Category: Global

Tra­di­tion­al­ly it has been the con­tent of com­mu­ni­ca­tion that has been the focus of gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance but the police are increas­ing­ly inter­est­ed in data min­ing tech­niques to uncov­er pat­terns of asso­ci­a­tion. Sim­ple data, when stored, aggre­gat­ed and ana­lyzed using sophis­ti­cat­ed com­put­er algo­rithms, con­tains far more infor­ma­tion than is com­mon­ly appre­ci­at­ed. Col­lat­ing mobile phone num­bers, and the data retained by net­work providers, can pro­vide the police with a pow­er­ful incite into our net­works of asso­ci­a­tions. This is not only an inva­sion of our pri­va­cy but may also threat­en our abil­i­ty to work togeth­er effec­tive­ly.

At least years cli­mate camp the police were tak­ing peo­ple phone from them dur­ing stop and search. As well as brows­ing through peo­ple
phone­books and text mes­sages, they were typ­ing *#06# to get the phones unique ser­i­al num­ber (IMEI). They would then look up the reg­is­tered own­er of phone then threat­en the hold­er of the phone with being arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of theft if they refused to prove that they were the own­er of the phone by reveal­ing their iden­ti­ty.

To reduce the abil­i­ty of the police to steal our iden­ti­ties and learn
more about our social net­works, please con­sid­er the fol­low­ing advice.

Mobile phones are use­ful tools for com­mu­ni­cat­ing and organ­is­ing — we do not advise you to leave them at home. You will find them essen­tial for stay­ing informed and inform­ing oth­ers. How­ev­er…

Copy the entries in your phone­book and leave it at home.

Delete from your phone­book all but the num­bers that will be essen­tial dur­ing the week.

Rename those con­tacts to remove sur­names, per­haps using code names instead.

Erase your sent and received call logs and text mes­sages and do repeat this reg­u­lar­ly.

Make use of the secu­ri­ty fea­tures of your phone so that a PIN code is required to access any of its fea­tures.

There are gen­er­al­ly two types of secu­ri­ty on mobile phones, the PIN that pro­tects the phone and PIN2 that pro­tects the SIM card so it can’t be used in anoth­er phone with­out the code. It may be a lit­tle incon­ve­nient to have to type in the num­ber each time but it’s bet­ter than allow­ing the cops to browse through your phone book, call logs and mes­sages.

If you can’t set your phone to require a PIN code each time it is used, sim­ply switch off your phone when it looks like a police stop and search is like­ly.

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Might be worth not­ing about mobiles:

* That the police are also able to retrieve phone calls and sent text mes­sages, both from the phone and the SIM. Once delet­ed off the phone they are NOT gone for good. If you have made a fool­ish phone call or sent some­thing dodgy, and you are at risk from hav­ing your phone tak­en, get a whole new phone and SIM card.

* Police can use your mobile as a track­ing device of your where­abouts, this evi­dence has already been used in cas­es — espe­cial­ly if mak­ing a call. This pin­points your exact loca­tion. So don’t take it any­where you’d rather the cops did­n’t know about. Dis­con­nect­ing the phone by tak­ing out the bat­tery appar­ent­ly can stop this as the phone is no longer con­nect­ed to any elec­tri­cal source.

* Police can bug a mobile and use it as a lis­ten­ing device… if you are say­ing some­thing you don’t want the cops to hear, and you want to be extra para­noid, remove the bat­tery from your phone or leave it else­where. Turn­ing it off will not nec­es­sar­i­ly work!

* If the cops ever get your phone and give it back to you… give it to some­one else not involved in any­thing you are, donate it to char­i­ty or burn it. Do not ever use it again!

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Your advice about hav­ing an alter­na­tive SIM is OK if police are search­ing the phys­i­cal phone for text mes­sages. How­ev­er if you are con­cerned about sur­veil­lance involv­ing your mobile phone com­pa­ny, you should be aware that text mes­sages (and phone calls too I would think) send a SIM ID *and* the phone IMEI. On that basis, send­ing a mes­sage using your con­tract phone but a PAYG SIM will still be eas­i­ly trace­able to you.

The best approach is to buy a PAYG phone with cash and only top it up with vouch­ers bought with cash, and use that along­side your reg­u­lar phone. How­ev­er you can’t get away from the fact that it is still a loca­tion-track­ing device. If you have spe­cial need to be care­ful — and that’s a per­son­al judge­ment — only put the bat­tery in when you are away from your house to col­lect mes­sages or to make calls. That said if you live in a high­ly pop­u­lat­ed area — such as flats in a city — then you have less rea­son to wor­ry — the loca­tion track­ing is not very sen­si­tive AFAIK and it’s a right roy­al pain for the author­i­ties to get the data. If you’re a Cli­mate Camp activist and not part of a ter­ror­ist cell then it’s prob­a­bly too much has­sle for them.

It should be obvi­ous but also be care­ful when send­ing per­son­al­ly-iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion in text mes­sages — tele­phone num­bers, address­es, email address­es, account num­bers etc. In the­o­ry the same goes for voice con­tent as soft­ware now can tran­scribe voice con­tent quite reli­ably — how­ev­er this often can’t be avoid­ed and the best thing to do is not to wor­ry about it too much. Remem­ber: our wor­ry­ing is what some upper ech­e­lons of the police want!

Ulti­mate­ly for the activist there is a anti-sur­veil­lance/­con­ve­nience trade-off. Don’t get para­noid as this makes you less effec­tive in your cho­sen field. Be care­ful but, unless you are doing activism that is tar­get­ted for the harsh­est oppres­sion, tol­er­ate a bit of sur­veil­lance rather than re-organ­is­ing your habits com­plete­ly to avoid it.

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DO BRING A PHONE TO CAMP!

If you can, bring a new PAYG phone, don’t fill it with your friends num­bers, don’t use it from home and don’t call your mum on it.

Don’t ever put your nor­mal SIM in your new phone or your new SIM in your nor­mal phone.
Use the phone at the cli­mate camp to:
keep the legal team informed about arrests and stop & search­es
keep the media team informed about protests and actions
keep your­self informed about things going on around camp and beyond
call for help in a med­ical emer­gency

http://www.activistsecurity.org/