" … and no identifiable tattoos."
That’s exactly what I was thinking lol. Tattoos are way easier to identify than a face so the mask does nothing.
Great red haring though. Not that I ever would but I’ve also considered using a bald cap if I ever needed to do something illegal. They’ll be looking for a bald person and I’ll be here chilling with long hair.
Great red hair ring
Oof I don’t even know how I made that typo.
Not as easy for AI to understand at least, I guess. At least for now.
Someone should mass print the most common tattoo shapes in temporary tattoos and hand them out at protests or sell them for cheap.
Seems like a great way of just poisoning a lot of data sets
Or sheets you can cut to size that are just gibberish to cover up your actual tattoo (or lack of one) like
CAPTCHA for anarchists
The good ol’ wartime razzle-dazzle or temporary skin paint.
In my country there is a band of artists from a neighboring country that perform with hoodies and ever changing face paint. To this day, their true identities are still unknown for many years and with many TV appearances. So very effective
On a side-note. Those stamps can be circumvented depending on the type of ink/toner the text you are trying to hide is made of.
They make fake tattoo sleeves.
Probably going to be pretty easy to identify you with it though. You’ll be tracked by the purchase.
I suppose we should all buy some, then.
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I’ll just go to my local anarchist store.
Costume stores exist. Fake tat sleeves are pretty common outside of just anarchists.
Also don’t wear any clothing you bought from a unique Etsy store (or any store you physically visited and paid with a card).
The clothes you wear to the protest should also be bought from a thrift store that you visited without your cellphone and paid for the clothing in cash.
Otherwise, yes, your clothing purchases are tracked, and the young lady who torched a cop car during the George Floyd protests was literally found by the FBI searching Etsy purchase records for people who had bought that shirt.
https://www.inquirer.com/news/lore-blumenthal-philly-protests-george-floyd-sentencing-20220728.html
Other options are facial recognition defeating clothing like this:
https://www.dezeen.com/2023/02/07/cap_able-facial-recognition-blocking-clothing/
Or this:
EDIT:
But neither of those help when we’re dealing with stuff like Gait Analysis.
For help with that, we must turn to the Ministry…
Cory Doctorow has a solution: put some pebbles in your shoes, that will change the way you walk right away.
I remember reading a book about this hacker student kid that would do that to sneak out of the school because they had gait recognition cameras. Can’t remember the name of the book though…
Little Brother I think.
Oh haha yep that’s it! Guess I shoulda tried googling Cory Doctorow first. Thank you!
I aughtta give that another read
I’ve had this vague recollection of that book for over a decade and could never find it despite multiple search attempts and even requests on tip-of-my-tongue esque forums. I just could not remember any useful specific information about it for the life of me.
To make this discovery from a random thread so organically is incredible.
Many thanks to you and @Stache_@lemmy.ml both.
Oh nice! Happy to have helped! To be honest there’s not much else I can remember from the book either haha.
You’re not alone - what I did remember was completely incorrect. I would have sworn that the cover was burgundy with the title in black lettering. Also I had thought the whole time it was called Big Brother - which was quite the wrench in the machine when it came to searching online. Wrong on both counts. Goes to show how fallable memory is.
My library didn’t have a copy but the author has it available for free on his website in a few different formats. I’m looking forward to reading it - it’s a good deal longer than I’d thought. Thanks again.
I wish the facial rec-blocking clothes weren’t too expensive for most protesters
I could retain a subpar attorney with that
[checks site, certain that these will only be somewhat expensive] fucking WHAT
I highly suspect the “adverserial attack” clothes are gonna work, it seems more like they are just taking advantage of a buzz word and it goes against not wearing easily identifiable clothes (you will be one of a handful of people wearing your stylish riot sweater). Carry a concealed ski mask with you and wear it when you need to and keep it hidden when not (so you don’t get easily identified as a rioter and become a target when alone).
I think they work, but will quickly be defeated. Facial recognition is nothing more than advanced pattern recognition. This clothing works by confusing the pattern the AI is trained to recognize. That may work with current models, but all it takes is to train the AI on what this adversarial clothing looks like so it can differentiate it from actual faces.
thrift store clothing
Not to mention if you get hit with OC spray, you’re not going to want to keep them anyhow. That shit is meant to get into and onto anything you touch. Getting it out again, is a pain in the ass.
Yeah, the gait analysis is where I am truly fucked because I’m visibly disabled (and have gone to protests where i have been threatened with arrest, but evaded so far). I have been thinking about using my wheelchair at more protests though, so that might be able to fuck it up in the future.
Or everyone just needs to stick a rock in their shoe, or wear one shoes that has a bit of a platform.
Gee, people in the US need to be this cautious when protesting? Where I live it’s totally fine to just casually show up at protests, take selfies, talk to people and whatnot.
I live in Canada and there is a university professor that had police visit his house because he took some pictures of an oil project that was being protested while he was on a walking trail near the university.
It was an interview on the cbc several years ago. He was a prof at SFU, I assume it was the trans mountain pipeline expansion.
…in the `states, police can shoot you for any or no reason: we call it at-will liberty…
150 citizens were enfreedomed in todays public agreement demonstration.
You should take the same precautions in most european countries too, cops here are known to identify protesters and randomly raid their homes or arrest protesters under false pretense
It depends on the issue, time of day, and local cops. In San Diego a pro Palestinian march was allowed to go around and the cops mostly stayed away except for helping to block a few intersections.
In San Francisco they decided it was fine to pull anyone they thought was associated out of their cars and arrest them.
So as general advice, yeah. Especially if the police are the subject of the protest. They take that personally and you’ll have to figure out how to deal with rubber bullets and tear gas
No…we don’t. This I’m assuming is showing someone who’s idea of protesting is burning cars and businesses down.
Sounds like someone doesn’t know (or care) what can happen to protestors that are protesting the “wrong things”… Like oil and gas pipelines, for example, or training centers for heightened police militarization. Or foreign policy, even, that one has been happening for generations already.
Lol if only they would protest the right way, they wouldn’t have to worry about anything, right?
Do you have anything to back your claims up?
The police in Atlanta literally executed a protest organizer in the protests against the new police training facility.
What has that to do with the precautions that are being suggested in the picture and in the comment section?
First. It pretty well disproves the “nothing to fear” line you used. Second, how do they know who to come after if your opsec is intact?
The police have absolutely ordered peaceful day time crowds to disperse while blocking every exit. They then decide force is necessary because nobody is leaving. Look up police kettling.
Well the police can declare an unlawful assembly at any time for any reason, which tends to stir up even peaceful crowds. Not to mention being face to face with militarized thugs in riot gear, drones, helicopters, armored vehicles, mounted police, tear gas and “non-lethal” rounds. If I had a gas cannister lobbed at me, why wouldn’t I toss it right back. Fuck em. ACAB.
You might have no intention of causing trouble, but still get rounded up. Happened almost every day in my city for several months during BLM protests. Mass arrests of people in the wrong place at the wrong time. The countless live streamed videos don’t lie, each protest was non-violent until police agitated the crowd.
I don’t go looking for trouble but I have my limits just like anyone else.
Cops: “STAY PEACEFUL”
Cops: lob gas canister
Crowd: tosses it back
Cops: shockedpikachu.gif
I think it depends on the protest, a little bit, but that’s generally the case in Canada, too.
I counter-protested anti-SOGI assholes (didn’t want 2SLGBTQ+ taught in schools) and it was completely fine. I brought my 5 y.o.
That’s because people in the US don’t protest for real, since it’s totally toothless there’s not much crackdown either
It probably also depends on whether you are just holding a sign or straight up rioting.
Or holding…checks notes…
Wrench
Cordless drill
Water-hose nozzle
Flashlight
Shower rod
Cane
Broomstick
Hairbrush
Sunglasses
Bottle of cologne
Underwear
Tinfoil
Bottle of beer
Pill bottle
E-cigarette
Cell phone
Wallet
iPod
Wii remote
Toy truck
Sandwich
Bible
Hands
…can we add Acorn to the list? I think Acorn can go on there now, also.
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I think this comic is supposed to be based in the future.
Seems pretty relevant now as well. Just ask the brave environmental activists with RICO charges in Atlanta, for starters.
RIP Tortuguita
Cover up all destinguising marks… Like tattoos
No phone
No ID
Don’t take private transport or public transport. Use a bicycle if you can and take an unusual route to and from.
Wear very plain clothes of a solid colour (preferable black), no logos.
Do not wear easily identifiable shoes.
Be prepared to throw out your clothes after.
Cover all parts of your body with clothes (use gloves for your hands, wear long sleeves and pants, wear a mask, use sunglasses to obscure eyes)
Do not talk to anyone who approaches you. There will be plain clothes officers and they will attempt to engage you in conversation, just walk away.
Do not talk to people who approach you and ask questions
Freeeeeeedoooooommmmmmmmmmm
crazy how this is normalized
Escalation escalates
Just saying that a lacrosse stick would work well for launching back teargas grenades and could be used for the protest sign.
Bring rifles and they won’t try it in the first place.
It’s a very dangerous strategy, but you’re kinda right. My understanding is that armed protests tend to ironically be the most peaceful because cops tend to be too scared to challenge you. However, that only works if the cops think they’re outnumbered, so you have to have a lot of people openly carrying and hope the cops don’t decide to escalate past basic riot gear.
Edit: you also have to be prepared to pull the trigger. Like, seriously. If you’re open-carrying during a protest, you’d better be prepared to kill a cop or two in the event they decide to challenge you. If you don’t, then they’ll know the guns are just for show and will be quicker to challenge you in the future.
You need to absolutely out number the police and have enough trigger discipline NOT to fire first. Otherwise the armed protesters would just be put down and the cops would control the narrative. Look at the 60’s era Black Panther armed protests. They had enough guns that the cops weren’t interested in escalating.
Scared white people so bad they passed gun control laws
Or be fascist, because they just escort armed fascists. Cops firing on fascists is just friendly fire.
Gen-X here. Gen-Z answers a question I had as a teen. “What the hell children will the extreme sports, tech-centric, video gaming, gangsta rap, grunge, rage against the machine, angst filled ‘slacker’ generation raise?”
…gen Z have rekindled my hopes for a future which were snuffed by the millenial interregnum…
It’s fucking beautiful, right?
It sure is.
I’m Gen X too, and I feel the same!
Why shouldn’t you bring your phone?
Edit for y’all who thought I don’t know what cell triangulation and gps tracking are: If you’re involved in protesting to the extent that you might be actively tracked, you should have the proper precautions in place on your phone that make it untraceable even when you’re carrying it with you.
Edit 2: “Proper precautions” includes using GrapheneOS with 2 SIMs. Only use one of those SIMs at protests and make sure to never use them at the same time. If the government is tracking you past that point, why do you even have a phone in the first place?
That’s how the FBI has been able to positively identify where people were during the January 6th Insurrection. The FBI said shortly after the insurrection that if you had your phone with you, you would be caught.
Also worth noting that a fuck load of those mouth breathers kept their location on and were posting pictures and videos to Parler, which didn’t bother to clear the EXIF or any metadata from user uploads.
Your phones manufacturer or carrier can be subpoenaed for the location, cops can seize it and identify and/or extract data from it, and IMSI catchers are often used at protests. If you need, you can buy a burner phone and prepaid sim just for the protest.
Tell me you have 0 OPSEC without directly telling me you have 0 OPSEC
Yeah, like if you’re going to the trouble of getting a faraday bag or a lead lined case or whatever you think makes it untraceable… Just leave it at home? It’s a liability.
Because it can place you at the location of the protest while it happens. Not very good for anonymity.
Not if you use good opsec and turn on airplane mode.
I highly doubt airplane mode actually does anything anymore. At the very least, do you really believe companies like Google would willingly give up collecting data just because you’re in an airplane?
Bro, you’re genuinely dumb as rocks
Please elaborate
Airplane mode won’t do shit for 99.99% of the people he’s speaking at. Just leave your phone at home, don’t be stupid.
your phone can’t work if your carrier doesn’t know where you are
on top of that, advertisers put bluetooth receivers everywhere, which will log your phone as having been nearby, even if you don’t connect
on top of that, you can do the same bluetooth trick with wifi endpoints
plus your phone has a gps/glonass/whatever receiver in it
probably other reasons too but those are the ones i can think of off the top of my head
yes you can maybe mitigate all of these, but there are probably ones i haven’t thought of that people much smarter than me have, so why take the risk?
I’m not american. Why not bring your phone? Around here as long as you have a legion of people pointing cameras at cops they’ll not outright beat you senseless since it’ll be impossible to lie about some bullshit justification about how you did something first.
Why not bring your phone?
Your SIM/IMEI are tied to your ID. The police can visit you at home later. Details depend on the country.
Flight mode?
Don’t trust the surveillance device to turn off because you ask nicely. Leaving it at home helps sell the idea that you weren’t at the protest you were at.
Do you actually know anything about software or are you just saying things
If you have an iPhone you can go ahead and try Flight Mode right now. You’ll see that it disconnects from WiFi and disables cellular. NFC, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi stay powered on, Bluetooth stays active. Yes, latest iOS has Bluetooth tracking protection on by default (varies by country, illegal in some), but it is not completely safe. I’m not sure about NFC and Wi-Fi. If you power the phone off it is unlikely to turn off the radios - they are needed for “find my iPhone” and similar features on Google and Samsung Galaxy phones.
Overall you can’t be confident that your phone does not reveal your location and identity to “law enforcement”, especially in places where police is well equipped to track you.
Find my phone doesnt work if your phone isnt connected to the network, let alone if its turned off. Stop spreading misinformation
I’m pretty sure the SIM still connects to cell towers even if you have mobile data deactivated
Edit: on most phones it prevents the connection but there are still other ways to track like GPS
The GPS data will not be sent to the carrier, will it? And your phone will only be searched if they can tell its you in the first place. In which case you got caught physically there anyway.
Also this no id thing is confusing to me. I guess its just american law. In many other countries, they just jail you until you tell them who you are.
Because they can use the phone company records to say “We think you were here when this “violent riot” happened (actually just a protest that police started shooting at protestors because they know they’ll get away with it), you’re arrested”. And cops don’t care if you’re recording, they’ll either break your phone or shoot you anyway and then claim it was self defense.
- Tracking via bluetooth, wifi, cell signals, nfc, etc. Does one trust airplane mode?
- Seizure of the device if one is arrested. There is legal debate about what methods law enforcement can use to get into the phone. One is exposing both whatever pictures and video was made at the protest but everything else going on in one’s life too.
- If one has a unique case or model, one can be doxxed.
Action cameras are cheap, durable, and many come without any radios that can be used to track someone. They all look the same. Using a brand new sd card means that the only data on there is the pictures/video taken at the protest. The major downside is that if they are seized, they are an open book for law enforcement since they are unencrypted. If the sd card is taken or destroyed then one loses any evidence along with it.
One, it’ll get smashed anyway. Two, if you manage to get away, they’ll work with your provider or location based apps to prove you were there and arrest you. Or, force you to unlock it so they can arrest your contacts. Filming them barely helps, there’s so many videos of cops beating the shit out of people with no justification, who have been identified and never faced any repercussions
You. Cannot. Be. Forced. To. Unlock. A. Phone. With. A. Password.
(In the United States)
If you are caught with your phone in a bad situation, fight to manage to get it to shut down. Android will be stuck in a locked out state where biometrics are disabled. Im sure iphones can do something like that but rethink bringing your stupid iphone to a protest. Ask for a lawyer. Do not talk, do not answer questions, do not say anything else.
What’s the zigzag arrow symbol?
Squatters Symbol
i am unsure. the flash and circle is a fascist symble, but that usually doesnt have the arrow head. i assume its an antifascist symble but couldnt find anything about that.
Okupas ( Spanish for squatters )
This is why I love the west coast of Canada, I can talk to the cops all I want, I can call them pigs, I can tell them they should learn to do their jobs, I can just straight up troll them and it’s protected.
It doesn’t mean they won’t be absolutely shitty about it and try to start shit though.
There’s many many many other reasons it’s not a good idea during a protest
sadly, masking yourself when protesting is forbidden here in my country :c
Facepaint? Some designs can confound facial recognition systems
But it won’t protect against tear gas or rubber bullets.
Ironically neither does a mask?
Not a balaclava, but there are goggles and full-face masks that offer some protection. And even a balaclava is better than nothing against rubber bullets and bean bags.
It kinda makes sense, protests are supposed to be peaceful, why bring a mask if your intent is a peaceful protest?
Protest is never peaceful, if it is you’re doing it wrong. It should be non-violent and as respectful as possible but it needs to be disruptive and you can’t be peacefully disruptive
Peaceful and non-violent are synonyms….
You also contradict yourself as well. You say to be non-violent, then you say you can’t be peacefully disruptive… those contradict each other.
If me and my fellow protestors block a road, we are being non-violent, but we are being disruptive.
And that is peaceful as well, until it isn’t.
…and in 99% of the cases where it stops being “peaceful” it’s because cops come in and violently assault everyone to try to break up the protest.
I’m really not sure of the point you’re trying to make. Protest can be peaceful, non-violent and disruptive.
No, they aren’t. You must be disruptive, which isn’t peaceful.
How can you be non-violent and not peaceful at the same time…? lmfao. They mean the exact same thing.
Protest is not meant to be peaceful. You’re thinking of a demonstration
In the USA its because they use facial recognition and then decide to harass you for the next decade over every small infraction they can.
Because nobody in a position of power would ever abuse that power! /s
There have been events where nazis show up to counter protest and film/photograph you to then share among themselves so they can attack you later.
“Peaceful protest” is the ideal they push because it doesn’t work. If it worked it wouldn’t be praised. They don’t want change.
Who is “they”?
In this specific instance, anyone who stands to benefit from the status quo
Masks are no indicator of criminality. The idea that bad protesters wear masks is complete horseshit. It serves to divide movements and prevent momentum from being gained. It seeks to dissolve solidarity that couls have been gained at the protests.
Masks allow peaceful protests to remain peaceful if they prevent the violence of the justice system. Sometimes protesters and organizers are simply arrested and thrown in jail for a bit, sometimes even given nonsense charges, which is something that happens to organizers and some protesters in my area.
As well as that, masks can simply be good secops in some counter-protests such as protesting against fascist marches, gatherings, etc. If I’m showing up to show nazis or boogaloos or proud boys that they are unwelcome, the last thing I want is a violent right wing extremist group to try and doxx me. If I’m escorting people to a drag-queen story hour, I don’t want fascists to doxx me.
It’s also smart in some areas, such as Harvard’s campus where organizers are constantly doxxed and accused of antisemitism even though they are not.
Finally, what if the government makes your particular movement illegal? What if they start throwing the book people, accusing everyone involved(or at least the ones they can catch) of domestic terrorism? Wearing a mask will make it a lot easier for you to maintain your freedom when faced with the tyrrany of the state.
Also, masks look cool, and that’s a pretty good reason imo.
Protests only work because they carry an unstated show of force.
Because a nasty disease spread mostly by sneezing and coughing is going around.
