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The protester's guide to smartphone security

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Re: The protester's guide to smartphone security

#131

Post by slowloraorwhat »

iseanstevens wrote: post #55

Also Meshtastic.org is a cheap (various It supports strong encryption layer and over 1 km/mile per “hop” in most circumstances. Designed originally for off grid, it’s very flexible and pretty polished. Abstracts your phone into a UI. Has a whole ecosystem behind it. I’ve been using it for festivals and tracking my vehicles (high theft area) for years. Very handy should infra not be available. Should be great for prot…

LORA is a such a painfully low bitrate the best you would get is some text. I think 20/50 kbps in absolute best case, more like ~1000 bits per second.

Re: The protester's guide to smartphone security

#132

Post by slowloraorwhat »

idlewords wrote: post #99

Unfortunately this is a topic that attracts LARPers. Remember that if things get spicy, you are not going to settings nerd your way out of a bad interaction with the police. Tech advice for legal and illegal protests is pretty much diametrically opposite, and advice for countries like the United States is much different than for somewhere like Egypt. It's complicated!

[flagged]

Re: The protester's guide to smartphone security

#134

Post by paulryanrogers »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #103
echoangle wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking along the lines of „the state wants to oppress the protestors and makes it illegal“, but if you just want to avoid surveillance at a legal protest, yeah, you’re right.

Going into a protest with illegal communication devices is almost a direct sabotage of the protest's intent. It gives law enforcement a legitimate reason to act, even if almost certainly ex post facto . And it paints the protest as wilfully illegal--you went in intending to break the law.

If you're protesting an oppressive regime then it's likely most privacy respecting methods are illegal.

Re: The protester's guide to smartphone security

#135

Post by paulryanrogers »

slowloraorwhat wrote: post #132
idlewords wrote: post #99

Unfortunately this is a topic that attracts LARPers. Remember that if things get spicy, you are not going to settings nerd your way out of a bad interaction with the police. Tech advice for legal and illegal protests is pretty much diametrically opposite, and advice for countries like the United States is much different than for somewhere like Egypt. It's complicated!

[flagged]

Thankfully this attitude didn't set in during the civil rights movements of the 60s! Or we might still have had separate white and black bathrooms.

If we keep following such advice we may again have special water fountains and schools for those other people.

Re: The protester's guide to smartphone security

#136

Post by portaouflop »

dinosaurdynasty wrote: post #22
Cpoll wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing in this context it means drain the battery. I haven't heard of this technique, but it seems plausible, by tricking the phone into constantly transmitting over WiFi or cell.

I wonder how useful purism phones are for this (all external communication, including GPS, has hardware shutoffs). They are expensive though...

I just have a 20 yo Nokia - doesn’t have all the fancy stuff, only can send texts

Re: The protester's guide to smartphone security

#137

Post by mattnewton »

HeatrayEnjoyer wrote: post #42
kevindamm wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reasoning behind this is that your fingerprints and face etc. are public knowledge. Whereas you can retain your right to remain silent (about your password/PIN), failing to provide these aspects of your person can be viewed as not cooperating.

How does that mix with making direct eye contact

It’s not speech, ie not protected. I would assume they can force that in practice.

Re: The protester's guide to smartphone security

#138

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

mmooss wrote: post #39
diggan wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of groups have used https://briarproject.org/ successfully in the past, I've heard. Assumes you're using Android though which if you're using a burner, you most likely are.

> successfully Successfully in terms of communication or in terms of security? Successful communication is easy if you don't worry about security. Just post it on Instagram. How do you know if your security is successful? How do you know if your messages were intercepted and read, your app was hacked, data was extracted from it, etc.? The attackers (authorities or otherwise) are not going to tell you.

Sometimes, when a protest makes the government extra uncomfortable, they'll shut off the internet. So it's probably best to not rely on Instagram.

Re: The protester's guide to smartphone security

#139

Post by leptons »

slowloraorwhat wrote: post #131
iseanstevens wrote: post #55

Also Meshtastic.org is a cheap (various It supports strong encryption layer and over 1 km/mile per “hop” in most circumstances. Designed originally for off grid, it’s very flexible and pretty polished. Abstracts your phone into a UI. Has a whole ecosystem behind it. I’ve been using it for festivals and tracking my vehicles (high theft area) for years. Very handy should infra not be available. Should be great for prot…

LORA is a such a painfully low bitrate the best you would get is some text. I think 20/50 kbps in absolute best case, more like ~1000 bits per second.

1000 bits/s is still way faster than anyone can type a text message.

Re: The protester's guide to smartphone security

#140

Post by liontwist »

weakfish wrote: post #116
georgeecollins wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the "strategic ambiguity" here is ethics. Civil rights protestors were clearly breaking the law when they sat at diners that wouldn't serve black people. But who today thinks they were wrong? When I was a kid, students protested at Universities to divest from Apartheid era South Africa. People can agree on what the law is, but they don't always agree on what is right. Sometimes a democratic government will ze…

Yeah, I think a key point here is recognizing that the law isn’t always aligned with morality, depending on the issue you’re protesting for/against.

How would you feel if your political opponents made similar justifications? Are they laws for the thee and not for me?
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