Hate to break it to you, but people just simply dont care as much as you think they do. We have the right to own firearms for the purposes of protecting us against tyrany, but thats pointless when we cant even realize tyrany right outside our door.
This shows how flawed the idea is that individual gun ownership protects people from a rogue government. Acting alone with a firearm does not stop tyranny. It only leads to prison or worse.
Real resistance to authoritarianism has never come from isolated individuals using violence. It requires organized collective action where people stand together and refuse to comply. History shows that meaningful resistance often begins with simple nonviolent acts like refusing unjust rules or asserting basic dignity rather than a lone person reaching for a gun.
Owning a gun by itself does not meaningfully protect anyone from government overreach. Organization solidarity and collective action do.
A single gun is useless yet when a deranged asshole used it against children it stopped ~200 cops for 77 minutes. What a wild world we live in.
Are police more incentivized to protect a nebulous state than literal children who live in their same town and who are under their charge? If so I hope we are figuring out how to fix that.
> History shows that meaningful resistance often begins with simple nonviolent acts like refusing unjust rules or asserting basic dignity rather than a lone person reaching for a gun.
I'm having trouble coming up with many recent examples where non-state resistance to authoritarianism succeeded in defeating it, regardless of method. Myanmar? Hong Kong? Xinjiang? Iran? North Korea?
Having the capacity to do credibly threaten violence back acts as a check on abuse because nobody will stand for cops occasionally getting clapped over stuff they should never have been doing in the first place.
Look at how cops roll up on "is armed because you can't not be at his level" drug criminals. There's reconnaissance, preparation, checklists, etc, etc. Yes, there are exceptions, but it's generally orders of magnitude more professional than the sort of slapdash thuggery ICE is up to. And it's also much more expensive so they don't just target it at entire demographics, they prioritize.
While it's not a silver bullet. Being able to make credible threat of taking one or two of them with you really does force the government side to behave better, maybe not categorically, but enough to matter.
A nearly identical "force them to do better" argument applies to being able to film police, open records, and many other things.
Is the modem completely disabled? Does it still show the "SOS" option that allows you to call 911 without a SIM? If so, and if it's ever been turned on in your residence, there's a decent chance the IMEI could be traced back to your house just based on pattern-of-life movement.
great news! this old shoulder mount with a strap mounted VHS recorder will finally be able to come out of storage and find a new life! /s
not sure why you feel analog recording is necessary. just need a camera that isn't part of a phone. any DSLR, MFT, Mirrorless cameras would be just as good.
however, there's something to be said about live streaming so that even if the camera is confiscated the images are already publicly available.
There are inexpensive dedicated still and video cameras, for as little as $40.
Higher-quality devices will still cost markedly less than a flagship, or even several-years-old smartphone, and will have much greater lifespan absent misadventure.
- Do bring your phone, but put it into "airplane mode" so that it doesn't talk to any cell towers; then upload the video somewhere as soon as you get out of the area
Is there any evidence that "NSA can turn on your phone even if they're off" or "location toggles on phones don't actually do anything" conspiracy theories are true? Even if the NSA has such capabilities, is there any reason to believe that they'll burn it to go after some ICE protester? That's the type of stuff you'd save so you can use it to go after bin laden, not burn on some run of the mill protester.
I wouldn't assume pulling a SIM is enough to hide the phone's location. The modem will still be powered, the IMEI isn't part of the SIM card and is a unique identifier. Plus last I checked you can still contact 911 without being a subscriber.
I'm no expert on cell networks but my impression is the baseband will still ping towers and participate in the cell network on some level. If the phone gets confiscated or its IMEI otherwise associated with you, it can probably be abused to try place you in an area at a given time even without the SIM card.
Just use cameras without any RF hardware. (they tend to have better optics / zoom capabilities anyways)
People have allowed themselves to become so dependent on mobile phones that I'm frankly disgusted. You're talking about a scenario where you're worried about being illegally arrested by the secret police -- aided by their tracking of your phone, but it's still not enough to consider using your phone less. It's no different that a rat starving to death but continuing to push the lever for the cocaine hit.
[edit]
Vote me down all you want. If a bulletin went out that said "we're going to use your phone to steal your children and torture them" you'd have people saying "but, but .. how am I going to do my banking and check my messages." It's the height of absurdity.
yeah it's kind of amazing, just leave your phone at home and the tracking problem is solved (if one even really exists to begin with). If you want to document something bring a simple digital camera. They pretty much all have video and audio capability too. Like how is this not obvious to everyone?
edit: just want to point out there are still cameras everywhere so if you're worried about being found just leaving your phone at home isn't going to do much
id just bring my phone. if the secret police are going to arrest or kill me, theyre going to do it either way, probably while im there.
if i bring a phone, i can at least document the secret police's actions, and make friends and get contact info for other people that are there.
security by obfuscation isnt particularly good, and its a state level threat.
there's a different absurdity with your child torture example - that youd be ok with children being tortured over phone usage. the bulletin and the people doing the kidnapping at torture are the problem, not the phone. there's a third option of stopping said torturers, and youll likely want your phone as one of the tools in doing so
True, cameras can be taken away or smashed after the fact destroying evidence.
With my phone I can stream video to a cloud so that it can't be deleted. The ACLU used to have an app specifically for this but it seems to have been discontinued. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACLU_Mobile_Justice
If you are ok with the low quality, you could use a radio to transmit fast scan TV to a nearby receiver. Use a repeater if you need to get some real distance.
FPV drones often use this and could be a good source of parts. Or encode the feed and send through a small portable ham radio if you want a challenge. https://irrational.net/2014/03/02/digital-atv/
Hate to break it to you, but people just simply dont care as much as you think they do. We have the right to own firearms for the purposes of protecting us against tyrany, but thats pointless when we cant even realize tyrany right outside our door.
This shows how flawed the idea is that individual gun ownership protects people from a rogue government. Acting alone with a firearm does not stop tyranny. It only leads to prison or worse.
Real resistance to authoritarianism has never come from isolated individuals using violence. It requires organized collective action where people stand together and refuse to comply. History shows that meaningful resistance often begins with simple nonviolent acts like refusing unjust rules or asserting basic dignity rather than a lone person reaching for a gun.
Owning a gun by itself does not meaningfully protect anyone from government overreach. Organization solidarity and collective action do.
A single gun is useless yet when a deranged asshole used it against children it stopped ~200 cops for 77 minutes. What a wild world we live in.
Are police more incentivized to protect a nebulous state than literal children who live in their same town and who are under their charge? If so I hope we are figuring out how to fix that.
2 replies →
> History shows that meaningful resistance often begins with simple nonviolent acts like refusing unjust rules or asserting basic dignity rather than a lone person reaching for a gun.
I'm having trouble coming up with many recent examples where non-state resistance to authoritarianism succeeded in defeating it, regardless of method. Myanmar? Hong Kong? Xinjiang? Iran? North Korea?
2 replies →
Having the capacity to do credibly threaten violence back acts as a check on abuse because nobody will stand for cops occasionally getting clapped over stuff they should never have been doing in the first place.
Look at how cops roll up on "is armed because you can't not be at his level" drug criminals. There's reconnaissance, preparation, checklists, etc, etc. Yes, there are exceptions, but it's generally orders of magnitude more professional than the sort of slapdash thuggery ICE is up to. And it's also much more expensive so they don't just target it at entire demographics, they prioritize.
While it's not a silver bullet. Being able to make credible threat of taking one or two of them with you really does force the government side to behave better, maybe not categorically, but enough to matter.
A nearly identical "force them to do better" argument applies to being able to film police, open records, and many other things.
5 replies →
> It requires organized collective action where people stand together and refuse to comply.
... armed with guns and prepared to use violence.
[dead]
I have an old point and shoot (20x optical zoom) and a SIM-free phone that has never been used in my name for anything.
> SIM-free phone
Is the modem completely disabled? Does it still show the "SOS" option that allows you to call 911 without a SIM? If so, and if it's ever been turned on in your residence, there's a decent chance the IMEI could be traced back to your house just based on pattern-of-life movement.
That's why you also need to enable airplane mode.
3 replies →
Analog recording and viewing may need to become the state of the art given how low the bar has become to manipulate digital media
great news! this old shoulder mount with a strap mounted VHS recorder will finally be able to come out of storage and find a new life! /s
not sure why you feel analog recording is necessary. just need a camera that isn't part of a phone. any DSLR, MFT, Mirrorless cameras would be just as good.
however, there's something to be said about live streaming so that even if the camera is confiscated the images are already publicly available.
1 reply →
Burners, which you never bring anywhere near your home, and which you do not drive your car to pick up.
Point and clicks with no internet connectivity. Practice unloading and reloading SD cards in came someone comes to destroy evidence
There are inexpensive dedicated still and video cameras, for as little as $40.
Higher-quality devices will still cost markedly less than a flagship, or even several-years-old smartphone, and will have much greater lifespan absent misadventure.
- Use a different device: tablet, or camera.
- Do bring your phone, but put it into "airplane mode" so that it doesn't talk to any cell towers; then upload the video somewhere as soon as you get out of the area
Phone on airplane mode and with location services disabled?
I doubt that would do anything…
Is there any evidence that "NSA can turn on your phone even if they're off" or "location toggles on phones don't actually do anything" conspiracy theories are true? Even if the NSA has such capabilities, is there any reason to believe that they'll burn it to go after some ICE protester? That's the type of stuff you'd save so you can use it to go after bin laden, not burn on some run of the mill protester.
5 replies →
why not?
Librem 5 phone has a hardware kill switch for the modem. The camera is not so great though.
Buy a camera. And/or an audio recorder. Or pull the SIM out of an old phone and use that.
I wouldn't assume pulling a SIM is enough to hide the phone's location. The modem will still be powered, the IMEI isn't part of the SIM card and is a unique identifier. Plus last I checked you can still contact 911 without being a subscriber.
I'm no expert on cell networks but my impression is the baseband will still ping towers and participate in the cell network on some level. If the phone gets confiscated or its IMEI otherwise associated with you, it can probably be abused to try place you in an area at a given time even without the SIM card.
Just use cameras without any RF hardware. (they tend to have better optics / zoom capabilities anyways)
A phone with its SIM out is still registering with the network.
... and has an IMEI identifier.
3 replies →
Disposable film cameras and FRS walkie-talkies, I think.
FRS: family radio service, a broadcast communications technology, TIL:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Radio_Service>
There are standalone pocket cameras.
People have allowed themselves to become so dependent on mobile phones that I'm frankly disgusted. You're talking about a scenario where you're worried about being illegally arrested by the secret police -- aided by their tracking of your phone, but it's still not enough to consider using your phone less. It's no different that a rat starving to death but continuing to push the lever for the cocaine hit.
[edit]
Vote me down all you want. If a bulletin went out that said "we're going to use your phone to steal your children and torture them" you'd have people saying "but, but .. how am I going to do my banking and check my messages." It's the height of absurdity.
yeah it's kind of amazing, just leave your phone at home and the tracking problem is solved (if one even really exists to begin with). If you want to document something bring a simple digital camera. They pretty much all have video and audio capability too. Like how is this not obvious to everyone?
edit: just want to point out there are still cameras everywhere so if you're worried about being found just leaving your phone at home isn't going to do much
Being able to upload or stream is crucial so evidence doesn’t get confiscated
id just bring my phone. if the secret police are going to arrest or kill me, theyre going to do it either way, probably while im there.
if i bring a phone, i can at least document the secret police's actions, and make friends and get contact info for other people that are there.
security by obfuscation isnt particularly good, and its a state level threat.
there's a different absurdity with your child torture example - that youd be ok with children being tortured over phone usage. the bulletin and the people doing the kidnapping at torture are the problem, not the phone. there's a third option of stopping said torturers, and youll likely want your phone as one of the tools in doing so
....cameras exist :)
True, cameras can be taken away or smashed after the fact destroying evidence.
With my phone I can stream video to a cloud so that it can't be deleted. The ACLU used to have an app specifically for this but it seems to have been discontinued. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACLU_Mobile_Justice
If you are ok with the low quality, you could use a radio to transmit fast scan TV to a nearby receiver. Use a repeater if you need to get some real distance.
FPV drones often use this and could be a good source of parts. Or encode the feed and send through a small portable ham radio if you want a challenge. https://irrational.net/2014/03/02/digital-atv/
Sure, just be careful not to fall into the trap of technosolutionism.
I have an Eye-fi SD card which can send photos via wifi. Wouldn't be too hard to make a receiver that send from a raspi or something automatically.
Seems they are discontinued but there are other options that work similar such as "EZ Share"
the world isn't perfect, you do what you can. Just take a small RunCam or something and keep in it your pocket and be discreet when you're using it.