when you arrive at your gate.
For the truly paranoid use a paper boarding pass - no airlines or airports that I've ever been to require digital passes, there are people without phones or phone plans that still must be allowed to board planes. I'm curious if Singapore or the UAE might only allow digital passes because they've leaned hard into digitization - but nearly all the world still has some user path for paper boarding passes.
If you can’t turn off your iPhone, squeeze the volume up button and power button at the same time. This puts the phone in before first unlock mode and requires passcode. It’s faster than turning the phone off.
That said, turning it off also works.
The reason you want to do these things is it clears encryption keys from memory and makes it harder to get at your data.
Careful now. Apparently telling people their rights is subject to scrutiny now by the DOJ 🤣
We're good for the moment, this isn't Facebook.
That's been the case for decades, though it might be worse now.
Leaving your phone at home is too obvious now for metadata-checking cops. Read this for a more comprehensive take on security culture in the wake of Metadata.
Not if I do that regularly anyway.
I feel like this is making people unnecessarily afraid. Most protests do not require you to do anything special with your phone. If you expect more confrontational or destructive actions to be happening then this is a good idea but most protests I’ve been to are not like this.
If protests keep happening, things are getting worse, not better. Better to be prepared than not.
I’m just worried people won’t show up if it feels scary. And I personally think the risk of legal protest is extremely low at this point in time.
Sure, that could change at some point but there’s no sign of that currently.
Found the fed.
Guess you didn't hear the drones buzzing overhead with the Stingrays
I did not. I’ve been to several protests and did not take any “security precautions”, nor did most people there. It was completely safe with no reason to think there would be repression.
The point of mass resistance is that the state does not have the power to arrest us all. If they did then we would need to use different tactics. But resisting brazenly is a demonstration of power and makes such an outcome less likely in the future.