How to Protest Safely in the Age of Surveillance
NEWS | 09 January 2026
Just days into 2026, fresh anger against the Trump administration has already taken hold. On Wednesday, January 7, a federal immigration officer shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good as she attempted to drive away from the scene of an immigration enforcement action in a Minneapolis, Minnesota, neighborhood. Despite Department of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem's claims that the officer “acted quickly and defensively, shot, to protect himself and the people around him” from being run over, video of the incident clearly appears to show that neither the officer nor his colleagues were in danger of being hit by Good's vehicle. Protests condemning the shooting—and the Trump administration's brutish immigration agenda more broadly—sparked almost immediately after news of Good's killing surfaced. By Thursday, the unrest had only intensified and spread to towns and cities around the United States. If you're going to join any protests, as is your right under the First Amendment, you need to think beyond your physical well-being to your digital security, too. The same surveillance apparatus that’s enabling the Trump administration’s raids of undocumented people and targeting of left-leaning activists will no doubt be out in full force on the streets. Two key elements of digital surveillance should be top of mind for protestors. One is the data that authorities could potentially obtain from your phone if you are detained, arrested, or they confiscate your device. The other is surveillance of all the identifying and revealing information that you produce when you attend a protest, which can include wireless interception of text messages and more, and tracking tools like license plate scanners and face recognition. You should be mindful of both. After all, even before Good's killing, police had already demonstrated their willingness to arrest and attack entirely peaceful protesters as well as journalists observing demonstrations. In that light, you should assume that any digital evidence that you were at or near a protest could be used against you. “The Trump administration is weaponizing essentially every lever of government to shut down, suppress, and curtail criticism of the administration and of the US government generally, and there have never been more surveillance toys available to law enforcement and to US government agencies,” says Evan Greer, the deputy director of the activist organization Fight for the Future, who also wrote a helpful X (then-Twitter) thread laying out digital security advice during the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020. “That said, there are a number of very simple, concrete things that you can do that make it exponentially more difficult for someone to intercept your communications, for a bad actor to ascertain your real-time location, or for the government to gain access to your private information.” This story was originally published on May 31, 2020 and updated on January 8, 2026. Your Phone The most important decision to make before leaving home for a protest is whether to bring your phone—or what phone to bring. A smartphone broadcasts all sorts of identifying information; law enforcement can force your mobile carrier to cough up data about what cell towers your phone connects to and when. Police in the US have also been documented using so-called stingray devices, or IMSI catchers, that impersonate cell towers and trick all the phones in a certain area into connecting to them. This can give cops the individual mobile subscriber identity number of everyone at a protest at a given time, undermining the anonymity of entire crowds en masse. “The device in your pocket is definitely going to give off information that could be used to identify you,” says Harlo Holmes, director of digital security at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit press advocacy group. (Disclosure: WIRED’s global editorial director, Katie Drummond, serves on Freedom of the Press Foundation’s board.)
Author: Lily Hay Newman. Andy Greenberg.
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