The protester's guide to smartphone security

https://www.privacyguides.org/articles/2025/01/23/activists-guide-securing-your-smartphone/

479 229 1 year ago

mtlynch• 1 year ago

Some law enforcement agencies use "stingrays," devices which can impersonate a cell tower to track visitors to an area. While the capabilities of the most modern ones isn't fully known, you should definitely protect yourself from the subset of stingrays which abuse the lower security standards of older, 2G networks.

Good tip! I didn't know about disabling 2G support on my phone.

xinayder• 1 year ago

I just checked my Samsung S21 and there's no option to disable 2G. I can choose 3G only, or if I want to use 4G/5G I need to enable 2G as well.

diggan5• 1 year ago

If you're attending a large-scale protest, it's likely that the cell-towers (or stingrays) won't be able to handle everyone who is connected anyways, so worth planning to use apps that can chat over P2P WiFi or Bluetooth together with the rest of your friends. This also allows you to continue using Airplane Mode the entire time, while being able to communicate with people nearby.

Alternatively, investing in walkie-talkies that have encryption can be worth it as well, but unsure how legal they are around the world, think some countries put restrictions on those so you might have to acquire them while vacationing somewhere else.

It's mentioned in the body of the article, but get the feeling most people could miss it: Absolute best idea is to leave your "personal" phone at home! Either get a secondary (burner) phone with nothing useful on it and no real names, or skip out on the phone fully. If you do get a secondary phone, make sure it has a removable battery and keep it out from the phone until you arrive at location and as soon as you move, remove battery again.

qwerty_clicks2• 1 year ago

What apps do you recommend with p2p messaging?

diggan5• 1 year ago

Lots of groups have used https://briarproject.org/ successfully in the past, I've heard. Assumes you're using Android though which if you're using a burner, you most likely are.

DicIfTEx• 1 year ago

Here's a guide to PET (peer-to-peer, encrypted, through Tor) apps, focussing on Briar and Cwtch: https://itsgoingdown.org/the-guide-to-peer-to-peer-encryptio...

crossroadsguy• 1 year ago

Depending upon which OS are on. If Android - Briar is the most famous and obvious choice. On iOS? There are not any options really but wasn't any usable one around a year back the last I had checked.

On iOS there are not many options for P2P w/o Internet (I assume that is what you meant - otherwise if you want P2P over Internet then there are some options although not really "truly" P2P of course - and of course if Internet is shut down or overwhelmed then it will be down). There's https://github.com/berty/berty (the last time I tried it was crashing incessantly but it might have improved). I do not know of anything else really (there might be few but I am not sure).

morkalork• 1 year ago

How safe is Bluetooth really? Cities has scanners used to track devices for monitoring road congestion, malls have scanners to measure foot traffic. I have to believe that anyone with access to stingray type of device can track Bluetooth as well.

theoreticalmal3• 1 year ago

Don’t both Apple and Android implement random BT MAC addresses specifically to prevent this kind of tracking?

diggan5• 1 year ago

Usually, protests are located in one somewhat easily defined area, until you cannot be there anymore or the goal has moved somewhere else. So then you need to get to another spot, this is the moment you disconnect your battery until you've arrived at the other place.

So yeah, they'd be able to say that "person A was at location B and later C", but not necessarily the way there or after/before those specific locations.

I agree that the safest is to assume they can definitely track you no matter what protocol/antenna you use, so you have to chose what moment it's OK to be tracked (like large groups).

tehjoker5• 1 year ago

The battery thing can be important. One strategy law enforcement uses is to force your phone into a high energy state and zap the battery very quickly.

theoreticalmal3• 1 year ago

What does this mean? What does the zapping accomplish?

dghlsakjg• 1 year ago

How do you force a phone into using more battery through external means?

uoaei3• 1 year ago

Nitpick: it's sap the battery, as in sapping energy.

mmooss7• 1 year ago

One strategy law enforcement uses is to force your phone into a high energy state and zap the battery very quickly.

As a denial of service attack?

nine_k• 1 year ago

No need for the law enforcement to do anything. I suspect that a large, thick crowd where everyone carries a phone creates enough radio interference that phones lose contact with the tower very often, and try to reconnect very often, especially when people send or receive messages, auto-upload photos, etc. This keeps the phones in the active state for longer, draining the batteries.

G_o_D2• 1 year ago

cold boot attack usually on pc and laptop, nowadays there are not much removable batteriez

timewizard2• 1 year ago

Keep in mind "Mens rea." If you are implicated in the crimes of the crowd all of these actions may be used to increase the penalties you face. Even if you "trust" the crowd, somehow, you should remember that agent provocateurs exist.

You might ask what attending a large scale protest is intended to achieve and decide for yourself if the personal risks are worth it.

6LLvveMx2koXfwn• 1 year ago

And if those risks are too great due to state over-reach, best stay at home.

neilv2• 1 year ago

You might ask what attending a large scale protest is intended to achieve and decide for yourself if the personal risks are worth it.

True. But keep in mind that demonstration size can have an impact.

Even just relatively large, not even a Million Man March.

For example, relevant to recent news magnifying vile Nazi-saluting imbecile demographics: They tried to pull that at an event in Boston in 2017, but tens of thousands of counter-demonstrators showed up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Free_Speech_Rally

We need more reminders that the US can be good people.

giantg23• 1 year ago

"investing in walkie-talkies that have encryption can be worth it as well"

Generally not allowed in many bands in the US. Motorola sells some AES walkies. They're really the only ones I know of, and they're very expensive.

echoangle3• 1 year ago

Well the whole point of hiding your tracks is evading law enforcement, why would you care if it’s illegal? Or is it because of the „only do one crime at a time“ thing?

Aeolun2• 1 year ago

I don’t understand under what logic AES encrypted radio communications (walkie-talkie) differ from AES encrypted radio communications (mobile network).

_DeadFred_2• 1 year ago

Burner phones aren't safe. Security through obscurity worked with the 1990s cell network but not with today's vast logging/geolocation tagging.

scarface_748• 1 year ago

The idea is that they can’t tie the phone to a person. You also have to make sure you don’t get the burner phone some place with cameras.

seb1204• 1 year ago

Can you still buy phones with sim cards that don't require ID to get working? Not in Europe, UAE or Australia.

jenadine• 1 year ago

Just break your phone in two part after your call and you'll be safe /s

nostradumbasp2• 1 year ago

Turn your phone off, and wrap it in 5 layers of tin foil. Or like you said leave the stupid thing at home.

HumanOstrich2• 1 year ago

Hey that should go well with my tin foil hat.

esperent• 1 year ago

so worth planning to use apps that can chat over P2P WiFi or Bluetooth together with the rest of your friends

I can't even get Bluetooth audio to work reliably in a crowded cafe, are you sure these other protocols would fare better?

pclmulqdq• 1 year ago

Messaging doesn't have the same real-time requirements. It's still often flaky.

AnarchismIsCool10• 1 year ago

.....please don't rely on cell towers being too overloaded to track you. The rest of the advice is solid.....but the premise is just gonna get you v&.

diggan5• 1 year ago

My note about overloaded towers is not about that they'll be unable to track you, but you'll be unable to use public internet to communicate with the rest of your group.

Xen92• 1 year ago

Absolutely best idea is to make an encrypted PDA & play forensic scientist by recording everything.

1. Get a Google Pixel 9, 9 Pro, or 9 Pro XL smartphone (Cellebrite-proofn at time of writing). 2. Verify images & GOS. 3. Disable biometrics & wireless connections. 4. Memorize with Anki or your own head a new, NIST-compliant passphrase with ≥ 8+ words. 3. Get a cover for the smartphone. 4. Buy EMI tape and electrically insulating waterproof tape. 5. Tape the insides of the cover with EMI, layering it & govering the inner walls as well, no gaps (overlay two adjacent layer always, say ≥ 1 cm, if possible) 6. Add one layer of the other tape to insides of the cover 7. Story inside your underpants 24/7 powered off when you don't use it.

My setup is more secure than not having phone, a Qubes laptop, a 2G burner, or not having phone.

dartos2• 1 year ago

How is it more secure than not having a phone?

thunfischbrot• 1 year ago

If you‘re opening the cover, disconnecting antennas might be the way to go instead. Depending on the device, it‘s relatively painless and even reversible.

djoldman2• 1 year ago

If you lose your phone, you may be able to locate or wipe your phone remotely depending on the model...
Please be aware of the legal consequences of these actions. Wiping your device or revoking online account access could lead to obstruction of justice or destruction of evidence charges in some jurisdictions.

This can be really serious. It is far better to never have/collect/obtain data in the first place.

diggan5• 1 year ago

It got me curious; lets say I go to a protest, lose my phone and wipe it remotely. I couldn't possibly know who exactly got it (since I lost it) so if I remote wipe it while in police custody, could they really get you for "obstruction of justice" for example? Wouldn't that require intent?

djoldman2• 1 year ago

I am not a lawyer.

You just don't even want to be at the "proving intent" stage.

If you had a function/service that just automatically wiped your device at intervals, regardless of where you were and what you were doing, that might be more defensible than wiping manually.

Best is if your device can't be locked and doesn't have any evidence of anything at all.

layman51• 1 year ago

There’s a setting on iPhone called “Erase Data” which will erase the data on it after 10 consecutive failed passcode attempts. That seems like a recommended setting for any smartphone to be honest, especially if it is used for business.

lukan• 1 year ago

If you lost it and no police took it from you, wiping is the normal action.

jsheard• 1 year ago

Most of this applies wherever but do check your local laws where applicable, I know that in the UK you can be compelled to provide a PIN/password under some circumstances.

qwerty_clicks2• 1 year ago

Almost too many steps to remember here. Would it be possible for an app to prompt you to do all this? An app can bring up settings to allow your camera access, why not to quickly change those other settings?

tomphoolery• 1 year ago

However, in this situation it may make more sense to disable biometric authentication.

In Face ID, there's a setting that requires direct eye contact in order to open your phone. Highly recommend enabling this when feeling insecure about someone forcing you to open your phone (if it's not already on by default) because it means somebody forcing you to open your phone with Face ID can be easily defeated by simply closing your eyes. I tried this a number of times during the BLM protests, and I/nobody else could get my phone to unlock unless my eyes were open and looking right at it. So with Face ID, I think it's actually way more secure to have biometric authentication turned on, using this setting. The thumbprint stuff might be a good idea to avoid though.

(WARNING: This will make your phone pretty much impossible to unlock with your face if you're inebriated on anything. Ask me how I know. xD You should probably disable it after the protest.)

ryankrage77• 1 year ago

This has failed me. I was mugged while black out drunk, and they succesfully unlocked my phone, unlocked my banking app, etc, despite me having the eye contact feature enabled.

fastball• 1 year ago

How do you know what happened if you were blackout drunk?

theoreticalmal3• 1 year ago

While this is good info, it should also be known that in the USA, a judge (maybe and police officer?) can legally command you to unlock your phone via biometrics, but they cannot legally command you to unlock via password or passphrase. “Legally command” = command you to do something with the force of law, and legally punish you if you resist

kevindamm• 1 year ago

The reasoning behind this is that your fingerprints and face etc. are public knowledge. Whereas you can retain your right to remain silent (about your password/PIN), failing to provide these aspects of your person can be viewed as not cooperating.

Terr_• 1 year ago

IANAL, but I think the distinction is that "give us the password that unlocks this" is forcing you to testify against yourself, producing something from your own memory and forcing you to admit ownership/control of the object. (Which might not even be yours.)

In contrast, "the device opened in response to the same fingerprint/face that the suspect has" is a form of world-evidence which doesn't infringe on your mind, much like "the key found in your pocket unlocked the safe."

arcanemachiner• 1 year ago

On an iPhone, you can click the power button 5 times to disable Face ID until the next time you enter your PIN.

Depending on your settings, this may also call 911 automatically, but that can be canceled.

tehjoker5• 1 year ago

If you're this worried, don't bring your phone lol. If you need to take pictures (and don't take identifiable pics of people without consent), just bring a camera.

Otoh, the main function of protests is to get media attention, so if they don't get publicized there was basically no point unless they evolve into direct action.

If you're interested in this second point, read https://www.amazon.com/If-We-Burn-Protest-Revolution/dp/1541...

jMyles• 1 year ago

don't take identifiable pics of people without consent

Hard disagree. Public events are public events. My conclusion, based on experience at street protests, historic trends, and current political events, is that there have been significant actions by provocateurs over the past decade or more, and particularly in Portland in 2020. Taking and posting pictures of these people is an important act. It the internet age makes this tactic impossible, it will be a huge win.

The upside is nonexistent anyway: the state is photographing everyone at these events, so you taking an additional photo does not change the risk surface for anyone with regard to state retaliation.

nxobject2• 1 year ago

As another Portlander, disagree with exceptions: surveillance footage made it harder to identify people from top down angles, and it meant that a lot of people had their charges dismissed because of that. (I will need to look it up.) The bigger risk to a protest movement, I would argue, is an opposing agent provocateurs trying to get people doxxed. That risk to more people outweighs getting minority of provocateurs shut down.

(On the other hand, you’re also right that agent provocateurs are old COINTELPRO-era tactics used by the state and right wingers against protest movements.)

When it comes to tactics to keep yourself safe when protesting, there aren’t ultimately too many hard beliefs to be had, especially when the right are perfectly happy to collaborate with the state.

philwelch3• 1 year ago

I mean there’s two sets of social norms here, right? Set one is that whenever you see the first person advocating or starting to break windows or start fires or do something else illegal, you all point at the guy and chant “fed, fed, fed” until he slinks away in shame or maybe shove him out of the crowd and into the police lines and let the cops handle him. The other set of norms is that when you see people do those things, you don’t snitch. Various protesters will adopt either set of norms.

Maybe you’d argue that the second set of protesters are actually feds; I won’t argue the point because I prefer the first set of norms myself.

tehjoker5• 1 year ago

I can definitely see this perspective. I'm a bit torn myself on the public event section. The second consideration is, yes they are filming, but just because someone is filming it's not necessarily a useful picture (blurry, low res, bad angle, obstructions, etc). Your picture might be useful especially since you may be closer to the action.

hyperadvanced• 1 year ago

there was basically no point

Other good reads on this include the end of protest, the end of the end of history, capitalist realism

5423542342354• 1 year ago

If you need to take pictures (and don't take identifiable pics of people without consent), just bring a camera.

If you record police brutality, it doesn't do any good if the police come and smash your camera and then deny it. Being able to live stream or to live backup photos and video can be useful.

Also, many recent causes have used social media to provoke "big media" attention. The Arab Spring used social media to circumvent government crackdowns on communications and bring international attention. The #BringBackOurGirls hashtag was started locally after the Boko Haram kidnappings and incompetent government response and brought global pressure and resources.

nxobject2• 1 year ago

Re: iPhones - these suggestions are really good, AND it shows how hard it is to keep track of the attack surface of all of modern iOS features. I wish Lockdown Mode also set these hardening features on: it seems useless to harden your phone against spyware if you can still be surveilled in other ways.

upofadown3• 1 year ago

Briar messenger is specifically designed for things like protests. I think I would prefer it over Signal. The article says:

Signal has responded to 6 government requests since 2016, and in each case the only information they were able to provide was at most: ...

That is the all the information they claimed they had. We have no way to know what they actually collect. Briar runs P2P over Tor so they can't collect data, even if they should want to.

Whatever is used, an article like this should remind the potential protester to turn on disappearing messages with an appropriately short interval. The powers that be might use something like a Cellebrite box to get all your old messages by cracking the phone security.

fph• 1 year ago

Signal is open source and ships with verified builds, so yes, we have a way to know what they actually collect.

upofadown3• 1 year ago

I meant at the server. We have no way to know that is running there.

mmooss7• 1 year ago

Briar runs P2P over Tor so they can't collect data, even if they should want to.

That makes the common, dangerous, naive assumption that the implementation is secure. Correct, complete, secure implementations are very hard.

(It also assumes the design is secure, which is impossible to tell based on that limited information. P2P is not any more secure than over the Internet: In fact, it's easier to identify (there are only a few Briar P2P signals and near-infinite Internet signals - you've outed yourself), and if you mean local mesh P2P networking, that doesn't help at a protest, where the authorities also are present.)

In the more public app world, only Signal has done it well enough that experts trust it, and they have lots of free help from the expert security community.

AnarchismIsCool10• 1 year ago

It...depends.

If you're not technical, signal is hands down the best solution.

If you have a group that's going to something and you are willing to take some extra steps, something like matrix/briar/simplex/whatever setup with a self hosted instance provides you with the knowledge that all the infrastructure is under your control and that the feds just aren't going to have the time to sit down and figure out how this shit works.

The thing this thread is wildly missing the point on is unless you off a ceo or are a prolific organizer, the feds are systematic. They pick a set of techniques and technologies that cast the widest net possible with the money they have, then spend their time trying to nail people within that venn diagram. Yes, security through obscurity is not ideal in-and-of-itself, but combined with encryption and chaos, you can get much farther than using the same stuff everyone else has been using for a decade+. If you stay near the leading edge of tech the feds are a decade behind you, they still have years of threat briefing powerpoints to sit through before they can even think about implementing a countermeasure.

You could find 1000 CVEs in briar but if only a handful of of people at a demonstration are using it, the feds are still going to be sitting there beating their heads against signal because that's what they know how to do. If they ever find a single high severity CVE in signal, it's game over for everyone.

cmxch• 1 year ago

A sufficiently motivated state actor will have little issue with finding what they want/need, no matter what measures are taken.

tonymet• 1 year ago

protesters deal with various agencies from private security, city police on up to federal FBI etc. These measures will help in the most common scenarios and prevent further escalation. 99.999% of protestors are not going against NSA counter-intel teams, they are encountering low-level private security or police who escalate the situation.

Every security practice is a risk/reward. The measures being offered here are no-cost measures which can reduce the exposure of evidence to casual security / police.

AtlasBarfed• 1 year ago

Th smartphone is the greatest mass surveillance device ever conceived, although AI monitored camera networks will probably exceed it very soon.

There are basically no countermeasures. Which means freedom is truly at the discretion of the powerful, because once the government goes North Korea there is no going back.

I actually think the biggest threat to humanity in the Great Filter sense is authoritarianism, more than nuclear Armageddon, grey too, or super AI.

Nothing can stop by he centralization of power that AI provides to the powerful, and the fact the elite have been brazenly antidemocratic and anti- institutionalism in public and podcasting platform is this election cycle is frightening.

mmooss7• 1 year ago

Nothing can stop by he centralization of power that AI provides to the powerful

The social acceptance of defeatism and quitting is incredible - they couldn't have a more ideal opposition. You'll never win if you quit before you start. It's mass cowardice in the face of danger, with an excuse of course.

AnarchismIsCool10• 1 year ago

Weapons evolve, defenses evolve. There are ways of trivially defeating cell phone tracking, and there are ways of trivially defeating AI cameras (850 ways specifically). Some auth dipshit will probably come up with some other way of betraying the working class and the cycle will repeat itself.

CamperBob2• 1 year ago

This would be the same 'working class' that just re-elected Trump?

unethical_ban• 1 year ago

It's unfortunate that Briar is android-only. I know it is due to Apple restrictions on battery usage (afaik). But it is decentralized and can operate locally over wifi and Bluetooth.

These seem like good practical steps.

GrapheneOS has duress pins (type it in, and the phone is wiped). It has secondary pins for biometric - the intent being that your real password is a long passphrase, and "quick " unlock is bio+pin.

I would add to this list some method of uploading video live to another service, in a way that the video can't be deleted via the phone. I know those exist for the express purpose of civil rights, I think the aclu has a list somewhere.

raybb• 1 year ago

404 Media just released a great related article "The Powerful AI Tool That Cops (or Stalkers) Can Use to Geolocate Photos in Seconds"

https://www.404media.co/the-powerful-ai-tool-that-cops-or-st...

gruez3• 1 year ago

What does this have to do with protests? Aren't protests by definition events where the organizers want people to be aware of?

tejtm• 1 year ago

Protest also attract polarizing provocateurs, you may not want to be associated with all that is done in your name.

dang• 1 year ago

HN had a thread about that tool last year:

AI Photo Geolocation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40232755 - May 2024 (102 comments)

WarOnPrivacy2• 1 year ago

Old phones are an underappreciated resource, imo.

I keep a few handsets around for apps I don't want on my daily driver (ex:food ordering, 2FA).

More in line with the article: For alternate cell/SMS service I have a RedPocket SIM. (note: I see now it's $45/yr on ebay. I'm paying less, prob grandfathered).

gruez3• 1 year ago

Old phones are an underappreciated resource, imo.

Not really. Old phones don't receive security patches and can be trivially unlocked to extract all relevant information. Sure, it might not have your nudes or bank login, but if you're using it to coordinate the protest that's plenty of incriminating evidence for the police.

For alternate cell/SMS service I have a RedPocket SIM. (note: I see now it's $45/yr on ebay.

You have to be very careful with this, otherwise it's trivial to tie the phone/SIM back to you. Off the top of my head:

* the billing/shipping address used to order the SIM

* any payment information used to top-up the account

* location correlations with any other devices you own (for instance, if your burner phone pings the same towers as your primary phone for an extended period of time)

* using it for anything other than protests (eg. as a "burner" number when applying for jobs to avoid spam)

WarOnPrivacy2• 1 year ago

Not really. Old phones don't receive security patches.

For a phone that was off until 2 hours ago and it's only login is the app they comm with, there don't seem to be a lot of meaningful risk vectors.

and can be trivially unlocked to extract all relevant information.

The unlocker will maybe get one app login and 2 hours of location data.

if you're using it to coordinate the protest that's plenty of incriminating evidence for the police.

It's one app login and 2 hours of location data. Most of that same info can be gleaned by directly observing the individual.

5423542342354• 1 year ago

It depends on the threat model. A local police force vacuuming up cell data looking for easy targets and ways to intimidate protestors is different than a targeted investigation by a state actor to identify everyone at all costs.

The Jan 6 insurrection is a good example of how difficult it is in a real world scenario to ID specific people in a large protest, and many of them got caught because they talked about it afterward on Facebook. If you are cell phone 2,347 on a spreadsheet of 33,422 phones and the number has no associated locational data, open source information, etc. you are way safer than bringing your regular phone, while not being an easy target and being able to communicate if you need to.

iseanstevens• 1 year ago

Also Meshtastic.org is a cheap (various <$50 options) open source LoRa based hardware bridge (or standalone device) that can be used with an app over bluetooth (or WiFi web interface).

It supports strong encryption layer and over 1 km/mile per “hop” in most circumstances.

Designed originally for off grid, it’s very flexible and pretty polished.

Abstracts your phone into a UI. Has a whole ecosystem behind it. I’ve been using it for festivals and tracking my vehicles (high theft area) for years.

Very handy should infra not be available. Should be great for protests also :)

nightpool• 1 year ago

This would depend on your phone being able to permanently disable its radio, right? I don't know if I would trust my phone well enough for that, I would be worried even in airplane mode about it making some small beacon checks.

_heimdall• 1 year ago

There are a few devices floating around with a hardware switch built in. If you use a Pixel, grapheme OS is probably pretty trustworthy so you at least no there's nothing nefarious down to the OS level.

But yeah, in general if you take a phone just assume it's tracking you or at least making it possible for those with access to know you where there.

AnarchismIsCool10• 1 year ago

There are Meshtastic devices with keyboards that don't require a phone

red0point• 1 year ago

Do you have any information about the privacy achievable by Meshtastic?

From a quick glance it looks like it‘s using static NodeIDs derived from the Bluetooth MAC address in the always unencrypted Packet Header.

So not only can you sniff these messages from far away at greatly simplified complexity when comparing to cellular communication, but also tie it to the hardware that you carry with you.

Mesh networks sure have its uses, but I‘d be wary of their offered privacy in the presence of adversaries you could be facing at protests!

AnarchismIsCool10• 1 year ago

For the next few years it's fine. Functionally the feds just don't have the infrastructure to care about Meshtastic. In a decade maybe that'll change but two decades in the best they can do against drones is receive the ID DJI manufactured ones voluntarily broadcast and lookup the owner if they registered it correctly.

They're far dumber than most people give them credit, unless you off a rich guy they just don't have the resources to even think about penetrating anything but cell networks.

The encryption is pretty good, they're not likely to break it any time soon. The device MACs are whatever, unless you go to protests then go wandering around an urban area with the same radios for an extended period of time they're not going to do shit about it. They would have to geolocate from the RF emission and that's difficult to do to an accuracy necessary to uniquely identify you. Further, LoRa is still a bit of a pain to work with outside of using vendor chips which don't have non-cooperative DF capability so we're in the realm of expensive custom solutions from an RF shop which is far more money than the feds are willing to spend to dragnet a couple people.

slowloraorwhat• 1 year ago

LORA is a such a painfully low bitrate the best you would get is some text. I think 20/50 kbps in absolute best case, more like ~1000 bits per second.

leptons• 1 year ago

1000 bits/s is still way faster than anyone can type a text message.

AnarchismIsCool10• 1 year ago

I spend a lot of time in the RF space and Meshtastic is by far the most mature system out there for instant ad-hoc secure digital communications.

However...

The first rule of emergency communications is that if you can conceive of the need in the future, you need to practice using it now. Getting people to download the meshtastic app or figuring out a weird setting is a lot easier when you have working uncensored internet.

bryceacc• 1 year ago

how have you been able to use it at festivals? I tried it once and maybe the default settings are terrible but no communication could be achieved. There were dozens of other nodes that it found in a tight space and I think the entire network was saturated with pings/messages that I couldn't get mine to work. Are there settings to change that get around network saturation issues?

AnarchismIsCool10• 1 year ago

Four rules:

If you just want to talk to a few friends, don't bother with the default public mesh config, setup your own with encryption enabled.

Don't use longfast, use a higher speed setting if possible. Longfast will go 10km+ in optimal conditions and in a city environment, won't go any further than medfast.

Don't use the default radio channel, pick another one.

MAKE SURE ALL SYSTEMS ARE CONFIGURED IDENTICALLY - meshtastic is picky about all the radio settings being the same for bits to go through. It cannot figure out that the sender is using a faster/slower bitrate than you are so you will just get nothing. Do not attempt to use them until you've verified that all systems reliably send and receive messages in an uncontested environment. It's very easy to misconfigure meshtastic but once you do, fixing it in the field is going to be very difficult.

liontwist5• 1 year ago

I don’t understand the issue. Protesting is legal. Are we advocating for illegal activity?

Almondsetat4• 1 year ago

Protesting is legal

first of all, where?

secondly, what has legality of protest got to do with privacy?

liontwist5• 1 year ago

The concern of your phone being taken by authorities or capturing incriminating evidence

MengerSponge2• 1 year ago

1) Protesting is illegal in many parts of the world.

2) Authoritarians have been known to act illegally to solidify their power.

liontwist5• 1 year ago

Are we imagining only “good guys” will be the ones breaking the law?

philwelch3• 1 year ago

There’s some strategic ambiguity going on here. If you’re going to a protest that looks like the Women’s March on Inauguration Day of 2017, you don’t have to worry about this kind of thing. If you’re starting fires or breaking into the Capitol building, you definitely do have to worry about this sort of thing. And just to make things even muddier, the exact same protest can radically change from one to the other based on specifics of time and place. In the summer of 2020, Seattle and Portland had mostly peaceful and uneventful protests by day in the exact same places where shootings and arsons would break out after dark, while on January 6th, just as some of the rioters were trying to force their way through the windows on one side of the Capitol building and clashing with Capitol Police, on the other side of the Capitol they were peacefully walking through wide open gates and doorways and milling around in the hallways as the Capitol Police looked on. And yeah, the peaceful ones get prosecuted sometimes too.

georgeecollins2• 1 year ago

I think the "strategic ambiguity" here is ethics. Civil rights protestors were clearly breaking the law when they sat at diners that wouldn't serve black people. But who today thinks they were wrong? When I was a kid, students protested at Universities to divest from Apartheid era South Africa.

People can agree on what the law is, but they don't always agree on what is right. Sometimes a democratic government will zealously defend a law, war or principal that later generations of the same government will disavow.

pjc50• 1 year ago

That depends on whether the police like your protest.

dpc050505• 1 year ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Quebec_student_protests

Mostly legal protests that got violently repressed by enforcement of unconstitutional laws in Quebec.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_G20_Toronto_summit_protes...

Same thing in Toronto.

Canada rates very high on democracy indexes. Even if you beat the charge in court you can still get arrested on bullshit in every country.

georgeecollins2• 1 year ago

In the US, free speech is legal. You also have a right to congregate but lots of institutions find ways to subvert that, often by creating private spaces that seem public (and effectively are public but I am not a lawyer). The whole concept of civil disobedience in the US goes back to the Mexican American war, which many Americans felt was an opportunity to expand slavery to new states. Another example is the civil rights movement, where people thought it was acceptable to sit in the wrong part of the bus, even though it was against the law.

I am not advocating for breaking the law. You have to understand that if a police person or a security guard violates your rights of free expression you may not get bailed out by the ACLU.

giantg23• 1 year ago

Most of this is everyday security.

"Avoid External Storage"

They missed part with this. You could use external storage just for your current recording purposes so you can pop the SD card and take it with you if you think your phone will be taken.

scarface_748• 1 year ago

This is what the other side is telling law enforcement about iOS devices.

https://cellebrite.com/en/glossary/bfu-iphone-mobile-device-...

iOS is amazing insecurely to a determined law enforcement agency after the first unlock when you turn your phone on.

And a mitigation that Apple is doing.

https://lonelybrand.com/blog/iphones-operating-on-ios-18-1-w...

As far as having a strong pin to help protect you, it won’t protect you from rubber hose decryption.

echoangle3• 1 year ago

As far as having a strong pin to help protect you, it won’t protect you from rubber hose decryption.

I wonder why no one adds a „decoy pin“ which looks like it unlocks the device but secretly deletes sensitive data.

Probably, most people don’t see rubber hose cryptography as a real threat, and in most cases, they’re probably right.

scarface_748• 1 year ago

I don’t have any trust in the police or even more so the various 3 letter agencies.

idlewords• 1 year ago

Unfortunately this is a topic that attracts LARPers. Remember that if things get spicy, you are not going to settings nerd your way out of a bad interaction with the police.

Tech advice for legal and illegal protests is pretty much diametrically opposite, and advice for countries like the United States is much different than for somewhere like Egypt.

It's complicated!

vueko• 1 year ago

The fact that rubber-hose cryptanalysis exists doesn't mean that cryptography is useless. While settings nerding is indeed probably of limited use if you have a direct encounter with authorities, settings nerding can prevent being caught up in a dragnet search for, say, every cell service subscriber present at a protest gone sour, just as ubiquitous cryptography probably can't keep you safe from dedicated NSA attention but can protect against warrantless dragnet fishing expeditions.

As pointed out elsewhere, the line between legal and illegal protest is very blurry and can shift rapidly; if anything, the only way to be sure you're not going to a protest that could eventually be classed as illegal is to never go to a protest, regardless of how pure your intentions are.

ants_everywhere7• 1 year ago

What a lot of people don't realize is that a lot of the protests are organized by people who do not care if you get hurt, arrested, or die. In the US, Russian operatives organize a lot of the protests that turn violent. They also organize the counter protests.

In other countries, protests are often organized by foreign entities. The organizers will have good opsec, but everyone else is just (metaphorically) cannon fodder as far as the organizers are concerned.

It's been this way for decades. The Soviet Union organized protests in other countries for pretty much its entire existence. The US helped the Polish anti-authoritarian Solidarity movement and several others.

Aeolun2• 1 year ago

What a lot of people don't realize is that a lot of the protests are organized by people who do not care if you get hurt, arrested, or die.

I mean, that’s kind of a given even for the protests that are legitimate. They really only happen when people reach a point of no return, and the organizers are more likely to be fanatics in the first place.

AnarchismIsCool10• 1 year ago

Reputable sources or stop spreading fud

rainonmoon2• 1 year ago

These are some pretty obscene claims to make with absolutely no proof or citation.

AnarchismIsCool10• 1 year ago

Protester LARPers or police forensics LARPers?

maybejustmaybe• 1 year ago

Technically you could piggy back on another protocol and obfuscate your comms. Like piggy backing in an envelope across https connections from server to server. Nobody is looking there. And even if they are, good luck decrypting that. Looks like a legit site but it is actually a proxy for delivery encrypted payloads.

xyst• 1 year ago

yes, will need this in the upcoming class revolt.

rob_c• 1 year ago

It's called a burner phone. Learn from the professionals...

mastazi• 1 year ago

See also the EFF Surveillance Self-Defense guide for activists and protesters:

https://ssd.eff.org/playlist/activist-or-protester

gonzo41• 1 year ago

You should be going into airplane mode at an isolated time before you get to the protest so you don't have a pattern of 10 friends all of a sudden dropping off the network together.

Infact it's probably not the best idea to protest (in a crowd) anymore. The cops know how to kettle, and they have the tech edge. Activists need to think and act more asymmetrically.

G_o_D2• 1 year ago

There are some apps that detect fake base stations monitoring your traffic

There are apps that uses accelerometer and gyroscopic sensors to detect if phone is snatched execute certain action based on this

Use app lock, so in case your phone is opened, apps will still be locked --> lock galley + filesExplorer(any) + settings + playstore + Browser(All installed) + Cloud/RemoteDrives(any) + Any syncing apps + Contacts + Email+messaging apps etc

(Hell all apps for utmost paranoia)

Use apps that remotely sync your phone specific folder/gallery every time new file is created (So when taking photos or recordinf something, if pbone got snatched, data is deleted + phone is broken or formattef/wiped against your will, your files have already synced to remote location so no worries

Snoopsnitch https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.srlabs.snoopsnitch/

Stayput https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.y20k.stayput/

plucklockex https://f-droid.org/en/packages/xyz.iridiumion.plucklockex/

ignoramous2• 1 year ago

There are some apps that detect fake base stations monitoring your traffic

Pixels (and soon other Android devices) have this functionality built-in: https://security.googleblog.com/2024/10/pixel-proactive-secu...

rowie• 1 year ago

Just use Meshtastic! ;-)

frontalier• 1 year ago

Mobile Phone Security For Activists and Agitators

https://opsec.riotmedicine.net/downloads#mobile-phone-securi...

nanna• 1 year ago

Or simply leave your phone at home. Need to meet with friends? Plan a meeting point. Need to take photos? Do you really? What right have you got to photo other people's faces? Just leave your damn phone at home.

cluckindan• 1 year ago

If you want to take photos, bring a good quality video camera, preferably with optical image stabilization. It’s much harder for disinformationists to deny or reframe a long, uncut video.

Gasp0de• 1 year ago

Taking video can protect against police brutality or false claims by the police. Although I agree that it also is dangerous.

bArray2• 1 year ago

Potentially this is where the likes of the PinePhone should thrive [1].

As well as the methods suggested, you could have full disk encryption and just have the phone switch off if it suspects any shenanigans. If you want, it could still boot into an OS, but it just denies knowing about the encrypted disk. Done right, the image itself could be difficult to discern from something like a corrupted video file.

Your Risks at a Protest

In addition, your SIM (likely traceable to you, especially if you have it) will be auto-connecting to their temporary telecom system (i.e. Stingray [2]), where they can find out the following:

1. That you were nearby to the event.

2. A tonne of operations available via the modem [3].

3. If you speak to somebody locally (as part of the routing).

4. Shift your connection down to 2G/3G where it is easier to hack [4].

I think each person needs to consider their security model.

[1] https://pine64.org/devices/pinephone/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker

[3] https://www.electronicsforu.com/special/cool-stuff-misc/gsm-...

[4] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/06/your-phone-vulnerable-...

Delk• 1 year ago

Regarding #2, I thought AT commands were something you could send to your modem from your attached device. I'm not aware that they could be sent to a modem by another remote modem over the network link. Is that also possible?

bArray2• 1 year ago

You are correct, it's just there to give you an idea of the capabilities of the modem, what sorts of information it holds and what the cell tower may query.

The protester's guide to smartphone security

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