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EFF's Cell Phone Guide For US Protesters
An anonymous reader writes: The Electronic Frontier Foundation has updated its guide for protecting yourself and your cell phone at a protest. In addition to being extremely powerful tools (real-time communication to many watchers via social media, and video recording functionality), cell phones can also give authorities a lot of information about you if they confiscate it. The EFF is trying to encourage cell phone use and prepare people to use them. (The guide is based on U.S. laws, but much of the advice makes sense for other places as well.) Here are a few small snippets: "Start using encrypted communications channels. Text messages, as a rule, can be read and stored by your phone company or by surveillance equipment in the area. ... If the police ask to see your phone, tell them you do not consent to the search of your device. Again, since the Supreme Court's decision in Riley, there is little question that officers need a warrant to access the contents of your phone incident to arrest, though they may be able to seize the phone and get a warrant later. ... If your phone or electronic device was seized, and is not promptly returned when you are released, you can file a motion with the court to have your property returned."
Use a shitty pre-paid phone when you're out rabble rousing.
Wipe it before you leave the house.
Do live streams so they cannot just erase your shit. I also have my phone encrypted with a one and done failed password shutdown and a extreme acceleration shutdown trigger as well, go ahead and grab it. I'm not really worried about the police my motivation is geared towards my phone being stolen.
The best advice anywhere in the world, is to NEVER go toa protest, unless you are a political science or law student and wish to make politics your life. For everyone else, it is best to stay faaaaar away.
1. Use a burner phone if you're doing quasi-legal stuff
2. If you're going to film police or protestors, make sure the images are uploaded to a cloud server in real time, not stored in a retrievable manner on the device. This is only really doable on a jailbroken Android device, but what you do is have the pictures "magically vanish" using a script on the phone that copies the files to a remote server and then removes them from the device.
3. Livestream instead and have someone remotely save the video as it happens.
2 and 3 are probably not doable on prepaid data plans for obvious reasons, but if you're going to start trouble you should probably not implicate yourself in a crime.
Confiscation is legal. When a pack of thugs in costumes takes your phone to keep you from exposing their crimes, they're stealing your phone, not confiscating it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
watching too much foxnews again? OWS might be thoroughly lefty, but there are plenty of issues worth protesting about, like atrophy of liberty and due process rights..
atrophy of liberty and due process rights..
I have the right to money, in my pocket, right now! There's "liberty" and "god we trust" printed on it, and that's what I want! Gimme gimme gimme!
- every Occupy "protester"
nope. I don't think that's what they were advocating. They just want a government not run by the bankers.
For example, take steps to disable 'data communication ports on the device that you don't use.
Disable the ability to pair over USB or bluetooth.
Use nonstandard filesystems.
Analysts attempting to execute an illegal search of your device are not going to be "technical gurus"; too few of those to go around.
They'll be using standard software tools they bought from some vendor.
Make sure no "standard" tools will work as expected on your device, and their costs go up tremendously.
Cool story bro. I was there. I saw them graffiti the cell phone stores to protest their phone bills, because I was there. I saw them yelling outside the banks to demand money, because I was there.
They want money. The bankers have money. They want the money. Now.
well perhaps they feel the money the banks have gotten rich on actually belongs to the taxpayers... It's not too far from the truth considering the massive debt we're in now.
That doesn't address the desire to send text messages during protests without being eavesdropped .
Or the issue of documenting the event and not having your phone taken off you, thus losing all those pics/vids/etc.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Bring a SMALL phone, preferably of the old candy-bar shape. You never know where you may have to hide it.
No, they see the banks as Scrooge McDuck's money bin and they want in.
If they cared about deficit spending they'd advocate balanced budgets and higher taxes to pay off the debts. If they cared about the taxpayers they'd advocate not spending tax revenues on pointless wars. They don't advocate these things because they don't care about anything. They're selfish idiots who want money, money, money.
Only apply the simplest amount of technology to remain efficient. This is a case where too much technology is the enemy. Go back to CB, Amateur, and walkie talkie radio for communication. Use a camera that can record to an SD card and periodically switch out the card and find a safe place to "dead drop" it. This way, the police can glean very little, if anything at all.
If your phone or electronic device was seized, and is not promptly returned when you are released, you can file a motion with the court to have your property returned.
No, if your phone was seized and left your sight, you must consider it to be compromised. You can not use it again and therefor it has now value to you anymore.
We need a change in law that recognizes this fact, giving the original owner the option to either have the property returned or a monetary reimbursement instead.
The only sensible thing to do, imo (aside from not carrying anything that can ID you), from /both/ the standpoint of /and/ from the standpoint of adding to a protest's effectiveness (something just a bit lost in the
personal privacy,
EFF article), is to bring just the cheapest dumb phone that you can find, and at the site immediately exchange it
with another protestor unknown to you, for his/hers. Shortly test both, and you're on.
You've never actually read anything from the occupy groups have you? You're just coughing up a canned opinion from whatever opinion mill news channel you favour, right?
Block all cell signals so the looters can't send their movies anywhere. That's illegal, you say? And looting and pillaging isn't?
Bring a burn phone with a camera. Add software to it to give it a "duress" mode. When the duress mode is activated, it starts recording and videoing everything and uploading it to a public server in a foreign country so long as it has power. Then let the police confiscate it. It will be interesting to hear what they say when they think no one is listening.
It wouldn't hurt to put a bunch of viruses on it as well. Preferably some that spread via Bluetooth as well as USB. It would make dealing with confiscated phones very expensive for the police, and maybe they will stop doing it after they get infected a few times.
They do protest things like wars but then you call them dirty hippies.....
See how they can't win?