If your phone is on & you have passcoded or patterned in after boot, forensics can likely access the contents of your device. Doesn't matter that you have the best of breed disk or file-based (FBE) encryption. When on, it is in an *unlocked* state. Screen blanked does not mean "off".

Unless your Signal is also behind auth, forensics, investigators, can likely access your Signal chats, & all of your messages prior to your team doing their due diligence & removing you from the group.

2/n

It gets worse. Even if your phone is powered off before arrest (generally wise), a well resourced forensics team could have access anyway, using tooling like Cellebrite. At the current time only GrapheneOS & recent iOS versions _seem_ Cellebrite-resistant. That could soon change.

Regardless, not handing over access can have you legally pivoted as obstructing the course of justice. This is increasingly the case, & the penalties can be too cruel for many to bear, caving under pressure.

3/n

So it follows, the only good smartphone to take to a protest is:

1) the one you didn't bring

2) the one that can be safely handed over _unlocked_, with none of you, your fellow activist mates, family or friends on it (our devices are rarely only about us). It's a burner, with a burner SIM, burner accounts for streaming video, uploading photos to an anonymous share (ideally self-hosted, jurisdictionally gapped over the border), & with SOS contacts none more.

4/n

I realise this can all sound unrealistic, excessive. After all, so often we don't wake up planning to join a march, but there we are by mid-afternoon.

Reality is tricky however, & so if you are time & means privileged enough to get & setup a protest burner, do it. If not, just leave the smartphone at home (& have a fallback meeting point & time arranged). You'll be living the old French proverb "It's better to prevent than heal", keeping those you care about, the cause, & yourself, safe.

5/5