At protests you should not bring your smartphone but instead rely on anonymous drvices such as Meshtastic.
If you want to bring your smartphone to a protest, set Airplane mode and communicate with others through Bluetooth or WiFi networks using Briar or Bitchat
It’s amazing how many times I saw this knowledge being spread, together with thousands of umbrellas and hard hats during the Hong Kong riots from day one with “Hong Kong, add oil” as their first slogan combined with very mild mannered arguments (we don’t know if it could lead to more serious things) against the extradition law which was supposed to affect maybe half a dozen people per decade, all serious criminals. A law almost every country has on earth that the US used against the daughter of the owner of one of the largest companies in the world, for the flimsiest of reasons, in contrast to the walled-off-to-arrest-one-particular-teen-girl-axe-murderer-to-be-shipped-to-Taiwan-law Hong Kong tried to implement.
How many people have been affected by the Alien Enemies Act again?
And how did the
The protests were call “No kings” remember that? Remember that it was called NO KINGS “Unbiased. Straight. Facts” SAN? Do you remember that? No? Okay, well…“anti-ICE”it isprotests go?Because apart from the shocker that you were being surveilled, I think the protests needed a little bit less “Zero demands, not one more” chants and a little more ‘We demand and protest until we win and get what we want’ kind of thing.
Yeah, if you go protest you should leave your tracking device at home or, even better, with a friend or relative who you know will not be there. The US government doesn’t require subcutaneous tracking chips (yet), you can put yours away.
I don’t understand why cell phones don’t authenticate the towers they connect to. Is this really just a “standards lag behind modern security” thing, or is it on purpose to allow these Stingray devices to be used?
why cell phones don’t authenticate the towers they connect to.
I believe it’s because they assume it’s not necessary because it was until now
- prohibitively expensive, but now a “tower” is less than 2k EUR e.g. https://www.crowdsupply.com/ukama/ukama
- prohibitively complex, see above, namely you don’t need to be a TelCo engineer to get it going
- probably illegal, namely you needed (and I bet still need in most places) wireless band allocation before you could deploy anything
… so I imagine there was no authentication because there was no practical threat beside few “fun” examples in CCC or DEF Con.
The use of Stingray by US law enforcement has been challenged on grounds that the law enforcement agencies have no spectrum license. Those challenges seem not to have found success.
On the other hand, prisons in the US have been stopped from operating cell phone jammers on prison grounds, on the same complaint of no spectrum license.
Even if they did, I don’t see government having trouble getting a proper authentication key.
Those circumstances include immediate threats to national security and situations where a person is in danger of death or serious injury.
Well I see a problem there. It doesn’t specify the cause of the danger or the reason the person is in danger in the first place.
Pass paper notes
When I go to a protest with friends/family we leave our phones at home and then use basic walkie talkies. It’s open channel, so no privacy, but the main goal is to just communicate basics like “I’m safe.” We predetermine a couple of locations to meet up at if things get rough and we’re separated.
EFF missed a fun opportunity to call the Rayhunter “DeCSS”.
I like how the image clearly shows a blue sky for this very expected and foreseeable headline.
