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Going to a Protest? Don't Bring Your Phone Without Doing This First (www.pcmag.com)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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The right to assemble and protest is enshrined in American law, but it can still be dangerous to hit the streets to make your voice heard. Your devices are a treasure trove of information about you, and you may not always know who's collecting that data. Take a few minutes before you go to assess your digital and physical safety. Even if you have nothing to hide, you don't want to accidentally give law enforcement officials any information you didn't intend to share. Follow these tips to lock down your phone before a protest or other peaceful assembly.

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[–] 46 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (14 children)

Shitty article. Doesnt even contain the words SIM card or IMEI so it has no business advising people on whats safe to bring to a protest. There is no such thing as cop-proofing a mobile phone unless all wireless modules have been removed. The cops can and do track peoples cell tower signal derived locations and they can log active Wifi/Bluetooth MAC addresses in their vicinity.

As others have said, just dont bring it if you are scared. Consider just using a bodycam or gopro style camera.

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  • [–] 14 points 10 months ago (6 children)

    Modern phones rotate random MAC addresses. For WiFi, capturing SSID probes can be enough to track somebody though (some phones also have some mitigation for that too, like not probing for an SSID after it hasn't been seen for some amount of time). Even when turned off, many phones, including iPhones, turn into BLE beacons similar to AirTags, which can be used to track you.

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    almost worthless. I just learned that the android 13 xiaomi phone of a family member broadcasts some of the wifi AP names it knows when scanning for available networks! constantly! why the fuck it does I don't know because neither are hidden networks that would need this, and there's no setting for it

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Are those networks marked as hidden SSID networks? Hidden networks require the client STA to broadcast them to find them.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago

    they aren't. one of them is an AP from another phone, so I believe that one couldn't even be configured as hidden by accident, because the phone does not offer it. another is one I sometimes use, and it's not hidden either.

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  • [+] -11 points 10 months ago (5 children)

    This is slightly false in an alarmist fashion. At least in the US, the police are not actively tracking anything without a subpoena to the cellular provider of the phone in question. They can look at the location data after the fact, using a court ordered subpoena. They can also use live location data in an emergency situation,also using a court ordered subpoena.

    Cellular data from cell towers on cell networks are private property of the cellular provider companies. That's not to say you are private while on them. Just that the police are not actively tracking your location through them without great effort for each individual they wish to track.

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  • [–] 13 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Commercial location data, in this case acquired from hundreds of millions of phones via a company called Penlink, can be queried without a warrant, according to an internal ICE legal analysis shared with 404 Media.

    https://www.404media.co/inside-ices-tool-to-monitor-phones-in-entire-neighborhoods/

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

    I thought this was using SDKs embedded in apps and advertising platforms. This is a different threat model. You need to block ads and prefer using websites instead of apps which have more access to device info like the advertising ID.

    If you've got an Android, go to Settings, search for ads, and find the advertising ID and delete the ID. It's a stable identifier that can be used to identify your phone.

    Switch to more private browsers like Firefox for Mobile and install uBlock Origin.

    EDIT: I'm not saying this will protect you against IMSI catchers or tower based drag nets. In addition to not bringing your phone, when you do go home you need an entirely different set of tools to protect yourself.

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  • [–] 10 points 10 months ago

    They can also use live location data in an emergency situation,also using a court ordered subpoena.

    What qualifies as an "emergency situation"? I imagine that definition could be stretched pretty thinly

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