Don't take your phone to a protest
this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2025
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Bring an old point and shoot digital camera though. Pics and video might keep you from getting locked up.
If it came to that, the SD card would be confiscated and/or the camera smashed.
Send data to a remote location and don't tell them anything about it. No comment to everything before you get legal advice.
What a boring dystopian article. It’s sad, but necessary.
purchase and use a burner phone instead, and only turn it on when you’re at the site of the demonstration
This should be the de facto response. In addition, I’d suggest not using your personal phone for any protest related communications and stick with burners no matter how much you may trust the organizers.
Burners
The Hated One is another good resource on these topics. The guy is a paranoid and has an extreme threat model, but the information is still on point. Worth watching and sharing.
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Write down your name and ICE information with a sharpie on your body. Use a rugged phone case.
Don’t bother going to peaceful protests, they don’t work against post-truth authoritarian governments.
I've been involved in peaceful protests and in other actions. Get out there and attend peaceful protests. It helps develop your situational awareness, you learn what it's like being at a protest, and often you'll get to find out what happens when the police and/or counter-protestors run amok. And even when the corporate media suppresses reports of protests, there are other ways of getting that information out.
As for non-pacifistic direct action, operational security and comms security are even more critical. This thread is probably not the place to discuss it in detail. Just be aware that the few normal constraints on the behavior of the authorities have been relaxed or lifted entirely.
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