OK, I don’t get this at all:
Here is bloody rule: if you are involved in these activities [public protests] you either don’t take a cell phone, or you take the batteries out, or you put it in a shielded bag. In addition to being a tracking device you take with you, it is also possible to use your phone as a bug, to listen in remotely. Laptops are also problematic if they have a camera, can connect to the internet, or have microphone. At the least, keep them powered off.
The technological revolution did not happen unless you want everyone to know your business. There are times when you do, but if you don’t, turn this stuff off.
Isn’t the whole point of being in a public protest to make it public that you disagree with a policy? It sounds quite counter-productive to try to take a public stance in favor of against something while making efforts to hide from public view.
And there is more:
Next, forget democratic decision making when it comes to specific tactical decisions. One person should know what you’re going to do, and he or she should not tell ANYONE until just before it is to be done, and hopefully too late for effective counter-action.
This is also a very weird organizing strategy. Do you tell people, “There is a strike being planned, wink-wink, but it’s not like I’m going, and nobody I know will go either”? That is surely bound to convince people to go.
Immaturity is in vogue and getting more popular every day. Remember the Civil Rights movement? An entire generation of people fought for freedom and won. They didn’t do it by hiding from view. They stood up for their beliefs and accepted the consequences. These days, however, people want to play at being rebels but God forbid their comfort should be disturbed by their supposed politics.
Clarissa's Blog 
Sounds a lot like black bloc dudes who think of smashing in store windows and then scurrying off during peaceful protests as revolutionary praxis.
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Point taken but COINTELPRO did happen.
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If you have a cell phone you can take pictures of police brutality (ie the cops beating you and your friends up) so that at least your friends who stayed home know what happened to you.
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When privacy fanatics have ago at protesting, hilarity always ensues. It is just funny when they try not to be seen, heard, photographed, recorded, mentioned or written about when that is actually kinda the goal of a protest 🙂
Also IMSI catcher are vastly overrated if you ask me. While the linked-to article is right in that they can be used to locate and listen to phone calls. But the “They know exactly where you are!”-type of scare-argument is kind of bullshit.
The link states that “Any phone within a certain in distance of the device will therefore send identifying information to it”. What is conveniently left out is that this certain distance is roundabout a kilometre (for the models i looked up, anyway). That means that every phone in a kilometre distance is identified.
The only thing you could use to check wether a phone is sitting on someones coffee table or in that protester crowd is the signal strength and even that is questionable. So doing this you are going to get a ton of false-positives and no way to distinguish. All they can say is that your phone was somewhere within x metres of that IMSI catcher.
Also, considering that actual phone cells are sometimes overpowered by protests and their massive number of cell phones, I really wouldn’t judge the capacity of these things very high.
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“It is just funny when they try not to be seen, heard, photographed, recorded, mentioned or written about when that is actually kinda the goal of a protest”
– Exactly. 🙂
It seems like some people desperately want to feel important and pretend like they are James Bond.
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Privacy is a lost cause. I sympathize with people who rally around it, but I’d like to see that energy allocated to addressing the related problem of information asymmetry (in everything, not just in financial markets), which might be solvable.
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Yes, people who look for privacy in a public protest deserve every sympathy. 🙂
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