A guide to protect your devices against surveillance at protests

Long Read
graphics of people viewing their phones
Explainer

If the police seize your phone during a protest, they can gain access to your location data. Here's how to better control access to your data (UK edition).

Explainer

If the police seize your phone during a protest, they can gain access to your phone's content. Here's how you can better control access (UK edition).

Explainer

The police can access your digital communications. Learn how to limit the risk.

Explainer

The police can access your mobile phone’s ‘unique identifiers’. Learn how to maintain your anonymity (UK edition).

If you go to a protest, the police have a range of methods of tracking and identifying you through your phone, and they can potentially even access data on your phone remotely.

This section of the 'Free to Protest' guide focuses on a range of ways you can make your phone more secure when you go to a protest. But to be clear, there is no guaranteed way of protecting your device from police surveillance, just methods and strategies to reduce risk.

You can visit the separate 'Police surveillance of your devices' section of the 'Free to Protest' guide to learn about the specific technologies and capabilities that the police can use to surveil you through your phone or your data, such as hacking, mobile phone extraction, IMSI catchers, Cloud extraction, and social media monitoring.

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