The EFF's Guide to Attending a Protest

[philipthebucket@ponder.cat]

I bought my transit ticket with a credit card, and they picked me up. Can I give them your number, will you be my lawyer now?

[philipthebucket@ponder.cat]

Thank you. I don't know what I was thinking, posting this on lemmy.ml where any useful advice will immediately be countered with "no no don't pay attention to that, I just thought about it for 3 seconds and I'm pretty sure I have a better answer than whatever the people whose whole job and organization is this." I won't repeat the mistake.

[philipthebucket@ponder.cat]

A lot of people are still coordinating their protest activities through Facebook. Recommending signal or matrix is a step up, full stop.

[something_random_tho@lemmy.world]

Even if your phone is OFF, it can still track you from the towers and transmit your audio (this is documented in court cases bringing down the mob). It's built into the chips themselves, at a lower level than the operating system. Do not bring your phones to protests.

[something_random_tho@lemmy.world]

None of these except Signal and SimpleX hide metadata (who you're talking to, when, and how often). I also have trouble where iOS "instant" notifications in SimpleX aren't delivered--hopefully this gets fixed.

[surph_ninja@lemmy.world]

Be mindful of local risks. In trying to end the Stop Cop City protests, the Georgia attorney general has declared all of these self-protection tactics to be criminal intent. Not bringing your phone to be tracked at the protest, or bringing a burner, is enough to get arrested in Georgia.

https://georgiarecorder.com/2024/02/12/georgia-ag-claims-not-having-a-phone-makes-you-a-criminal/

Granted, it’s just a scare tactic, and I don’t think any of this would hold up in court. But simply being arrested for something like this is enough to ruin some people’s lives.

I’m not trying to dissuade anyone at all, but I think people should know what they’re getting into. This AG has his eyes on the governor’s mansion, and he’s going completely off the rails to make a name for himself.

[umbrella@lemmy.ml]

holy shit, what court cases?

[something_random_tho@lemmy.world]

I'm not sure of the specific case numbers but searching brings up many sources, e.g. https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/fbi-taps-cell-phone-mic-as-eavesdropping-tool/ (2006)

[davel@lemmy.ml]

lemm.ml is “a community of privacy […] enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers,” and, after over a century of US state propaganda, repressions, purges, and assassinations upon us, communists might know a thing or two about militancy against US state power, including protests.

[philipthebucket@ponder.cat]

The EFF might know a thing or two about OPSEC as pertains to activities against US state power. They know more than you do.

You don't automatically absorb all the knowledge of "communists" and a century of real-world experience simply because you're on lemmy.ml. Again: EFF knows more than you do, on this topic. If that kind of thing is a confusing concept, you need to get out more, and stop looking at lemmy.ml as conferring a special type of power that the EFF isn't privy to.

[davel@lemmy.ml]

I didn’t say the EFF isn’t also knowledgeable, nor that we are more knowledgeable than them in all areas.

[philipthebucket@ponder.cat]

The guy certainly did, who said "Don’t bring anything with a modem and you’re good to go," ignoring quite a bit of additional advice that the article gives that could really help some people out and explicitly implying that they don't need to read it as long as they don't bring their phone.

Maybe it's not fair for me to ascribe that to all of lemmy.ml just because that one person did it. There are plenty of people in all corners of the internet who are sure they're instant experts on everything, y'all don't have a monopoly. What I was actually trying to say was that "being a community of privacy enthuiasts" and a history of communism doesn't give anyone a pass on ignoring advice from the EFF and instead offering their own 2-second take on it as an expert opinion. I think that's a foolish habit of thought to get into.

If you had responded with, "Hey, don't blame this guy on lemmy.ml, we're concerned with US state power and of course we take seriously what the EFF has to say about this topic" then I probably wouldn't have been snarky about it. But I do apologize about being snarky about it, I think it was a little un called for.

[davel@lemmy.ml]

All good and the EFF link you posted is a good jumping off point as well.

[engineergaming@feddit.nl]

In this case, I think it matters that you can selfhost a server under your control. And to potentially have redundant servers. Maybe even disabling federation to be sure the big ones don't get the metadata.

Also while the court ordrs have shown that Signal doesn't collect much metadata now, it does not mean it is not capable of it - which is what matters in a life-threatening situation. Like, all the traffic goes through a single point - there is still trust involved.