Digital devices and digital spaces offer activists many opportunities: Never before it has been that easy to document human rights violations with a smartphone, and to share photos or videos of the incidents immediately with very large numbers of people around the world through the internet and social media.
At the same time, however, digital devices and digital spaces also could include dangers for political activists. Especially the smartphone with your photos, videos, and personal contacts is an important source for state authorities for investigation and suppression. And networks such as Facebook and Twitter could also be used to analyze your networks.
There is no such thing as 100% digital security!
Remember this mantra. Being aware of that contributes to taking care of and protecting our human rights in digital contexts. But which measures are useful and important in the field of political activism to protect yourself and fellow activists? Here are three short advises
Tip 1: Secure your smartphone – or leave it at home
Secure your smartphone with a strong PIN or password, rather than via Touch ID. Set your screen to lock if you don’t use it. Turn off location services and an app to erase metadata from pictures. Or go even further and encrypt the data on your cell. You could use an app like Tella, that automatically encrypts your photos, videos, and audio recordings as soon as they are captured and hides your files in the device. If possible, take an alternative phone to protests, without phone numbers (except for emergency contact of a lawyer, for example), previous photos, and apps.
Tip 2: Secure your communication
If you want to coordinate protests and other activities, messengers are a handy tool. Unfortunately, the perfect messenger does not exist. However, there are messenger apps that focus on secure communication and privacy. For those in a hurry, I recommend Signal. It is very similar to other popular messengers in terms of interface and convenience, but it is free software. The communication is end-to-end encrypted and there is a group function. If you don’t want to use a phone number for registration, Threema and Session are alternatives. A special messenger is Briar, intended to provide secure and resilient peer-to-peer communications with no centralized servers; messages can be transmitted even if the internet is interrupted, via WiFi or Bluetooth. And if you have to use email, use an encryption system like GPG (GNU Privacy Guard) or PGP (Pretty Good Privacy).
Tip 3: Use alternative social networks
During protests, networks such as Facebook or Twitter sometimes are restricted. In addition, state authorities could throttle the Internet to make it difficult or impossible to transfer photos and video. But Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube themselves could also block accounts and delete posts. Therefore, consider Fediverse (a portmanteau of “federation” and “universe“) alternatives for social networking or (micro)blogging: Mastodon, Peertube, and Pixelfed, for example. These platforms are not commercial, walled gardens, but networks on different servers; a disadvantage is that they have significantly fewer users. And always be careful not to post photos of yourself or your fellow activista.
These are three brief but fundamental recommendations for digital self-defense by political activists. Please be aware of your communication, use encryption and strong passwords where possible, and be careful what attachments you open on your devices.
