I doubt its even environmentally/economically sustainable for a whole crowd of millions to just buy burners to discard after every protest. Too much ewaste. Is there a strategy that everyone can use without generating too much ewaste?
Risk and safety is on a spectrum. You’ve got a wide range of answers here, so I won’t go into depth on specifics, but the safest thing by far is to not take a phone at all. However, in practice, some people can’t do that. For example, a friend has a continuous blood glucose monitor that connects via Bluetooth. This affects the kinds of protests that they feel comfortable going to.
If you do opt to take a phone, there are things you can do to make yourself safer. Wiping the device beforehand can help, if you have a good backup. Turn off biometric authentication and have a strong password/pin. Airplane mode can help, as can a Faraday bag to blog signals (though DIY ones of those can have leak problems, I think). Also having a quick way to turn off your phone is good — there might be settings in your phone to make that easier. The reason for this is because your phone is harder to break into if it’s waking up from being turned off (i.e. before you put your pin in when booting up). However, even with precautions like this, it’s pretty damn hard to protect your device if it is confiscated and law enforcement is determined to get into it. This means that if you do take your phone, be extra mindful about doing anything that might make you of particular interest to law enforcement.
In addition to the personal risk angle, it’s also useful to consider the community risk. One of the ways that Bluetooth is used, for example, is to track the motions of crowds of people. The more people who are using their phones at a protest, the easier it is for them to be tracked and possibly controlled. This means that even if your security was perfect, you might be made vulnerable by someone being more careless with their privacy. Equally though, it means that you taking what steps you can helps make everyone a bit safer.
Good question, and I just want to add my input as a framework for how to think about this:
Airplane mode is a software feature built into phones, and the idea of restricting it from connecting to the internet would work for what you want it to do; HOWEVER that requires you to TRUST the people who make the software, and I think nothing good could come from that. Smart devices have cameras, microphones, GPS technology built in; all of the tools necessary for something to spy on you exist in those devices, it is just safer to not have them at all unless you are an advanced user who can take appropriate measures.
I’m not an advanced user, so I leave my devices at home when I want to minimize my risks. Paranoid? Sure, but it’s not a constant anxiety inducing fear of being tracked, I see it more as a basic safety measure like wearing sunscreen or carrying an umbrella.
No. Full stop. No.
No device that can or should connect to the internet. At all. SD card camera at most. Leave your phone at home, charging, playing an 8 hour YT playlist to your dog.
Don’t want Clearview AI destroying your life 3 months from now? Cover your full face, arms, and legs. You can and WILL be identified easily from even a partial facial image. Hat, sunglasses, bandana. Guy Fawks mask. You do you, but you have to commit to it. Don’t take anything off until you are sure you’re concealed and not visible from any cameras.
You are trying to casually tempt the second most advanced surveillance state on earth. There is no room for error anymore.
comrade, especially if you can’t afford new gadgets, you leave the one gadget you have and don’t want to get destroyed by the police water gun truck at home. this isn’t even just about tracking any more in this situation.
Leave your networked electronics at home, simple as that.
Bring a separate camera/go pro, if you want a camera on hand. Same with satnav.
A cheap af old Android setup as new, with a new/no account, and no sim would probably be better for the majority. A Go pro + sd card are $100+, while a used android can be had for $50. Half the protesters probably already have one sitting in a drawer.
If it’s kept in airplane mode and only used for the most basic shit like offline maps, recording audio or video, notes, etc, I don’t see how it’d be much of a threat. Ideally you’d want to only connect it to coffee shop wifi and restore it to an old backup after every protest (if you can do offline), but if it’s never used for PII, contacts/comms, or any internet services, they can’t get much from it.
At the end of the day, if they really want to identify protesters they will. You can’t expect anonymity at a protest in 2025. Just don’t make it easy for the Gestapo.
No. No network capable electronic devices period. It is absolutely possible to correlate the device MAC address to a protest, and the US government has repeatedly proven they have backdoor access to wireless access points and routers to collect this information.
bruh, back door smack door. they are litterally just buying it.
Android now has MAC address randomization btw
But the phone imei is still always yours. If there’s a SIM in there, or it connects to a mobile service, you’re cooked anyway.
Most phones and tablets have E-SIM now so its a moot point
Then it automatically connects for emergency calls, and ya cooked.
You are not smarter than a well-resourced set of my military grade contractors that sell intel to law enforcement.
No networked devices. At all. This isn’t hard! The entire Civil Rights Movement happened with zero mobile phones. You can do the same. Write important info in a notebook. SD card camera if you must.
So you’re saying that they can scan the MAC addresses of devices in airplane mode, a setting designed to not receive or transmit any comms?
Do you have any evidence for these claims, because that is something security researchers could very easily prove?
military grade contractors that sell intel to law enforcement.
So salesmen, who sell products? Like all salespeople they likely promise the world, and like all consultants, they likely advise based on the average/lowest common denominator. So yeah, if you are completely tech illiterate, don’t think you can outsmart people on tech literacy…
That’s not what I’m saying.
First off, you, my fellow human, are a fallible creature that can make mistakes. Relying on airplane mode is a huge risk because if you oopsie once, you’re done.
Second, your phone at home is a reasonable alibi. As long as you cover your face fully.
Third, your phone and face are gifts to LE. Do not go bearing gifts.
Using public WiFi is enough to ping a MAC on a snoop-able network device. Let’s recall that no one should be connecting to free public WiFi without a VPN anyway. Plus, every LE agency can check connections from IPs of popular open WiFi spots near a route and see that your gmail or Snap or Twitter were accessed. Also, do you know and trust whoever owns that WiFi? So you need a burner, randomozed changed MAC, and a VPN on the phone just to use that public WiFi.
Open BT or AirDrop are also enough. The Chinese love using AirDrop.
Next, if you get arrested, everything on your phone can and will be used against you if they can get in. Did you take a selfie? Good work collecting evidence against yourself. Plus, that phone is gone for food even if you get released. Why do that to yourself?
As for contractors, that’s how the military industrial complex works. Contractors do the morally grey area stuff and the government uses what’s called third party doctrine to use those capabilities that might not necessarily come up in full during a FOIA request as it would if something was only government based.
Did the Isreali government develop Pegasus spyware? No, NSO Group did. How about which governemt develeoped facial recognition databases used be LE? No government did that. Clearview AI, Amazon at one point, Meta, and Google all did their own. Where does the government get all that data on what you do on your phone? From targeted advertising markets that anyone can access. The government doesn’t make fighter jets, or tanks or guns or uniforms or paper or computers or surveillance equipment. Contractors do.
Depend how much you trust thé ones building you phone. Their is no mean of airplane mode now, nobody will notice if a phone ping a tower every hour.
Édit: By nobody I mean you me not gouvernement. Thé government will track you if it can.
I think it depends on your personal level of risk. I usually bring mine to normie protests like the ones today but if you belong to a targeted demographic or you’ll be engaging in confrontational direct action you should definitely weigh that.
If you leave your phone at home, you have a weak kind of alibi, since the phone with which they track you is still at home (i.e. you are allegedly at home).
If you must: wrap your phone in several layers of tinfoil to shield it. Test the amount of tinfoil you need with bluetooth speakers (add layers of tinfoil until the connection drops).
I wouldn’t trust airplane mode (software) if there’s a failsafe physics-based solution to your problem.
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you probably aren’t going to be the target of an investigation, but don’t take my fucking picture
See here’s the thing, yes there is a risk of friendly fire if someone records a protest, but at the same time, there needs be more cameras in order to show everyone any incident of police aggression, to sway public opinion.
Ideally, the cameras should be pointed towards the law enforcement, but like everyone is gonna have a camera, the media is gonna be there. You should really cover your face. I wouldn’t intentionally aim a camera at your face, but a nearby journalist will. The law enforcement definitely will.
TLDR: Please cover your faces. People from all sides are gonna be documenting protests.
If the protestors don’t record it, the government and the media can just editorize everything and paint the protestors in bad light.
I agree, also, do you have an android? if so, you should think about a different OS than stock. I use graphene, and it is designed for this type of shit. It does not send out any bluetooth or internet checks when turned off, does not come with any google, uses their own proxy servers for internet and location, randomizes telemetry as much as possible etc. If I was worried I would take out my sim card just in case, although if it is airplane mode it should be ok. Comes stock with barebones free, open source programs. So no tracking. You can still install play store if you want, and they have done a lot of work to have it run sandboxed really well. So it accesses what you give it permission to, rather than everything on stock android. I still would not have it installed for your use case, or would at least have it on a separate user profile I wasnt using. Comes with vinadium, a degoogled chrome fork. I use ironfox and brave personally. Also I use Mullvad VPN, which Graphene is designed to work well with and is super reputable.
I also use neostore. It is a storefront for a bunch of different open source software repositories. Tells you very clearly specific privacy concerns for all software. Great app.
There is also I think Organic maps? A functional foss alternative to google maps. I can’t really get it to run well myself, but others say its great. So you can use google maps with Graphene Proxy servers, but the location will still be sent to google, ip address etc. You can deny it network access, but it is still sketchy. I personally use Magic Earth, which is not foss, but more overtly privacy focused than google by a mile. No account needed, no ligs etc(the rub is it is private so we don’t absolutely know). It has pretty robust transparency and can be used without connecting to the internet. No logs, no data collected by default. GPS is calculated by recieving, not transmitring a signal, ao this can be done completely privately if you turn the internet and bt off. Magic Earth is my compromise choice of privacy and ease of use.
There is also something called the guardian project by the tor browser people. besides tor itself(more secure but quite slow for video and such), they have a suite of apps you might like. Designed for journalists and such. One for scrubbing data from pictures, another one you can set to scrub your entire phone or specific apps as a panic button(Graphene natively has a panic code you can type in if cops are trying to unlock your phone thatll wipe it as well, but I dont think it can be tailored). another app lets you set your phone as a motion sensor camera, another will send a premade message to emergency contacts when enacted etc. Super good shit.
Sorry, I ramble a lot. On a final note, getting into all this shit made me realize how much big tech fucking hates us now. How they see design as a distant secondary concern to extracting data. Like, these are apps people make just because, and a lot of them are far better to use because they’re not bloated spyware fronting as a camera app.
Lastly, it comes with a hardened fork of signal I use. works perfectly, but still uses their servers(encrypted, but they know who sent it). If you want other anonymity tools there are p2p messaging apps like Briar, ones you can set up your own server to host messages, freenet lets you upload pictures and such anonymously.
All to say, there is a whole ecosystem for the shit you’re talking about. If you have an apple phone, don’t trust a goddamn word apple says. It is marketing. Capital will always side with fascists when their interests align and sell you out in a heartbeat(they already have to others). And Apple of course allows no 3rd party OS or foss. Fuck Apple. Also their design isn’t elegant imho, it is just childish. They make doing anything not explicitly designed for impossible. Incredibly frustrating. I have to use Apple for work and almost broke the fucking computer when I realized their native pdf viewer is made by someone that hates you and doesnt have night mode. If you want anything approaching anonymity the first step is not being in ecosystems built by big tech, otherwise anything you do is comically futile. You are at all times holding a massive neon sign with all your info on it. Of course, I am just a guy on the internet that is a newbie himself to most of this, also a fucking moron lol. Do your own due diligence, but I have not regretted switching for a second. Also it is super easy and takes a youtube video and 15 minutes. Try it with an old phone first if youre hesitant. Best of luck
Not sure if I want to get a pixel for Graphene, now that Google stopped publishing pixel-specific source code which means moving forward, Graphene OS will have a hard tine trying to fix firmware security flaws. If I had one, I’d keep it, but I currently don’t have one, so I aint getting one.
Like IDK, maybe CalyxOS on a Fairphone? (I’m in the US so I’d have to import it, which mean customs can tamper with it.)
Or I can get a Muena’s e/OS Fairphone 4, so I don’t have to deal with customs myself, but this is about to get out of date, and it cost the same as the 5 so seems like a waste of money.
Or a Pinephone?
Or a Librem 5? (Expensive AF tho, and the company is sketchy)
What even is the future of Graphene, now that Google is being a dick?
Shut off your phone when you protest, wherever it happens to be (especially if you’re not leaving it at home).
Turning them off is not enough, they will still be confiscated and searched which is the bigger problem. DO NOT BRING PERSONAL ELECTRONICS AT ALL UNLESS THEY ARE BURNERS . FULL STOP.
iPhones also transmit “Find My” beacons even when turned off, no?
For iphones and graphene is they’re fully encrypted on startup. Not sure about other android phones.
Enough for what? What do you want to achieve or protect yourself from?
Even in a genuine authoritarian state there’s no need to “discard” anything. For these occasions just keep a separate device with plausible data on it, or don’t take one at all.
So does an old device that you wiped clean, and have only offline maps and use as mostly a camera and put into airplane mode all the time, a device which the imei and serial are already linked to your identity count as a “burner”? I mean you’re not connecting to any towers so its fine, right?
As others have said, there are two discrete threat models.
Turning off all the radios (pull out the SIM for good measure) is enough to block any proof of your geographic whereabouts. That absolutely includes wifi. Cell towers are yesterday’s news, geolocation is also done by wifi and GPS and your device will be sharing that with a bunch of third parties if you let it connect.
But there’s a separate issue about what happens if you have to surrender the device. For this scenario, your choice will be between fighting the authorities over the encryption key or presenting a dummy device as your only one.
Not necessarily. If you are connecting to or available for connecting to Bluetooth for example, this can be used to track you, even if you never actually connect.
It’s effectively the same principle as how air tags work. Before a device actually connects it needs to be shown it can connect. So even without connecting you can be visible.
Then there are private companies aggregating and processing these data. It’s about 30k a month for API access, but with some clever geofencing, you can practically track individuals.
Short answer: hear what’s being said. The only true failsafe is no device at all.
That being said, it may not be practical, so follow good practices.
Personally I’d feel fine in airplane mode. Just make sure wifi and Bluetooth is disabled as well. They’re not always deactivated in airplane mode.
And may as well disable location too, in case an app is logging it still. Would be a shame if Meta geofenced you and sold it to bad actors.
There’s a paperback version of offline maps. Don’t forget your compass to find the azimuth.
Also, wrap your shit in foil, and leave the lens exposed if you’re too broke for shit.
Buy second-hand?
