From Minneapolis to Munich to Tehran, people are taking to the streets as a form of political expression. The right to peaceful assembly and protest are bedrocks of democracy, and we support everyone’s ability to exercise these rights. Proton’s mission is to protect people’s privacy and freedom from surveillance and censorship. For this reason, protesters across the political spectrum and around the world have turned to our encrypted email, VPN, and other services to keep their communications and online activity safe from monitoring and attacks. 

Digital privacy is only one concern; demonstrators must protect themselves offline too. Governments are monitoring protests with increasingly draconian methods, like the thousands of CCTV cameras with AI facial recognition in Hong Kong, and the surveillance creep and rise of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in cities all over the US. 

ICE has deployed mobile biometric tools, such as the Mobile Fortify app, which allows agents to identify individuals in a crowd by pointing a smartphone camera at their face or fingerprints, which matches them against federal databases. Because the biometric matches are considered definitive, US citizens have been wrongfully detained after being misidentified by the technology.

Federal agencies are also circumventing the need for search warrants by purchasing bulk location data from commercial data brokers. If you have apps on your phone that collect and sell your movement history, agencies can use this data to identify individuals back to their homes or workplaces.

In the face of these privacy threats, this guide explains how to defend your rights at a protest in three important areas: your phone, your communications in the cloud, and your face. It’s critical that you remain in control of each of these “identifiers” so you can peacefully voice your opinion without fear of repression or repercussions for exercising your rights.

Secure your phone

Smartphones have made it much easier for protesters to record what’s happening in front of them, and video recordings can be powerful calls to action and tools to hold those in power accountable. However, smartphones also contain massive amounts of personal information and are constantly transmitting data.

Many law enforcement agencies in the US use IMSI-catchers (often called Stingrays), which act like fake phone towers to track your location and phone number. While modern 5G networks have better built-in protections, authorities can use jamming techniques to force your phone onto older, less secure 4G or 2G networks to bypass those safeguards.

If you want to protect your data, you have three primary options:

Leave your phone at home

This one is self-explanatory: The authorities won’t be able to track your phone at the protest if you don’t have it. To avoid suspicion, leave your phone on while you are at the protest. For maximum digital privacy, you should not bring any device that can create an external connection, including smartwatches, fitness trackers, or Bluetooth headphones.

Depending on your threat model, you might decide the extra privacy of leaving your phone behind is not worth the inconvenience. 

Bring a clean phone

The phone you use every day is linked to your identity, and you could leave it at home (but still on) to make sure authorities cannot access it. If you want a phone with you at the protest, you could buy a new, cheap phone. However, for this to be effective, there are steps you will need to follow. This new phone can only be used at protests. You should not turn it on before you arrive at the protest, and you should turn it off before you leave. You will need a new SIM card. You cannot use your regular SIM in your “protest-only” phone. You should only load the apps that are essential. And you should not link your protest phone to your normal phone in any way.

If you buy a cheap, unlocked Android device and a prepaid SIM that you only turn on and use at the protest, it will be very difficult for anyone to track or identify you. Do not log in to it with your Google account (or your iCloud account if it’s an iPhone). To be extra cautious, you should buy the phone and SIM with cash or a gift card. You could also use a trusted VPN provider, like Proton VPN, to access the open source app repository F-Droid and download the apps you want for the protest. The goal is to put as little personal information as possible on this protest phone.

Buying a new prepaid phone can be expensive, especially if you’re only going to use it for one afternoon. If a new one costs too much, you can bring your regular phone, but precautions must be taken.

Turn off all location data and keep your phone off until you need it

This is the most convenient but least private option. If you must use your primary phone, take these steps to minimize your data trail:

• Reset your advertising ID: This is a hidden ID that apps can use to track you. On Android, go to Settings > Security and privacy > Privacy controls > Ads and tap Reset/Delete Advertising ID. On iOS, go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking and ensure Allow Apps to Request to Track is off.
• Use airplane mode: Keep your phone in Airplane Mode whenever you aren’t actively using it to stop it pinging nearby towers.
• Use a Faraday bag: This is a small pouch that blocks all radio signals. It is more reliable than simply turning your phone off, as some modern devices may still be tracked even when they appear to be off.
• Disable 2G: If your phone allows it, turn off 2G to prevent IMSI-catchers from forcing your phone onto an old, unencrypted connection.

Encrypt your phone

Regardless of which phone you bring, if you have one at a protest, you should encrypt it. This will prevent the police or anyone who gets physical access to your phone from accessing your data. If you set a passcode on your iOS device, it is already encrypted. Most Android devices also automatically encrypt themselves, but if you are uncertain, you can tap Settings, then Security, and see if Device Encryption has been activated.

You should also make sure you update your device’s settings so that it does not display notifications when the screen is locked.

Turn off biometrics on your phone

Do not use biometric authentication, like face or fingerprint scans, to secure your iOS or Android device. While the legal landscape is shifting, it remains unsettled. In early 2026, some US courts ruled that compelling a person to unlock their phone with a thumbprint is a “testimonial act” protected by the Fifth Amendment. However, other courts disagree, and federal agencies like ICE use warrants that explicitly authorize them to forcibly hold a phone to your face or use your fingers to bypass security.

It is much harder for authorities to legally or physically force you to provide a memorized passcode.

• Use a strong passcode: For the best security, your PIN or passcode should be at least 10 digits long, avoid obvious sequences, and ideally include numbers and letters if possible.
• Enable lockdown mode: On both iOS and modern Android devices, you can quickly enter a lockdown state (usually by holding the power and volume buttons) to instantly disable biometrics and require a passcode for the next unlock.
• Know your rights: In the US, you are generally not obligated to share your passcode with law enforcement. However, in countries like the UK and Australia, authorities can legally compel you to hand over your password or face criminal charges.

Use secure messaging apps that are end-to-end encrypted

If you are at a protest and are worried about your privacy, you should not use SMS. It is the easiest messaging method for law enforcement to intercept. Instead, you should use an end-to-end encrypted secure messaging app. The most secure messaging app is Signal, which is operated by a nonprofit and collects almost no metadata.

• Use disappearing messages so that if your phone is seized, your past conversations are already gone.
• You can hide your phone number and use a username, which prevents your identity from being linked to your account if a stranger adds you in a group chat.

Although WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted, Facebook controls the metadata. While they can’t read your messages, they do record who you message and when. Law enforcement can request this metadata to map out protest networks.

Apple’s iMessage is also end-to-end encrypted, but only if you turn on Advanced Data Protection. But please note, if you turn on iCloud backup on your iOS device for WhatsApp or iMessage, your messages will be saved in an unencrypted state. 

Protesters should not use Bridgefy. Despite marketing itself as a “protest app” and an end-to-end encrypted messaging service, it is not end-to-end encrypted and should not be trusted with sensitive communications.

Bridgefy uses Bluetooth and a mesh network routing so that users can message each other without an internet connection. However, a group of researchers devised a series of attacks against the app and discovered it puts an incredible amount of user data at risk. As Ars Technica reported, even attackers with only moderate resources can deanonymize users, decrypt and read messages, and tamper with messages in transit.

The researchers shared these vulnerabilities with Bridgefy in April, but they have not yet been fixed.

Use end-to-end encrypted email

Email services like Gmail or Outlook can scan your messages and provide them to law enforcement. If you need to coordinate privately using email, it’s important that all members of the conversation are using a secure email service that supports end-to-end encryption. 

Conversations in Proton Mail are end-to-end encrypted (meaning only the sender and recipient can access the contents of the message) when both parties are using Proton (or another PGP-enabled service). Otherwise, the communication will be zero-access encrypted, meaning Proton won’t have access to the messages, but the service of the person you’re writing to will unless you password-protect your emails.

Proton Mail also lets you send self-destructing messages, which are erased from your recipient’s inbox at a specified time you set. 

To protect your inbox from physical searches, you should use app-level PIN protection. This requires a code or biometric check specifically for the Proton Mail app, meaning that even if someone manages to unlock your phone, they will still be blocked from your emails. For an added layer of physical privacy, you can use the discreet app icon feature to change the Proton Mail icon on your home screen to look like a generic utility app, such as a calculator or weather app. This makes it much less obvious that you have a secure communication tool installed if your phone is inspected.

Proton is based in Switzerland, so your data is protected by some of the world’s strongest privacy laws. We are prohibited by Swiss law from responding to any foreign data requests unless they are approved by a Swiss court, providing a vital legal barrier against overreaching surveillance.

Be wary of posting to social media

You can put yourself and other protesters at risk by posting on social media. There is little point in going through the effort to protect your smartphone from being monitored if you share everything you are doing on Facebook, X, or TikTok.

In 2026, federal agencies use AI-driven social media monitoring to scrape protest photos and videos. These tools can identify you or your friends through facial recognition, unique tattoos, or even the metadata hidden in your files. To preserve your privacy, be mindful of the information you share about yourself and the protest in general. If you do take pictures, ensure that all faces and identifying features are blurred or covered first.

Strip photos and videos of faces and metadata

If you must post to social media, be careful what information your photos inadvertently expose. When you take a photo or video with your smartphone, it records metadata (also known as EXIF metadata), which includes the exact time, date, and GPS coordinates of where the image was captured. 

You can prevent your smartphone camera from adding location metadata in your iOS and Android settings, but for photos you have already taken, you should scrub the data before sharing. The most effective way to do this quickly is to use the Signal app.

Open Signal and select a photo as if you are sending it, then use the blur tool to hide faces. Signal automatically strips out all EXIF metadata and hides facial features in a way that is difficult for AI to reverse. 

Taking a screenshot is a popular way to hide data, because they do not carry the original GPS metadata. However, screenshots may still contain metadata from your device, such as the time of the capture or your phone’s model. For a more thorough approach, use specialized tools like PrivMeta or Image Scrubber, which allow you to wipe metadata and paint over faces while your phone is in airplane mode.

Tip: Pixelation can sometimes be undone, so covering faces with solid black boxes or opaque digital stickers is a much more secure way to protect identities.

Your face is your identity

If you are at a protest, it’s impossible to control who takes photos of you. To protect your privacy, you should plan on covering your face in a way that disrupts modern AI. While medical masks were once sufficient, current surveillance technology can often identify individuals by analyzing only the area around the eyes and the bridge of the nose.

To be effective in 2026, you should use a combination of items to break up your facial symmetry. A wide-brimmed hat pulled low can block overhead cameras, while large, wrap-around sunglasses can obscure the key landmarks around your eyes. Using a bandana or neck gaiter that covers from the bridge of your nose down to your chest is much more effective than a simple mask.

For even greater protection, consider garments or makeup that use specific patterns designed to confuse AI. Look into computer vision dazzle (CV Dazzle), which uses high-contrast shapes to hide the bridge of the nose and eyes.

Finally, remember that law enforcement also uses unique identifiers like tattoos, bright-colored hair, or specific logos on your clothing to track you. Covering these with long sleeves, gloves, or plain, unbranded layers is just as important as covering your face.

Final takeaways

As a Swiss organization, we are politically neutral; however, we are unequivocal in our defense of citizens’ fundamental human rights. We believe everyone, including protesters, has the right to security, privacy, and freedom. Peaceful popular protests are often catalysts for long-overdue policy changes. If you are protesting peacefully and you want to protect your privacy, you should:

• Secure your phone (or leave it at home)
• Use end-to-end encrypted messaging and private email apps
• Be careful about posting on social media
• Scrub out identifying information from photos and videos

It is also important to note that as a Swiss organization, Proton Mail is subject to Swiss law, meaning we will take firm action against those who use our service for purposes that are illegal in Switzerland. We have clear terms and conditions as well as a zero-tolerance policy for crime. If any user violates those terms and conditions or uses Proton in the commission of a crime under Swiss law, such as the destruction of property, we will disable their account. 

We’re proud that Proton Mail and Proton VPN have become tools that protesters and demonstrators use to share their voices. We are firm in our stance that everyone has the right to privacy, and we hope this guide helps peaceful protesters stay safe.

UPDATE Aug. 25, 2020: This story now includes information about the Bridgefy messaging app.

UPDATE June 17, 2025: Added information about license plate scanners, Faraday bags, and Signal removing EXIF data.

UPDATE March 3, 2026: Updated to include information on federal biometric surveillance (Mobile Fortify), the data broker loophole, and 2026 legal rulings on compelled biometric unlocking.

You can get a free secure email account from Proton Mail here.

We also provide a free VPN service to protect your privacy. Proton Mail and Proton VPN are funded by community contributions. If you would like to support our development efforts, you can upgrade to a paid plan. Thank you for your support.

***

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Former Kentucky Gov. Martha Layne Collins died on Nov. 1, at age 88. Gov. Collins was a woman of firsts. She was the first — and only — woman thus far to serve as Kentucky’s governor, and was in office from 1983 to 1987.

Among a long list of accolades, one stands out: she negotiated the 1985 deal that brought Toyota’s first standalone plant to the United States.

[Ed Note: Following Collins’ passing earlier this month, Micheline Maynard, an award-winning journalist and author who covered the industry as the Detroit bureau chief for The New York Times, wrote this piece earlier for her Substack Intersection: Everything That Moves, which you can subscribe to here. We’re reprinting it here with permission.]

Forty years after the plant was announced in December 1985, the deal might be best known from newspaper clippings and TV footage, except for a fascinating set of oral histories.

They can be found online in the William H. Berge Oral History Center at Eastern Kentucky University. They were recorded in 2001 to document her administration, and include interviews with Collins administration officials as well as the late governor.

I discovered them recently when I was looking for background about Collins.

The recordings lift the veil on what has often been a mysterious process: how major companies choose sites for investment, and the lengths that states go to in order to land them.

Even now, there is a perception that Collins began courting Toyota in early 1985, the same year that Toyota announced that it had chosen Georgetown, Kentucky as its location.

But the oral histories make clear that the process began before that. The site that Toyota chose wasn’t the first one that Kentucky proposed for the factory. And before the deal was concluded, Kentucky officials fretted that they would lose the plant to a Southern neighbor.

Setting The Scene

First, a little background. In 1982, as Detroit companies suffered a then-historic decline in auto sales, the Reagan administration negotiated a Voluntary Restraint Agreement with Japan. It limited the sale of Japanese vehicles in the U.S., except for those it built here.

Japanese companies entered joint ventures with their U.S. counterparts — Toyota with General Motors at New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. (NUMMI) in Fremont, Calif., Ford with Mazda in Flat Rock, Mich., and Chrysler with Mitsubishi in Normal, Ill.

Honda, meanwhile, decided to open its own plant in Marysville, Ohio, in 1982. Nissan followed with its first U.S. factory in Smyrna, Tenn., in 1983. That meant Toyota, the biggest carmaker, was in the spotlight to launch production here.

But as anyone who has ever watched the company knows, Toyota never rushes.

“When we first started calling on Toyota, they had not said they were going to come to North America, other than their plant that they had in California,” Collins said in the oral history interview. “We just started going and calling on them.”

Unusual Deference

At the time, books and seminars providing advice on Japanese culture were all the rage. I remember reading some of them before my trips, but Collins said she did not take any extra steps to prepare herself for meetings with Toyota.

“I did not go to school to learn how to work with the Japanese. I did not take any courses, as some of the other governors did. I did not learn how to exchange a business card or what to do or what not to do. It kind of came naturally.”

Her gender was an advantage, she said. “I would go to Japan and be the only female governor over there. So they never got me mixed up with the others.”

Possibly because she was female, Collins was treated to hospitality that many visiting dignitaries never received. When she eventually met Toyota chairman Eiji Toyoda (above), he brought his wife along.

“The Japanese did not bring their families into their business. It’s totally separate. You knew there was something special there when they bring their families,” she said.

Collins also shared a philosophy that Toyota has regularly espoused during its history: customer service. She did not want the Toyota officials to feel she was demanding the investment or expected it in return for the time her staff was putting in.

“They were my customer. I was providing a service,” Collins said.

In courting Toyota, much of the day-to-day work was done by a team headed by Ted Sauer, executive director of the Kentucky Commerce Cabinet’s Office of International Marketing.

Sometimes, Collins recalled, she charged Sauer with traveling to Japan to deliver requested information in person — something other states were not doing.

Modifications In Secret

While on a trip to Japan, Sauer learned that Toyota was unhappy with the 500-acre site that the state proposed. That set off a scramble to assemble purchase options on another 500 acres. Now, any economic development agency has that information at its fingertips.

But back then, “We didn’t have the experience to go out to get the options, and we didn’t want people to know,” Sauer recalled.

The state enlisted help from Norfolk Southern Railway, which had the ability to make confidential land deals. Then, word came that Toyota had increased its request to 800 acres, and the Kentucky team had to find more land.

“From day one we knew this was going to be a much larger project than the original specifications,” Sauer said. “It exceeded our expectations.”

Said the governor: “This was going to be BIG.”

While choosing Kentucky now looks like a foregone conclusion, Collins and Sauer said it was not at the time. “The consultants rated Tennessee better than us. They rated Ohio better than us,” he said. Ohio – where Honda was located – “was head and shoulders above us in skills and services.”

After the months of conversations, site visits, and trips to Japan, the finalists boiled down to Tennessee and Kentucky. The Kentucky group hoped their site would be more attractive because of its proximity to Lexington, the presence in the area of several universities, and access to Cincinnati’s international airport, about an hour away.

The Toyota site selection team chose to visit Tennessee first, which gave Collins time to set up a celebration for the visitors from Japan.

She knew American folk songs were popular in Japan, so she arranged for singers from My Old Kentucky Home, a historic site in Bardstown, to sing Stephen Foster tunes at dinner. She ordered Baked Alaska, which was decorated with sparklers for an exciting touch. She set up an after-dinner fireworks display at the state capitol.

Sitting At The Airport

Then, she rode to the Lexington airport to meet the team in person. But the Toyota planes, two private jets, were late. Her staff tried to convince her to return to her office, but the governor killed time greeting passengers as if it were a normal part of her day.

“I was just meeting people in the airport, talking to them, welcoming them to Kentucky,” she recalled.

An hour stretched into two, and Collins said she began to wonder if the Toyota team had chosen Tennessee and was going to ghost her. “I’m thinking they are going to say they are not coming, but I didn’t think they’d do that,” she said.

Collins kept telling herself, “You’re not going to look nervous. Everything is under control. But your mind is constantly thinking, what if? Some people do this with a dinner party at their home. They get uptight. What if they had made a deal and that was what was taking so long?”

Finally, the private jets arrived, two and a half hours late. Collins knew the Toyota officials were rattled by being so far off schedule. She had learned in Japan that promptness mattered. Often, during her trips, the Kentucky team would arrive too early and would drive around in the car to arrive on time.

But Collins did her best to soothe the frazzled Toyota group. On the ride from the airport, she calmly pointed out local landmarks. “Now, here’s Keeneland, here’s Calumet,” the big horse farm across from the racetrack. She remembered that the interpreter had trouble keeping up with her patter.

Upstaged At The End

To her relief, the welcome dinner went off smoothly, and in December 1985, Toyota planned to announce that Kentucky had won the plant. But their announcement was upstaged by U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell.

According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, he slipped out of a dinner at the Watergate Hotel where Toyota officials, as a courtesy, informed him, then-Sen. Wendell Ford and others about the decision, and began calling the news media.

That night, TV stations reported that Kentucky had won the plant, followed by newspaper headlines the next morning. Some people in the administration were furious that Collins and her team did not get the credit.

But years later, Sauer was sanguine. “Toyota had to pay attention to national politics. There’s a bigger picture for them than this plant in Georgetown,” he remembered.

At the time, “The Japanese were real worried about the labor force in the United States. Tennessee was a right-to-work state. Kentucky was not. Anyone would be excited to get 3,000 jobs.”

Beyond Imagination

From the 1985 announcement of an $800 million investment, Toyota has invested more than $11 billion in facilities in the Georgetown area. It employs roughly 10,000 people.

On Monday, it announced its latest U.S. investment of $922 million across its plants in Kentucky, Mississippi, West Virginia, Tennessee, and Missouri, to add 252 jobs and boost production of hybrid electric vehicles.

If you drive through what was once rolling countryside where Toyota is now located, you see plants making cars, engines, plastics, and dies. The 800-acre site has grown to 1,300 acres.

Collins was right: it is big — even bigger than she might have ever dreamed.

[This piece was republished with permission from Micki’s excellent Substack Intersection: Everything That Moves, which you can subscribe to here.]

Top graphic images: Toyota

The post How Kentucky Ended Up Winning A Toyota Plant Worth Billions Of Dollars appeared first on The Autopian.

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