How Americans Are Surveilled During Protests

WIRED

17-04-2025

Protesters rally in Manhattan to demand an end to cuts in science, research, education and other areas by the Trump administration on April 08, 2025 in New York City. Photo-Illustration: WIRED Staff; Photograph: Spencer Platt
There have been a number of protests in the past few months pushing back against President Trump's most recent policy changes, and we're likely to see more. Today on the show, WIRED's senior editor of security and investigations, Andrew Couts, talks us through the technology being used by law enforcement to surveil protests, how surveillance tech has evolved over the years, and what it means for anyone taking to the streets or posting to social media to voice their concerns. Plus, we share WIRED tips on how to stay safe, should you choose to protest.
You can follow Michael Calore on Bluesky at @snackfight, Lauren Goode on Bluesky at @laurengoode, and Andrew Couts on Bluesky at @couts. Write to us at [e-mail]. How to Listen
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[Archival audio]: No justice, no peace. Ho ho. Trump and Musk have got to go.
Michael Calore: People are taking to the streets to challenge President Donald Trump's most recent policy changes, some of which have been created with the aid of Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
[Archival audio]: All 50 states saw these so-called hands-off rallies and so did a few cities in Europe.
Michael Calore: The first hands-off protests occurred earlier this month. The Tesla Takedown demonstrations have been rolling for weeks and from the feel of it, we're looking at a summer full of protests. So today we're talking about the risks of being surveilled by law enforcement during protests. We'll talk about how surveillance tech is being used, how it's evolved over the years, and what it means for anyone taking to the streets or posting to social media to voice their concerns. This is WIRED's Uncanny Valley , a show about the people power and influence of Silicon Valley. I'm Michael Calore, Director of Consumer Tech and Culture here at WIRED.
Lauren Goode: And I'm Lauren Goode. I'm a senior writer at WIRED.
Michael Calore: Katie Drummond is out today, but we're joined by WIRED's Senior Editor of Security and Investigations, Andrew Couts.
Andrew Couts: Thanks so much for having me.
Michael Calore: So let's start by talking about what's going on right now. There are the hands-off protests, there are the Tesla Takedown protests. Are these related at all?
Lauren Goode: The hands-off protests and the Tesla Takedown movement are not the same, but they are related. They're both in some way resisting some of the policies that Donald Trump has quickly enacted without congressional approval in the short time since he took office in January. Tesla Takedown is pegged directly at Elon Musk who has this official but unofficial role in Trump's administration as the leader of DOGE. We sometimes refer to him as the Buddy In Chief, and the idea there is to challenge Musk's power as one of the world's richest men by devaluing one of his most important businesses in the private sector, which is Tesla, whereas the hands-off protests are about all kinds of things. They're protesting the firing of federal workers, the overreaching and potentially unconstitutional immigration policies, threats to women's rights and LGBTQ rights, threats to social security, threats to healthcare. The list goes on. The idea is basically get your hands off my rights.
Michael Calore: And how are the protests looking?
Lauren Goode: They're fairly significant. Tesla Takedown is a grassroots movement that started outside of Tesla dealerships in showrooms back in February and has been happening on an ongoing basis and has gotten quite a bit of attention. Hands-off had its biggest day so far on April 5th I think, and organizers said that there were more 1,300 rallies of varying sizes across the United States on that Saturday. And if you haven't heard of these rallies or seen the sizes of the crowds that people like AOC and Bernie Sanders have been pulling in, then I would seriously question the media that you're consuming because this is really happening.
Michael Calore: Yeah, there's been really striking footage of people walking in Manhattan and just wall to wall people down one of the major avenues just for like a mile.
Lauren Goode: Right, and not AI generated.
Michael Calore: The people who are out taking the streets and engaging in their constitutional right of free speech and assembly, what are they worried about?
Lauren Goode: I can't speak for everyone and I want to toss this to Andrew because I think Andrew's going to give us the real meat here in terms of digital surveillance, but I would just say that I think with any protest, even before we all had smartphones and there were surveillance cameras everywhere on every street corner in every train station, you always had to weigh the risks of doing the surveilling as in being a watchdog of the powerful and questioning abuses of power and civil rights versus being surveilled at the same time you're doing it, but because we live in this digital world now, I think surveillance really is one of the biggest threats today. Andrew, do you want to say more about that?
Andrew Couts: Yeah, I mean surveillance is just constant and we are all being surveilled constantly if you have a smartphone or just on the internet. So whether someone is being surveilled at a protest, the answer is a hundred percent yes, especially if they have their phone with them and there's obviously other types of surveillance, but I think one of the things that you have to think about if you're going to engage in any type of protest and engage in your first amendment right to speak out against whatever you want to speak out against is that it's not just what's happening at the protest that matters, it's also the constant surveillance that's happening of your social media feeds or any other types of publishing you might do online. You really need to be thinking about your entire life and your entire data footprint and how that's going to be contextualized within you being at a protest. The other thing I'd be worried about is bad actors or anybody committing crimes while you're at that protest, there's a difference between going and exercising your constitutional rights and committing crimes. And I think these days those two get conflated a lot, especially after the 2020 protests where there's a lot of vandalism and violence and the protesters and the people committing crimes get all lumped together and it's very easy to lump people together these days, and I feel like that's happening on an official level in terms of immigration right now with the Department of Justice, the state Department categorizing anybody who they deem as a problematic as either a criminal outright, they'll say that or just canceling visas because somebody spoke out against the war in Gaza. These things are all getting conflated, and so you don't necessarily have power over how you're going to be perceived if you go to a protest and something happens or somebody just decides to characterize that activity in a way that's inaccurate but is potentially consequential for your life.
Michael Calore: And to get into how exactly that conflation happens, I want to talk a little bit about how devices and certain signals on social media are used in order to identify you and identify you as a certain type of person or a person who was somewhere. So let's talk specifically about the phone for a minute. What specifically does the phone do to identify you?
Andrew Couts: So there's a few ways. The first is even if you had no apps on your phone except for the phone app basically, probably even not then, if you just have the device with you and it's powered on your phone is going to be pinging the nearby cell towers, it's going to ping whatever the tower is that has the highest signal that's close to you and that power is going to be collecting your device ID and the time and date when your phone pinged the tower. And so that information can easily be obtained by police with subpoenas and anything to get just whatever devices were pinging a specific tower. So that's one way. The other way is through the apps on your phone. And so we've done a ton of reporting at WIRED about the ways in which advertising data, which can be collected in a few different ways, but is often collected through developer kits or SDKs, and these can often include very, very precise location data down to which parking spot you parked your car in front of a Home Depot or something. It can be extremely precise and it's constant. And so as long as your phone is on and is communicating with any server that's connected to an SDK on whatever random apps on your phone, that data is then being backing up and used typically to serve you ads, but it can also be purchased by governments, it can be purchased by police departments or anybody, me or you, if you have the money to buy that data and you can see exactly where someone was at a specific time or at least you can see where the device was. And so it's not too difficult to kind of figure out where somebody was at any certain time if you have your device. And so that's one of the main reasons that having a phone with you at a protest, you got to make that decision about whether that's the best choice.
Michael Calore: Right. The idea is that as you move around in the world, if law enforcement wants to sort of draw any sort of conclusions about what kind of person you are and who you hang out with and what sorts of places you go, it's relatively easy for them to do so.
Andrew Couts: Yeah, absolutely. And the fact is that they're not going to just be using one or the other. They're going to be using basically every tool available to them. So that can include other people's social media posts that show you in photographs or videos. It's going to be police body cameras, it's going to be your own social media posts or statements saying that you were at a certain place at a certain time, and so it's all going to be used together to show like, yes, this person was at X place at X time.
Lauren Goode: What is your advice then for sharing the social media from a protest, particularly since social media can be an important tool for getting a message out or letting people know there is a rally happening?
Andrew Couts: When making these decisions, it's really depends on your risk threshold. I think if you are really concerned about your safety and maybe your immigration status or your ability to live freely in the United States, I would definitely limit your exposure to other people's social media posts, meaning wear a mask if you're able to, remove any identifying features that you can cover up or make sure you don't have your name on your shirt or anything like that. And definitely don't post to your own social media about the protest if you're really concerned about that. Not everybody's risk levels are going to be the same though. Maybe getting the word out is the most important thing to you, maybe that's your job, but it is definitely something to factor in that you are almost certainly going to be subjected to other people's video and photos and you need to take that into consideration before you decide to go to a protest or how you decide to conduct yourself there.
Michael Calore: So if we can assume that what you're doing online and not only moving around in the world, but the things that you're doing online are being monitored, then what about your private conversations? What about if you're using Twitter DMs or if you're on Facebook and you're private messaging with people on Facebook?
Lauren Goode: Or WhatsApp or any of the Facebook-owned apps?
Michael Calore: Yeah, sure. Is it possible for those types of things to also be exposed through like a subpoena? Basically my question here is are tech companies protecting us in any way against governments prying into our DMs?
Andrew Couts: So there's a difference between active surveillance and passive surveillance, especially when we're talking about social media. There are companies that are constantly collecting everything that is posted publicly online about a particular keyword or a hashtag or anything like that. So anytime you're posting about a certain protest or a certain political thing, you might be getting subjected to some kind of surveillance there, but it's very passive. You're part of many people who are talking about a thing presumably, and it's not targeted at you. Then there's active surveillance where you are a subject of an investigation or you're a person of interest to authorities, and that can be much more invasive. So if somebody suspects that you say caught a car on fire at a protest, you may be subjected to subpoenas or your communications may be subjected to subpoenas or warrants, search warrants, and the sky's the limit on how much the police are going to be able to get about your communications if you are subjected to a police investigation or some other government investigation. So those might not be subjected to it because those messages are much more limited in their availability. So that's going to be a big difference in terms of whether you're just at a protest, nothing has happened, you're just posting about stuff on social media that's just going to be probably passively surveilled in one degree or another. If you're subject to an active investigation, that's a much more serious type of surveillance and you're in a much more serious situation.
Michael Calore: So there are several companies in Silicon Valley that specialize in surveillance technology. They basically make products that law enforcement and governments can use to surveil people. So I think we should identify some of them. Who are the big names here?
Lauren Goode: Well, there are some companies that are specifically in data intelligence, and I think the Silicon Valley company that comes to mind for most people is Palantir. Palantir is building ICE's case management software. That's just one example. There's also Clearview AI, which is a facial recognition company, and then there are data aggregators like Data Miner, and then of course there's the whole network of other tech companies too, whether they're chip makers like Nvidia or Intel or they're cloud service providers like Amazon that directly or indirectly power some of the systems that governments around the world would use in their surveillance technology, if you want to call it a surveillance technology, but there are different contexts for all of these too. For example, Andrew, one of the things that you mentioned in your video series Incognito Mode is you call out Data Miner, but you also say, "But as a journalist I've used that too."
Andrew Couts: Yeah, I mean there's a lot of overlap with what reporters do, what journalists do, and what other types of investigators do. You're trying to get the information and connect dots and try to see what you can prove. And so the motivation or the end product of that is going to be very different depending on what your job is. The thing, I think anybody using them regardless of why is just how powerful they are and how much data we're all producing all the time. And I think Data Miner is a good example. It's really one of the main ways that social media is surveilled, and I think when we're talking about social media, we're not just talking about X and Instagram and TikTok, we're talking about all of those plus Reddit forums, everything where there's user participation online is often getting sucked up into these tools as long as those posts are publicly available. A lot of these companies, they're now using AI to perform additional data analysis, at least on these conversations that are happening online and kind of flagging things to say, "This looks like it's maybe a threat," or, "This looks like it maybe falls into whatever parameters that an investigator of any type wants to look into." And so we're taking the human element out of it so it's not just some guy watching your Bluesky feed, it is a computer watching everybody's Bluesky feed and then using AI to flag that for human beings who can then maybe look into it further.
It's happening constantly. We just have to assume everything you post, even if you delete it, whatever, it's all being vacuumed up into these big data tools and then potentially used by authorities in whatever way they're going to use them. And I think the biggest change from say the 2020 protests is we don't know how they're going to be used, what the authorities are going to be going after, what they could go after in a year from now. And so when we're talking about assessing our own personal risks, that has to be at the forefront of it is that we don't know what's going to matter or what's going to be a problem or what's going to even be a crime within the near future.
Michael Calore: All right, that feels like a good place to take a break. We'll be right back. Okay, let's go back in time a little bit about five years ago to be exact. It's May 2020 and we're in the first year of the pandemic and George Floyd has been murdered by police in Minneapolis. This sparks nationwide an international protest. It also sparked a huge conversation about surveillance technology and how it was being used to monitor protesters. And Andrew, you wrote a story around this time about how hundreds of protesters in New York were arrested and eventually won a landmark settlement against the city of New York. Can you tell us about it and where the surveillance tech came in?
Andrew Couts: Yeah, so this is an interesting case where the police body cam footage was ultimately used against the police department in the form of a lawsuit because the plaintiffs in this case and their legal team were able to gather, I think around 6,300 videos from protests around the New York City and use the body cam footage to document instances of police abuse in various ways against the protesters. And so they were able to win millions of dollars by doing this, and they were using the body cam footage that the police were capturing themselves. This is one instance where the system worked how it was supposed to in certain ways. They also used a tool that allowed them to go through this many, many hours of footage to be able to pinpoint instances of police use of force, use of pepper spray, other types of police infractions against the protesters. So it was really an interesting use of surveillance technology used against the police themselves as well as custom big data tools that are able to make sense of all this data because that's a lot of times when we're talking about surveilling protests, we're talking about just massive, massive amounts of data and the data doesn't matter unless you're able to make some sense of it. And so I think the tools that are used to analyze big batches of data are just as important as the tools capturing the activity or the speech or whatever it is themselves.
Michael Calore: Back at the time of the 2020 protests, one of the tools that was used to identify who was in a specific location was a geofence warrant. How have geofence warrants evolved since 2020?
Andrew Couts: First, let's just start with what a geofence warrant is. A geofence warrant essentially allows law enforcement to go to a tech company and ask for every device that was in a specific location and give us all the devices that were in that location at a specific time. Now, very often police departments would go to Google for this because Google's apps are on so many people's phones or Google makes people's phones, and so they're going to have the most data. They're going to probably get something on every single person who had a phone in that location, in that geofence area. Google has since said that it's no longer going to provide information that way. That doesn't mean police aren't going to still be able to get that data in some form or another, but Google isn't going to just hand over this big batch of data the way that it used to. And so that's one big change. They can also go to another company, they can go to TikTok, they can go to whatever. That said, there's been a couple of changes on the legal front as well. Last year there were two court rulings, one in the Fourth Circuit and one in the Fifth Circuit specifically about geofence warrants. And these court rulings looked almost identical from the beginning of the case, but the rulings were completely the opposite. So essentially the Fourth Circuit ruled that a geofence warrant, it doesn't constitute a search in the way that the fourth Amendment requires. The Fifth Circuit ruled that it does.
Michael Calore: And as of April, the Fourth Circuit Court is actively reconsidering its stance on geofence warrants. So there's still more to come, right?
Andrew Couts: There's still a lot of ambiguity around it and the changes that Google made definitely impacted police ability to get that information in such a clean one-shot way, but they're still happening.
Michael Calore: What if I'm just walking by a protest going from one bus stop to another or getting a bagel? Do I get trapped in the circle that they've drawn on the map?
Andrew Couts: Yeah, if you're there at the specific timeframe that the police have stipulated in their geofence warrant, then yeah, you would.
Michael Calore: That's super reassuring. So we've talked a lot about police, specifically law enforcement and cities, but also the US government is collecting this information and analyzing the data that they're getting. What agencies are using these technologies to surveil people?
Andrew Couts: So we know for certain that the FBI is going to be collecting data for national security purposes. We're likely seeing Department of Homeland Security collecting a lot of data. Customs and border protection are using social media surveillance. ICE is using social media surveillance. At this point, I think you just have to assume all of them are. I mean, part of the capitalism of it all is that these companies are competing and that means prices get lower. And so it's not just one company that's offering it. It's multiple companies that are offering different surveillance platforms or technologies. And so it gets cheaper for governments to get it, and then at some point it's going to make a lot more sense for a certain agency to have it, even if five, 10 years ago they wouldn't have had it.
Michael Calore: Okay, let's take another break and then come right back. Welcome back to Uncanny Valley . Okay, let's talk now about what our listeners can do if they want to go and protest out in the streets or if they want to tweet through it, if they want to express themselves online, what measures should they take to protect themselves if they're worried about surveillance and if they feel as though they would not want to share as much information as we now know law enforcement and the government can collect on them? Now, Lauren, you co-authored a piece a few years ago and then just recently updated it with advice for people to go out and protest safely. And I know we have a few different guides on WIRED that people can read, but let's talk through some of the high-level stuff here. This question is for both of you, what are the top things that you would recommend for people who want to go out and protest in person?
Andrew Couts: I think the top thing I would consider is whether you should bring your phone with you or not or potentially put it in a Faraday bag, which can block all signals to and from the device and limit that surveillance. That's going to be one of the greatest sources of data for anybody who wants to investigate anyone who's at a specific protest. Your phone is a surveillance machine. The best thing you can do is to throw it in the sea if you want to protect your privacy overall, but that's not practical, so consider leaving it at home. I would also be really careful about what you're posting online. If you're serious about an issue, avoid making flippant jokes that are going to be misconstrued by prosecutors basically. And don't joke about spray-painting Tesla's. Don't joke about committing crimes of any kind. Don't joke about engaging in violence and because that will be used against you if something happens and you find yourself under arrest.
Michael Calore: Would you recommend that people turn off biometrics on their phone? That's a tip I see a lot.
Lauren Goode: Yeah, that's one of our biggest pieces of advice. Turn off your face ID.
Michael Calore: Face ID.
Lauren Goode: What do they call it on the Google phone?
Michael Calore: They call it fingerprint detection.
Lauren Goode: Fingerprint. Sure. The idea being that if you are approached by authorities, and this goes for if you're even traveling through an airport by the way, and you're concerned that you might be detained, the idea is that someone could basically hold the phone up to your face or force you to unlock it versus using a numeric passcode.
Michael Calore: Okay, and what stops somebody from holding up your phone and saying, "Plug in your passcode"?
Andrew Couts: You can also just say, "I am exercising my right to remain silent," and you can say, "I'm exercising my Fifth Amendment rights." That's the law, which that advice actually stems is because police can't tell you to turn over evidence against yourself, which is ostensibly what a password is if they go in your phone and find something there. I think that advice is especially important. You mentioned airports, but the ACLU has pointed out the so-called a hundred-mile zone, which is a hundred miles from any US border or any ocean where ICE and other immigration authorities can basically just search anybody for any reason. You just have to be a much more cognizant of that. And if you're in the US on a visa, I'd be really, really careful about that because we've seen people who are here perfectly legally, and then their visas get just canceled. So if for some reason you're at a protest that is deemed not within the Trump administration's okay list, you might find yourself just automatically getting your visa canceled or anything like that if you're going to a protest. So I would just add being realistic about your own personal risk thresholds and what personal risks you probably face. The answer to that is to not go, and that's also very problematic because then you are limiting your First Amendment rights yourself and it's the chilling effect, but you have to balance those two things out. We're in kind of no man's land at the moment, and so you have to be really realistic about what makes sense for your own personal life.
Michael Calore: So Lauren, what are some of the other things that you would recommend people do to stay safe if they want to go out and protest?
Lauren Goode: Well, our guide recommends that you don't go alone. So traveling groups. I would also throw in there avoid taking your own car. Not only is your license plate likely to be scanned, but in terms of the location of your vehicle can be pinpointed specifically to a parking spot. Also, for whatever reason, you have to get out of there sort of quickly, having to get to your car and possibly get out of a log jam doesn't make any sense. So use public transit or traveling groups. Certainly back in 2020, we saw a lot of people wearing masks during the protests because it was covid. It was covid times. It's still not a bad idea to wear a mask, not just for health reasons, but because it obscures some of your face and therefore less of your face is being recorded and stored somewhere. This is kind of social media hygiene, which Andrew has given us a lot of great tips on, but don't capture people's faces in photos and videos. Be considerate. If you are going to take an image, maybe shoot from behind, you can't see people's faces. Try not to capture any sort of distinctive outfits, tattoos, something that could sort of set someone apart because you don't want to be a narc for them basically. Use encrypted messaging once you're on the ground. I mean, I think that these are all kind of standard good safety policies. If you suspect things are really going to get pretty hairy, it's a good idea to have important phone numbers written directly on your body. We sort of joke these days about how we don't remember anyone's phone numbers in our lives. They could be the most important person in your life. It could be your partner and you're like, "I don't know anyone's phone number because it's stored in my phone." But that can become a real issue if your stuff has been confiscated and you've been detained or arrested. A couple other things. Keep in mind the ACLU says you can protest at government buildings, but you should maybe try to stick to traditional public grounds like public streets and the sidewalks outside of government buildings. Don't block access to a government building if you're protesting. Don't do what January six protesters did, and Andrew mentioned your immigration status as well. But basically you really do have to consider the risks quite carefully if you are someone who is here on any kind of student visa or any kind of non-immigrant visa like an H-B or an O-I. I spoke to an immigration attorney who just said, really think twice about going. And she said, "It pains me not to tell people to exercise their First Amendment rights, but you're much more vulnerable in that situation and the risks are much higher for you."
Michael Calore: Okay, well, this is all very good advice and I would just add to all of that hydrate, because it's going to be a very long summer and it's going to be very hot summer, and you need to make sure that you don't pass out while you're out there.
Lauren Goode: That's good advice.
Michael Calore: Andrew, thanks for joining us today for this conversation. It was filled with a lot of great info. Thank you.
Lauren Goode: Thanks, Andrew.
Andrew Couts: Thanks so much for having me.
Michael Calore: And of course, everybody should check out Andrew's YouTube series on WIRED's channel. It is called Incognito Mode, and it's all about surveillance and it's all about digital privacy. Thanks for listening to Uncanny Valley . If you liked what you heard today, make sure to follow our show and rate it on your podcast app of choice. If you'd like to get in touch with us with any questions, comments, or show suggestions, write to us at [e-mail]. Today's show is produced by Kyana Moghadam. Amar Lal at Macro Sound mixed this episode. Page Oamek fact checked this episode. Jordan Bell is our executive producer, Katie Drummond is WIRED's Global Editorial Director, and Chris Bannon is the Head of Global Audio.