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The protester's guide to smartphone security

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Re: The protester's guide to smartphone security

#161

Post by AnarchismIsCool »

mmooss wrote: post #43
upofadown wrote: post #27

Briar messenger is specifically designed for things like protests. I think I would prefer it over Signal. The article says: >Signal has responded to 6 government requests since 2016, and in each case the only information they were able to provide was at most: ... That is the all the information they claimed they had. We have no way to know what they actually collect. Briar runs P2P over Tor so they can't collect data…

> Briar runs P2P over Tor so they can't collect data, even if they should want to. That makes the common, dangerous, naive assumption that the implementation is secure. Correct, complete, secure implementations are very hard. (It also assumes the design is secure, which is impossible to tell based on that limited information. P2P is not any more secure than over the Internet: In fact, it's easier to identify (there a…

It...depends.

If you're not technical, signal is hands down the best solution.

If you have a group that's going to something and you are willing to take some extra steps, something like matrix/briar/simplex/whatever setup with a self hosted instance provides you with the knowledge that all the infrastructure is under your control and that the feds just aren't going to have the time to sit down and figure out how this shit works.

The thing this thread is wildly missing the point on is unless you off a ceo or are a prolific organizer, the feds are systematic. They pick a set of techniques and technologies that cast the widest net possible with the money they have, then spend their time trying to nail people within that venn diagram. Yes, security through obscurity is not ideal in-and-of-itself, but combined with encryption and chaos, you can get much farther than using the same stuff everyone else has been using for a decade+. If you stay near the leading edge of tech the feds are a decade behind you, they still have years of threat briefing powerpoints to sit through before they can even think about implementing a countermeasure.

You could find 1000 CVEs in briar but if only a handful of of people at a demonstration are using it, the feds are still going to be sitting there beating their heads against signal because that's what they know how to do. If they ever find a single high severity CVE in signal, it's game over for everyone.

Re: The protester's guide to smartphone security

#162

Post by lesuorac »

liontwist wrote: post #140
weakfish wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

IIUC, the parent [1] is talking about 2 scenarios going on

1. If you're planning to commit arson you want to have encrypted radios to not get caught.

2. If you're planning a peaceful protest at a location somebody might commit arson you want an encrypted radio so you don't get unfairly punished.

I don't think anybody is arguing that (1) is desirable. They're arguing that the people involved with (2) shouldn't be punished for (1)'s crimes.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42833935

Re: The protester's guide to smartphone security

#163

Post by uoaei »

Onawa wrote: post #105
uoaei wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nitpick: it's sap the battery, as in sapping energy.

I think both 'sap' and 'zap' work in this context, and zap might be the better option because 'sap' can have the additional meaning of moving the energy somewhere else, whereas 'zap' can just mean to remove in general.

"zap" has never meant to remove anything, in general, where are you getting this?

Re: The protester's guide to smartphone security

#164

Post by AnarchismIsCool »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #35

Th smartphone is the greatest mass surveillance device ever conceived, although AI monitored camera networks will probably exceed it very soon. There are basically no countermeasures. Which means freedom is truly at the discretion of the powerful, because once the government goes North Korea there is no going back. I actually think the biggest threat to humanity in the Great Filter sense is authoritarianism, more tha…

Weapons evolve, defenses evolve. There are ways of trivially defeating cell phone tracking, and there are ways of trivially defeating AI cameras (850 ways specifically). Some auth dipshit will probably come up with some other way of betraying the working class and the cycle will repeat itself.

Re: The protester's guide to smartphone security

#165

Post by AnarchismIsCool »

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!

Protester LARPers or police forensics LARPers?

Re: The protester's guide to smartphone security

#166

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

Muromec wrote: post #144
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d go as far as to assume there’s no evading surveillance in a strict sense. If you attend, leave your phone home (atypical usage), go with other people / meet them there / other people you know are there (facial recognition / gait analysis / clothing preference) those are all good data points to predict with high probability where you are and what you’re up to, especially given your typical movements, data usage pa…

>If history is anything to go by, we’re only ever an election, or other political churn, away from your particular sets of beliefs / identifiers being persecuted, or at least your least favourite political prisoners being released and coming after you. it goes other way around too - you are only one election cycle away to be pardoned. And if the protest is succrssfull, you dont need a pardon anyway. Source -- been to…

Being pardoned doesn't help much if you're dead.

A special law shields you? How does a law shield you from persecution?

Over ten years later, I've never forgot this comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6033481

Re: The protester's guide to smartphone security

#167

Post by dostick »

mathieuh wrote: post #157
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.

“If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear” right? That’s the same logic politicians are using to make spying on populations legal.

"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." - Ed Snowden

Re: The protester's guide to smartphone security

#168

Post by weakfish »

lesuorac wrote: post #162
liontwist wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

IIUC, the parent [1] is talking about 2 scenarios going on 1. If you're planning to commit arson you want to have encrypted radios to not get caught. 2. If you're planning a peaceful protest at a location somebody might commit arson you want an encrypted radio so you don't get unfairly punished. I don't think anybody is arguing that (1) is desirable. They're arguing that the people involved with (2) shouldn't be puni…

Agree, nobody (at least not I) is suggesting the former

Re: The protester's guide to smartphone security

#169

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

scarface_74 wrote: post #118
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Burner phones aren't safe. Security through obscurity worked with the 1990s cell network but not with today's vast logging/geolocation tagging.

The idea is that they can’t tie the phone to a person. You also have to make sure you don’t get the burner phone some place with cameras.

Once the phone is on, they can tie it to a person with geolocation. Either directly if you do it at home, or indirectly when traveling in a vehicle associated with you.

Re: The protester's guide to smartphone security

#170

Post by fastball »

ryankrage77 wrote: post #15
tomphoolery wrote: post #11

> However, in this situation it may make more sense to disable biometric authentication. In Face ID, there's a setting that requires direct eye contact in order to open your phone. Highly recommend enabling this when feeling insecure about someone forcing you to open your phone (if it's not already on by default) because it means somebody forcing you to open your phone with Face ID can be easily defeated by simply cl…

This has failed me. I was mugged while black out drunk, and they succesfully unlocked my phone, unlocked my banking app, etc, despite me having the eye contact feature enabled.

How do you know what happened if you were blackout drunk?
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