[mdhb]

This is dumb advice that doesn’t match any kind of realistic threat model. It’s like something you saw in a movie I think.

The entire modern game is very literally, don’t be interesting and don’t do weird shit that normal people wouldn’t do. It’s a needle in a haystack problem so don’t go and start creating a really weird signature of whatever it might be: behaviour, communication, RF emissions etc. The anomaly is the signature and has been for about 20 years now.

[therobots927]

So are you in the “no phone at protests” camp? Because it’s impossible to attend a protest and “act normal” because by definition you’re engaging in abnormal behavior and that’s exactly why they’re logging all the phones there

[mdhb]

I think you can still go to a protest with a phone just fine honestly.

The fact that there are a lot of people there is actually the strength of it.

I’d probably think carefully about what you want to use it for and what I had on there though. I wouldn’t recommend bringing a device with a a bunch of incriminating evidence to an event like that.

I think a good threat model is just operate on the assumption that maybe someone stops you and asked to look at your phone. Go ahead and also assume that they will ask at the most inconvenient point in the day also. Act accordingly and I wouldn’t anticipate much in the way of trouble from having one.

Also, look at it through the eyes of the opposition, what are their goals here…

1. Fix the signal to noise ratio in a crowd

2. Identify people

3. Map out networks

And your goal is to not to be “invisible” (you can’t anyways) but to be uninteresting. They aren’t the same thing and the difference is important.

For the overwhelming majority of people I don’t think there is much yet to worry about in simply attending a protest (Assuming you’re a citizen and you act sensibly because otherwise that’s an entirely different threat model and you probably shouldn’t be there at the moment).

But I would leave you with this bit of advice also… they very much want you to think they are the all knowing, all seeing and ever present 50ft tall enemy. That isn’t true. There is also no shortage of people who really seem to get off on pretending things are more dangerous than they really are but that shit turns into paranoia real quickly and then people become terrified to do anything or you start making bad decisions. Fight both of those things when you run into them.

You can and should feel good about getting out in the streets at the moment, it’s not going to get easier the longer it goes on just be sensible.

[542354234235]

>For the overwhelming majority of people I don’t think there is much yet to worry about in simply attending a protest (Assuming you’re a citizen and you act sensibly because otherwise that’s an entirely different threat model and you probably shouldn’t be there at the moment).

That seems a tad naive. I think being recorded by local/Federal agencies at a protest, especially one critical of current government actions, is a legitimate concern. Especially since those tools are being brought out specifically for the protest, not because they are looking for some murderer that happens to be a block away from you.

Also, the word "yet" is doing a lot of work there. Considering that data can be stored indefinitely with little oversight, there is little to stop police from searching through the database and looking for "targets of interest" like phones that showed up to multiple protests.

Being at a protest is already known to make you interesting, which is why those tools are being brought out in the first place, why police are "friending" protest organization FB pages to gather membership data, etc. Keeping yourself out of databases that could be used later to jam you up is reasonable. There is also no way for police to tell who has a phone and who doesn't at a protest, so you aren’t highlighting yourself anymore by not bringing your phone (or turning it off), unlike say wearing a mask and sunglasses to reduce facial recognition visually highlights you.

[therobots927]

Thanks, that was a very thoughtful comment and you basically read my mind, in that I have become so paranoid that I’m afraid to go to a protest. And I can definitely see how that plays right into their hand. I think there is definitely a lot of room for messaging like yours because it seems like now many are becoming aware of the surveillance situation which is good but at the same time can result in a form of learned helplessness.

[mdbh2]

It’s a weird new world for sure out there and honestly everyone is going through this.

Even the CIA had to stand up a whole new department years ago when the realised they even with all of their tradecraft and gadgets they couldn’t even move around London without the Brits knowing about it and had to totally change how they did business as a result. It’s not just an average protestor on the street problem at all.

I think a big part of the problem comes from this idea that you’re trying to be invisible and you keep running into all these new layers of problems all the damned time.

Maybe I’m using E2EE apps but the people I’m talking with take screenshots and run them through co-pilot or put them into their iCloud backups or a million other scenarios. It just feels like such an unwinnable game sometimes that you can very easily and convincingly get yourself to a place where you feel overwhelmed and you just freeze which is such a trap in and of itself.

I’d recommend keeping the illegal activity side of things extremely fucking low to non-existent personally and everything else will become much simpler as a result. It’s much easier to just not have evidence than trying to hide it. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do things with a sense of purpose though. There are many ways to frustrate the opposition, to tie up their resources, to send them on wild goose chases, to wear down their morale that are all firmly in the legal category.

[therobots927]

Very good advice. I make a big effort to stay on the good side of the law as like you I have a healthy respect for their abilities. I’m also interested in your last couple sentences there about sending them on wild goose chases. It reminds me of a YouTube video I watched recently about a way to send AI data scrapers into an infinite hall of mirrors filled with randomly generated text. Not something I have the time to cook up at the moment but I found it amusing. At the same time it’s not hard for me to imagine how easy it would be to pass laws that make such efforts to poison AI a felony.