How to Protest Safely in the Age of Surveillance

If you insist on using biometric unlocking methods to access your devices faster, keep in mind that some phones have an emergency feature to disable this type of lock. Hold the wake button and either volume button simultaneously on an iPhone, for example, and it will lock on its own and require a passcode to unlock rather than FaceID or TouchID, even if they’re enabled. Most devices also let you take photos or record videos without unlocking them first, a good way to keep your phone locked as much as possible.

Your face

Facial recognition has become one of the most powerful tools for identifying your presence at a protest. Consider wearing a face mask and sunglasses to make it much more difficult to be identified by facial recognition in surveillance footage or photos or videos of the protest on social media. Fight for the Future’s Greer cautions, however, that the accuracy of the most effective facial recognition tools available to law enforcement remains an unknown, and that a simple surgical or KN95 mask may no longer be enough to defeat well-honed face-tracking technology.

If you really want to not be identified, she says, a full face mask can be much safer, or even a Halloween-style mask. “I’ve seen people wearing funny cosplay-style cartoon masks, mascot costumes, or silly costumes,” says Greer, giving as an example Donald Trump And Elon Musk masks she saw protesters wearing Protests against Tesla withdrawal against Musk and the so-called Ministry of Government Effectiveness (DOGE). “It’s a great way to challenge facial recognition and also make the protest more fun.”

You should also think about what clothes you wear before you go. Colorful clothing or clearly visible logos make you more recognizable to law enforcement and easier to track. If you have tattoos that make you identifiable, consider covering them.

Greer warns, however, that it’s increasingly difficult to prevent agencies with the authority and authority to monitor them from learning the simple fact that you attended a protest. For those of you in the most sensitive positions — such as undocumented immigrants at risk of deportation — she suggests considering staying home rather than depending on any concealment technique to disguise your presence at an event.

Another factor to consider is your mode of transportation. Driving a car to attend an event, whether yours or someone else’s, can expose you to surveillance. automatic license plate readersor ALPR, which can be used to identify a vehicle’s movements. Also note that in addition to license plates, these ALPRs can detect other words and expressionsincluding those on bumper stickers, signs and even T-shirts.

More generally, everyone participating in a protest needs to think – perhaps more than ever – about their tolerance for risk, from simple identification to the possibility of being arrested or detained. “I think it’s important to say that protesting in the United States now carries higher risks than before: it comes with a real possibility of physical violence and mass arrests,” says Danacea Vo, founder of Cyberlixir, a cybersecurity provider for nonprofits and vulnerable communities. “Even compared to the protests that took place last month, people were able to show up bare-faced and march. Today, things have changed.”

Your online footprint

While most of the privacy and security considerations of attending an in-person event naturally concern your body, the devices you bring with you, and your physical environment, there are a host of other factors to consider online. It is important to understand how posts on social media and other platforms before, during or after a protest can be collected and used by authorities to identify and track you or others. Simply saying on an online platform that you are attending or have attended an event helps spread the information. And if you take photos or videos during a protest, that content could be used to broaden law enforcement’s view of who attended a protest and what they did while there, including strangers who appear in your images or footage.

Authorities can access your online presence by searching for information about you specifically, but can also get there by using bulk data analysis tools like Dataminr that provide law enforcement and other clients with real-time surveillance connecting people to their online activity. Such tools may also surface in past posts, and if you have ever made violent comments online or alluded to committing crimes, even as a joke, law enforcement could discover the activity and use it against you if you are questioned or arrested at a protest. This is a particular concern for people living in the United States on visas or those with insecure immigration status. The US Department of State has explicitly stated that it monitors the activity of immigrants and travelers on social networks.