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.
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.
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.
Good additions, thanks.
My phone does, but im not sure if normal google/apple phones do by default.
Thank you, I have been saying this. Use a regular camera and be sure to delete meta data off images and videos when uploading!
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.
You’ve never heard of a stingray or cell site simulator?
https://www.404media.co/inside-ices-tool-to-monitor-phones-in-entire-neighborhoods/
What qualifies as an “emergency situation”? I imagine that definition could be stretched pretty thinly
Yeah cell tower data is private just like your google search history is private. Which means absolutely not private. Also cops can (and do) use fake cell towers to make your phone connect to something that they have live access to.