At the same clock, it ’ s a dependable mind to bring a earphone to a protest so you can record what ’ s happening and get the message out on sociable media. Filming police is completely legal and within your rights, and it ’ second one of the few tools citizens have against police ferociousness. It ’ second besides crucial to be able to communicate with others in real time or to find your friends in case you get separated .
To reconcile this tension — between wanting to protect your privacy and wanting to digitally document protests and police misdeeds — the safest option is to leave your primary telephone, which contains a massive come of individual information about you, at home and rather bring a particularly prepared burner telephone to protests.
I discuss how to do this at duration below, and in the video recording above .
What if I Can’t Afford a Burner Phone?
I bought a Nokia 1.3 smartphone for $ 99, vitamin a well as three months of prepay phone service for $ 40. If this is besides expensive for you, you may have other options :
- If you have an old phone collecting dust in a drawer, as long as it still works and the battery still holds a charge, you can use this as your burner phone rather than buying a new one. You just need a new SIM card, like one that comes with prepaid cell service. Make sure to factory reset the phone before getting ready to protest.
- There are even cheaper phones and prepaid service options than the ones I chose, and these can work fine as well.
- If you want to avoid paying for phone service for your second phone, depending on your current cell phone provider and what types of phones you have, you may be able to remove the SIM card from your main phone and insert it into your burner phone, and then put it back after the protest. This will cause all calls and texts to temporarily go to your burner phone instead of your main one. You’ll want to make sure the SIM card slot on the second phone can accommodate the size of the SIM card you have on your primary phone.
If a separate burner earphone placid isn ’ thyroxine an option and you decide you need to bring your elementary earphone, here are some steps to take to make it safer and less likely for your private data to end up in the hands of the patrol :
- Disable fingerprint and face unlock, and instead require typing a passcode or password to unlock your phone. This makes it take longer to get into your phone, but it also makes it considerably harder for police to get in without your consent.
- Make sure your passcode or password is not easily guessable. If you’re using a numeric passcode, it should be at least 6 digits, but longer is better.
- Set up a SIM PIN, which prevents police from removing the SIM card from your phone and inserting it into another, which would allow them to take over your phone number. Here are iPhone instructions and Android instructions for doing this. If you set a SIM PIN, you’ll need to type it every time you reboot your phone in addition to your passcode.
- If you’re using Android, make sure your phone’s storage is encrypted (all iPhones have encrypted storage). On most Android phones, you can look in the Settings app, under Security > “Encrypt phone” to find phone encryption settings.
- Disable every smartphone feature that isn’t necessary like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and location services. You can also keep your phone in airplane mode when you don’t need to use the network. This will make your phone leak less information that police can use to track you.
The Markup published some good steps to take before bringing your chief call into a protest, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation has a estimable usher as well .
There are extra tips for non-burner phones in a video I made with my colleague Lauren Feeney in 2017, “ How to Protect Your privacy at a Protest. ”
Picking Out a Burner Phone
The main criteria for picking out a cheap burner call is cost, which means iPhones are out. You may be able to find an old or refurbished iPhone for around $ 200, but Android phones can do the job good angstrom well for much less. It ’ randomness coarse for low-end Android phones to be riddled with security issues that never get fixed, so the future standard is finding a phone that supports the latest security updates .
With this in mind, I settled on the Nokia 1.3, which I bought for $ 99 on Amazon. This call was released in March 2020, and it comes with the latest adaptation of Android ( the Go version for low-end devices ). It seems to have a good battery life and a decent camera, which is about all that ’ mho required for this earphone .
I was besides looking for a cheap prepay telephone plan and ended up choosing Mint Mobile. I ordered a SIM batting order that comes with 3 months of avail, besides on Amazon, for $ 40 .
photograph : Micah Lee I ’ meter using this telephone and this call overhaul, but these steps should be similar no matter what model earphone or earphone service supplier you go with .
Using a Password Manager
Everyone who is dangerous about digital security should be using a password director. password managers are apps that create and storehouse passwords for you, allowing you to use impregnable, random passwords without needing to memorize them. All your passwords are saved in an code vault, and you unlock them using a single passphrase that you do memorize .
The serve of setting up this burner telephone requires keeping track of a bunch together of passwords, so if you ’ re not already using one, you should set one up beginning. Some good options are Bitwarden, KeePassXC, LastPass, and 1Password .
When you ’ re setting up your burner call, you ’ ll want to save the comply information in your password director :
- Username and password for prepaid mobile service account
- Username and password for burner Google account
- PIN for unlocking the phone
- PIN for Signal
- Any other PINs or login information related to your phone
Setting Up and Locking Down the Nokia 1.3 or Other Android Phone
Watch the video for a dispatch tutorial on configuring the Nokia 1.3 to get quick to bring to a protest. much of the advice applies to early up-to-date Android phones. The tutorial steps include :
- Inserting the prepaid Mint Mobile SIM card and activating cell phone service
- Creating a burner Google account to go along with the burner phone
- Installing system updates, and adjusting all of the Android settings to be as secure, and to leak as little data, as possible
- Installing and configuring the Signal app, and adding the contacts you’ll need during the protest to the device in such a way that they don’t get uploaded to the cloud
- Installing social media apps
- Setting up Google Photos to automatically upload photos and videos to the cloud, so that you’ll be able to recover them from another device even if police confiscate or break your phone
I besides went to a Black Lives Matter protest in Oakland, California, to field trial this burner phone. The video includes photos and footage that I took so you can see the quality of the television camera.
photograph : Micah Lee
A Note About Anonymity
If you carry a earphone with you, you don ’ t have placement privacy. Police are able to use devices called cell-site simulators, besides known as Stingrays or IMSI-catchers, to monitor and collect data from all phones at a protest. additionally, telecommunication and technical school companies collect their own huge location databases from phones, and this sort of datum is not potential to anonymize .
careful ! ! if you protest you can be tracked using your call. we know because examined a huge “ anonymous ” dataset on smartphone movements and were able to follow protestors back to their homes https : //t.co/U6hVTTI9WU pic.twitter.com/ae8sZbi91r— stuart andrew thompson (@stuartathompson) June 1, 2020
Using a burner earphone can help with this problem, particularly if you leave it powered off or in airplane mode except when you need to use it. But if you actually want to make sure your burner phone international relations and security network ’ thyroxine connected to your identity in any way, you have to do a lot more workplace :
- You have to buy the phone and phone service in person using cash instead of online, and pick a carrier that allows you to activate service without asking for identification.
- Whenever you need to use the internet — first on your computer to activate your phone service, and then on your burner phone to install updates and apps — you need to do so anonymously by using Tor Browser or a public Wi-Fi network that’s far from your home.
- You should never have your primary phone and your burner phone powered on in the same place at the same time, and you should never power on your burner phone at your house.
If they search your burner, they ’ ll addition access to far less information about your life, your friends, and your activism .
You besides need to take extra steps to stay anonymous at a protest, such as wearing characterless clothes, covering your side ( you should be doing this anyhow since we ’ re in the middle of a ball-shaped coronavirus pandemic ), covering tattoo, and making a design to avoid license plate readers or using populace transit cards that can track your movements .
Keeping yourself completely anonymous while using a burner earphone for protests is outside the setting of this article. rather, these steps present a middle ground where it ’ randomness more difficult, but not impossible, for police to learn your identity, and if they confiscate and search your burner earphone, they ’ ll gain access to army for the liberation of rwanda less secret information about your life, your friends, and your activism than if they had confiscated your primary phone .
Before the Protest
Each time you ’ re prepare to go to a protest, it ’ randomness crucial to know precisely what you ’ ll be bringing with you. Leave all electronics at base except for your burner telephone : Don ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate bring a laptop, a smartwatch ( regretful, your steps won ’ t count ), USB sticks, or anything else. And if you ’ rhenium planning on using your burner call to bring to different protests, make sure to delete all your photos and videos from the burner call after copying them to another device, and to delete any Signal conversations from former protests, before you head out .
It ’ sulfur always safest to go to protests with a buddy or a group of friends. You should put the call numbers of everyone you know who will be at the protest in your burner earphone in encase you need to contact them. If your friends are bringing burner phones of their own, put their burner numbers in your contacts .
You should besides make sure you know who to call in lawsuit you get arrested. Protest organizers should provide attendees with a legal support call number, often run by an organization like the National Lawyers Guild. You should write this telephone count on your skin with a permanent wave marker. If you get arrested, the police will confiscate your telephone so you won ’ metric ton be able to look it up there. You ’ ll want to call this number from imprison in order to get legal back .
And it ’ s significant to keep in mind that the coronavirus pandemic is hush ongoing. Make certain to bring a face mask and hand sanitizer, and attempt to social distance when you can to avoid spreading the virus. It ’ sulfur besides constantly a good mind to bring a bottle of body of water .
During the Protest
No matter what cops might tell you, it ’ s completely legal to film them in public. Filming the police is one of the few tools citizens have to force accountability on them. If it weren ’ thymine for people filming police brutality on their cellphones, we wouldn ’ t have closely therefore much testify of far-flung systemic racism within american police forces .
It ’ mho good to share photos and videos from protests on social media, but you should besides be mindful of the wishes of other protesters. While you ’ re legally allowed to movie anything in a populace assembly, it ’ second respectful to ask license before taking photograph of people ’ south faces .
If you ’ re paying for enough mobile data, you may want to configure Google Photos to mechanically upload all photos and video recording you take to the cloud. This way if patrol confiscate or damage your earphone during the protest, you ’ ll be able to log in to your burner Google account from another device to access your media late on. Be mindful, however, that pictures in Google Photos are not encrypted, meaning Google will be able to provide them to authorities if subpoena.
Read more: The environmental impact of a PlayStation 4
If You Get Arrested
evening if you ’ ra passive and aren ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate breaking any laws, police might arrest you at a protest. If you can tell that you ’ re about to get arrested, and it ’ s safe to do so, exponent off your telephone. This makes it a distribute hard for cops to get into your call .
Police do not have the right to search your phone without your consent unless they get a warrant. If an officer asks you to unlock your earphone, or if they grab your earphone from your hands while it ’ randomness unlock, tell them : “ I do not consent to a search of my phone. I want to talk to a lawyer. ” ( It ’ s OK if you don ’ t have a lawyer yet, you should distillery say this. ) They may confiscate your call and illegally search it anyhow, but it ’ south best to make it clear at the moment that you don ’ thymine consent .
It ’ south besides potential that cops might try to steal or break your phone, particularly if they noticed you filming them being violent. If any of this happens, at least it will barely be your bum burner earphone with minimal data on it quite than an expensive telephone full of private data about your life and your activism .
