March 19, 2024

How police in the UK are monitoring protests - and what to do about them

How police in the UK are monitoring protests – and what to do about them

British rights group Privacy International has launched a campaign to inform protesters of the state’s surveillance techniques. There is also advice on how protesters can better protect themselves from surveillance. In the meantime, it is almost impossible to completely protect yourself from police surveillance at demos.

Under the slogan The organization presents the “Freedom to Protest” campaign pageWhich are dealt with different topics. The Attractively designed instructions in PDF format It clearly collects all the questions in one document, while the online version is a bit tedious to use.

The manual, which currently only describes the legal situation in Great Britain, explains monitoring methods such as IMSI-Catcher and Read the seized mobile and cloud data, but also police officers’ access to state databases. There are tips on how protesters can protect themselves in relevant topics.

So far only Great Britain

Some tips, like those of Difficulty recognizing the faceHowever, it can lead to problems with German assembly law: for example, wearing a bandana, a scarf that you can pull over your face, is regularly seen as a violation of the ban on wearing masks in this country. Other tips can also be used in Germany, such as noting that as a participant: you should only post in the faces of other protesters.

Other chapters deal with video surveillance of all kinds, whether via police body cameras or drone recordings. Some of the information in the manual, such as that of Protecting digital data on smartphones Not only useful for demonstrations. In general, Privacy International recommends the use of end-to-end encryption in communications. In almost all social networks, communications are stored on their servers and are therefore easily accessible to security authorities.

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This guideline, which depicts the legal status of meeting monitoring in Germany, is currently missing. Only seniors are available What to do in the event of a fire brochure (PDF).