The best way to make sure your smartphone is secure at a protest is to leave it at home. But many people find it difficult to leave their phone at home – so what can you do to make your phone more secure when going on a protest?
To prevent the phone being seized during arrest and data on it being found:
Turn off your lock screen notifications, so messages aren’t visible as they come in. Clear chat histories / set disappearing messages in chats, or sign out of messaging apps completely. Delete images, messages and files which you want to keep private off your phone. You shouldn’t take anything to a protest that you don’t want to risk the police finding – that applies to data on your phone too! Turn off Touch/Face ID. This makes it harder for police to access your phone if anything happens. To prevent the phone’s location tracking placing you at the protest, which could put you on lists for more surveillance or assist prosecution:
If possible, keep your phone either switched off unless you need it, or turn off GPS and place it in airplane mode. Sign out of apps that track your location or disable location-sharing, and turn off/clear your location history. The best way to protect your privacy is to limit the amount of information your phone tracks in the first place. If you want to learn more about how the police track phones and devices at protests, Privacy International have produced a very comprehensive guide with further advice.
Q: Can police look at my phone if I’m stopped and searched?
The police don’t have the right to look at your phone during a routine stop and search.
The exception to this is if you’re stopped for a terrorism-related offence, in which case the police have more powers.
However, police may still try to get access to your phone when they stop you. You are not obliged to hand your phone over unless you are arrested, or the police officer produces a warrant.
If you can, challenge the police on this behaviour. If a legal observer or friend is nearby ask them to document what is happening.
You can refuse to unlock your phone, and following some of the measures above (such as turning off lock screen notifications and making it harder to unlock your phone) helps.
Most of the institutions that I come across insist on their 'members' connected. Personally I hate mobile phones except when I am meeting somebody and need to know where to meet. Plus the use of WhatsApp (and such) video/audio connection that is essentially free. I am thinking of the ole days when I had to find a post office offering telephone connection to my loved ones in a different country than the one I was in. It didn't cost a fortune, but it wasn't exactly easy.
Straying off the point here .. I insist .. to these 'institutions' that it is impolite and not exactly formal to try and make proclamations and insistence to use .. mobile phones. Email address not connected to mobile phone helps ..
I am old school and the computer etc keyboard is far superior to the usual crappy miniature screen and keyboard format that mobile phone has ..
The final point being that trying to insist on having a letter comms with the 'institutions' may lead to delay in solving the problems created by .. 'institutions'. In other words they want you to solve their logistical problems of having to reduce their costs and increase their profits. Easy peasey analysis. Welcome
What? Truly dissapear up one's own...anyhoo utility of what? The use of smartphones in order to overthrow our oppressors is the moronic attempt to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear......WiFi is intrinsic to the surveilance culture just as Bitcoin and Hadron collidors embody the aburdity of neoliberal (so-called), "economic" theory #LoS
P.S What I feel the Goddess forbids is another man in the Whitehouse and another as Archbishop of Canterbury....
on January 6, 2025, 6:27 am