There Are No Girls on the Internet - Campus Protests: A Surveillance and Harassment Nightmare

Episode Date: May 10, 2024

Campuses are canceling and shrinking graduation ceremonies after waves of student protests. The protests have also triggered a wave of harassment, doxxing, and online harm. Caroline and Sam, digital security and privacy experts with Convocation Research and Design, share some shocking facts and thought provoking perspectives about state surveillance during the protests.  They also describe steps people can take to help protect their own privacy and safety.  Follow Convocation Research and Design’s work: https://convocation.design/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. Graduation is supposed to be a time for eager college grads making speeches and walking across the stage to receive their hard-earned diplomas. But campuses around the country at places like USC, Columbia, and Emery have either shrunk or canceled graduation ceremonies in the wake of protests demanding universities divest from Israel. In other words, withdraw any funds their university endowments have invested in companies that are linked to Israel. The protests have really escalated recently, and even before that, a digital billboard truck

funded by a well-moneyed conservative group drove around university campuses at Columbia, Harvard, and UPenn, with pictures and names of students, accusing them of being, quote, their campuses leading anti-Semites. One student, whose picture and name were on a billboard truck at Columbia, spoke to Verge, saying, I literally did not leave my apartment the days my friends told me about it. The student said that her name was listed on the truck because a club that she was no longer a part of had signed on to an open letter urging Columbia to cut ties with Israel. I completely wiped as much as I could of my online presence and stated my apartment as much as I could,

the student said. Meanwhile, Canary Mission, a website that lists people perceived as being supportive of Palestine in order to keep them from getting future job prospects, has docked students across the country. It is your duty to ensure that today's radicals are not tomorrow's employees, a video describing the project explains. Caroline Cinders and their colleague Sam are part of Convocation Research and Design, or Cords for short. They help people who are being doxed or are at risk for being doxed, train people on how to stay safe both online and off while engaging in protest, and advocate for technology to be designed in more responsible ways. When I first caught up with Caroline and Sam, I thought this whole conversation would be pretty straightforward. You know, turn off your phone out of protest, that kind of thing.

But as we spoke, Caroline and Sam described just how charged of a landscape we're talking about. And I realized the conversation is so much more complicated than that. So when I first reached out to y'all to do this episode, I thought it was going to be a pretty basic guide for how folks protesting on campus and off campus can stay safe digitally. I thought we'd be talking about pretty basic things like use a passcode to unlock your phone so that if you're detained by police, they have a harder time getting into it or cover any distinctive tattoos, that kind of thing. But then when you and I started talking, I realized there was so much more going on here and that I needed to take a step back. You all told me about things like provocateurs setting up fake dating profiles and then going on fake dates with protesters and trying to secretly record them saying things to make them look bad. James O'Keefe style or how right-wing influencers are kind of selling themselves as citizen journalists and trying to make names for themselves by engineering viral content of

protesters looking bad on top of threats to protesters that you might traditionally think of, threats from campus administration or police. So can you just give us kind of the lay of the land in terms of the threats that these student protesters are facing right now? These threats are wide and varied. I think student action. activists are seeing threats not only from outside, but from inside as well. So they're having to contend with school administration, sometimes hostile students who are against what they are protesting for, as well as outside forces like the police or outside, sometimes infiltrators, like people like Project Beritas style,

where they're trying to like get into protests in order to record people who they perceive as their political opposition in order to make them look bad and then posting that on the internet for clout or subscriptions or money, as well as a variety of other threats that I think a lot of people don't really take into account. So you talked about people doing this for clout or engagement. Do you think that's a big undercurrent of what we're seeing here? Like people who are like, oh, this is a great opportunity to put out some viral video that makes a protester look bad or look uninformed or look threatening or dangerous.

I'll put that online and become a superstar myself. I mean, we are more in a time of the kind of. of like citizen journalists, some of them call themselves or like man on the street interviews where those are very popular on like TikTok or Instagram or Twitter or YouTube or Rumble. Like the list goes on and on of all these different platforms that they're able to monetize these videos for and it is very big in the cultural climate that these protests are happening in. So yes and no, like they are a small part of these protests, but any large event, I feel like that's happening collectively in the country is going to have probably a similar amount of

people that are chasing it for some type of engagement. And just to build on that, you know, I really do think we are in like the age of the influencer. I think that is something a lot of folks who feel comfortable saying. It is really hard to say, you know, citation needed in terms of how many folks are attending these protests in person or following them online, right? And commenting in a way that is related to influencer or citizen journalism. Like there are a variety of organizations that are trying to identify student protesters

and docs them and put their information online. like one that comes to mind is Camarie Mission, for example. But, you know, there are a lot of folks that are either, or not a lot, but there are definitely folks that are showing up to the protests that are, we could argue, have, you know, maybe some more malicious intentions that are in this more assist in journalism or influencer space. But there's also lots of folks watching online, trying to identify different folks at these protests and sort of doing a kind of, let's say, like recap or analysis. And this is stuff,

you know, we've seen in many other different kinds of spaces in ways. Like, what comes to mind for me is, you know, the Johnny Depp Amber Heard trial where we saw so many sort of armchair investigators and heavy, heavy quotes. Body language experts. Like, this is the lip readers and things like that. And, and, And, but that had like a real impact on how people really perceived that trial and how, I would argue, and really discoloring Amber Hurd not as a victim, but as a perpetrator when in fact, she was a victim, right? And so I think, you know, we're still seeing a lot of that here and now with folks, I think also maybe not physically being at the protest, but commenting on them, analyzing them, right? and providing different kinds of wrongful assessments. And similar to what we saw with the Amber Hurd Johnny Depp trial, have you seen that those kind of armchair folks who aren't necessarily involved in the protest

but are like, you know, commenting on the viral video they saw from the protest or whatever, that that is having an impact on how everyday people are perceiving what's going on on college campuses across the country? I think it's leading to like a stratification for sure. And I think some of that is also, you know, I would argue actually also coming from a place, even of sadly like traditional media. One of the things I like to highlight is we don't live in a harassment literate society. And I think a lot of the analysis that is sort of existing around this, this particular conflict, right, is sort of caught up in a really lack of nuance, right? So the inability to see, let's say, the people of Gaza as individuals, that we are watching

a genocide unfold, that we are watching things where many respected, reputable international bodies, right, are weighing in and saying, like, this is unprecedented in terms of, like, a famine that's being caused, in terms of the attack, in terms of the amount of journalists killed, in terms of the amount of children that are killed in this particular conflict, right? And a lot of what I think is happening is a version of context collapse in which I think some folks are weaponizing, are weaponizing anti-Semitism to push for other agendas. And that is also creating a space in which it's very difficult to have, one could argue, a nuanced conversation, right?

And I think that is a large part of this. And then from there, that kind of gives bad actors a space to push different kinds of agendas and different kinds of information. And also in a way, almost again, like justify the doxing of different activists, right? And so I think it's sort of hard to like definitively say, but I do see on. on like the, you know, on the, like, right or conservative end, this sort of lack of nuance and inability to understand, like, a human rights conflict, really muddying the waters in terms of also how do you contextualize

or talk about, let's say, like, student protesters. So we talked a lot about, like, media entities, I guess I'll say, who are known provocateurs that, like, nobody should trust. But I do think that national reporting is not, is not, I have not seen a lot of national reporting that is super clear about what is going on. Like the fact that we're talking about 19, like a 19 year old college freshman or something being up against a coordinated, organized, well funded institution with a mission to docks them and make them look bad. Right. And so like I don't feel like we are really getting a lot of opportunities to have that full. story told. I think that the way that you've described it, Caroline, as like, we just don't live in a harassment literate society where, you know, the actual context of what that would be like

and what, and like, why that is happening is not being reflected perhaps. And I guess I wonder, like, how can we get to a place where that's, that story is being told more honestly where people really understand that like, yeah, you're talking about a college student for who, and then a billionaire funds a truck with their picture and their name on it to drive around their campus, right? Or like how truly fucked up that really is. Totally. And thank you so much for that. I don't know how we get towards a harassment literate society. That's why I'm really grateful for a podcast. Like, no girls on the internet. So I've been really grateful for a lot of the programming we've seen across different kinds of

civil society organizations. I've been extremely grateful for teen vogue. It hits, like, existence over the few years. I think a lot of this is really sort of insisting on having nuanced conversations, but I think a lot of it also actually does come down to different kinds of education. And I don't know at what level that should happen or exist in. Like, for example, with our organization, we don't really work a lot with children for a variety of reasons. Some of that is also just like regulatory reasons. It's not one of our advocacy focuses because children are like under 18. They're just a different legal group than than adults. But you know, I think there's something to be said around how do we, how do we sort of talk about things like digital harm and also offline harm.

But I think that this is also an issue that adults run into as well. Like you can't necessarily summarize, I think often, or I think it's difficult to summarize a lot of harassment cases into a tweet, right? To summarize it in a few characters. And I think in this sort of space of us trying to maybe editorialize or, you know, take a stance on something that often really collapses the nuance of what we're talking about. I also think that there is like a binary in which people tend to approach good and bad, and that sort of weighs into harassment. I think that there's also a deeper context here. So this is one of the things I've noticed in some of the trainings we do with folks that are,

like victims that are facing harassment or have been harassed. And I've also noticed this with folks that are, let's end up being friends of harassers. It can be very destabilizing and difficult to sort of come to terms with that someone you care about might harm someone else. Folks often I've found in my experience, so this is like in my observations, like they'll sort of reflect on their own personal feelings about it, right? And what that says about them. And it's one of those things where I like to say harassment isn't complicated. It's your feelings about the harasser that are complicated. right? Like those are the complexities. So if you're a fan of Johnny Depp, it's probably very difficult

to reconcile your fandom and like this thing you've invested in, even with clear evidence that he has harmed someone, right? Or if someone is your friend. So then what I found is people try to look for logical reasons, like, oh, what did the victim do? There must be a reason that this thing or person or institution or country I really like is doing this. There has to be a logical reason. And one of the things I like to point out to is like sometimes there's not. It's like the bitch eating crackers mean. Someone just might not like that other person and that's all that it takes and they happen to like you. And that is sometimes just how harassment unfolds, right? Other times people are seeking out a weaker opponent to feel stronger. You know, there's all different reasons.

My work in particular doesn't really focus on this like psychology of the harasser or why they harassed that doesn't necessarily help me help victims. What helps me help victims is often looking at like how they're being targeted, how are systems being subverted to harm them, how do we improve those systems and how do we also support victims in a trauma-informed way. So I think this is where we're sort of seeing this almost at scale. I think the complexities here are also in terms of policy, they get very complex. I would say in terms of is it a genocide or not complex, it is a genocide. But I think this is where people also don't understand international relations or international politics, i.e.

that the people of Gaza are not Hamas, that they don't understand how aid work works, that they don't understand different rules of law and rules of war in terms of also how or how journalists and the media are allowed to engage in document, how different spaces or sites are targeted or not targeted, right? How aid and food is allowed to flow in and out. Like, these are, we work in human rights. These are even areas that are complex to me because I don't work in, like, war-torn areas. right? So these are also very complex systems to myself as someone who is a human rights expert. And so I think there's no space right now with how internet conversation has been defined or how we're engaging in it to be able to have a conversation. I can't give you a one tweet description or summary of this. Like I have to give you a long essay. And then this also butts up against, you know, then different kinds of mis and disinformation.

that I think build on what Whitney Phillips calls people's deep memetic framework. So beliefs that you have and then you see those reflected in other spaces. So if you've ever, like I'm from Louisiana, I very distinctly remember Hurricane Katrina. You know, I can understand how certain folks in New Orleans and Louisiana and Mississippi, where my mom's family is from, like might have a slight distrust of disaster relief programs or trusting the government to like handle disaster relief, right? Because people have lived through many hurricanes and not seen that go very well. So like that's a deep memetic frame of then saying like, oh, can I trust an international body, right?

And while those are different things, you can see how some of that mistrust gets sewn and how like misandisinformation can sort of exacerbate that at scale. So then how do you have a conversation with someone who's had, let's a negative experience? with FEMA to then be like, well, here's why actually you should trust like this UN organization that you've never heard of that only operates in this one region. It becomes actually very difficult to have those conversations. And I think this is what I mean, like these are the ripple effects of not living in a harassment literate society, is that we can't look at things just through a good and bad binary. You have to look at the context. You have to look at impact versus intent.

So what is the impact of someone's actions versus what they say their intent is? You have to also look at, I think, or I think really analyze and think very deeply about one's own ego in these situations. And like the seeking of justice or like retribution, that that sometimes results in more and more and more harm. And this is also very complex in which you want to allow a space for victims to be able to vocalize anger and distrust and dissent, like they're, like you're allowed to be angry. This also then complaints or combats our idea, very like, I would say global, northwestern American idea, like what a victim is. There isn't one kind of victim. There's so many different kinds of victims. There's no one way to embody victimhood. And I think that's also a complexity. People don't

understand, which is how we then get into, I don't know if I believe that person or I would have done this in this situation. And the answer is like, don't know what you would do in that situation until you're in that situation. And so that's also a very strange and skewed way to view how an individual or a group of people are responding to trauma. Let's take a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guide, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends.

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breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athlete themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear. The laughs, the drama, the triumphs, the moments that never make the highlight real. From viral moments to historic games, from buzzer beaters to controversial calls, we break it down, give you context, and ask the questions everybody wants answered. Sports slice brings you closer to the action with stories told by the people who live them. Listen to SportsSlic on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

And for more, follow Timbo Slic Life 12 and the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. And we're back. It reminds me so much of what we saw around GamerGate in some ways. And just this idea that it's so much about, like, what's happening is maybe not so complex. The feelings surrounding it might be the complex thing. And then the bit where we, then don't have a media that is informed enough or harassment literate enough to really lay out what's happening. Right. And so they try to find a way of like reporting along those binaries of like,

well, maybe they really do just care about ethics and game journalism. And like, maybe this woman really did deserve it and have it coming. And maybe, you know, maybe women have taken things too far in their criticism of gaming or whatever, rather than actually laying. out the sort of complexities that you did and the nuance that you just did, it's so much easier to have it be this binary, simple thing. And I almost wonder if they're like giving us what we want in a kind of way, because we want simple answers sometimes. We want like, oh, bad guy, good guy, or here's the reason they did that. And sometimes what we don't want is like, oh, well, it's actually a really complicated situation. Totally. This is something I see where I talk about a lot in my

coaching with different victims of harassment is that one of the, one of the very unsatisfying things that comes out of, of harassment, there's many unsatisfying things, there's many awful things, there's many harmful things, is that you might never get a why. And the why might be something that feels simplistic or minimal or naive or, you know, not even very well thought out. And one of the things,

I try to really coach people through is it might also not be worth thinking about why. Like it might actually, you know, it is you're being targeted, but it might not have anything to do with you. And in terms of seeking the why, like why this person is doing this, that might not give you the peace of mind or the closure that you're looking for. And I think that's also, I think that's really hard for people. And I know that when I, like, when I have faced harassment, sometimes that's even hard for me, even though I know that. I know that if someone were to tell me why it wouldn't be the answer that I'm looking for, it maybe wouldn't solve any of the conflicting feelings I'm feeling about that particular instance. And I think,

you know, this is where it is sometimes important to separate harassment research and harassment like literature from, let's say, international politics and war and conflict. But, But I do think it is at times important to sort of understand the why can be incredibly simplistic in heavy quotes. I think a lot about my partner's family. He was born in 1991 in the Western Balkans when Yugoslavia was breaking apart. And like, what are the why's there? There's a lot of whys that Yugoslavia was breaking apart. there's a lot of whys in which a group, different groups were targeted.

And a lot of those whys are not satisfying, you know, because it comes down to hate and discrimination and Islamophobia and like very entrenched, like, ethnic ties and views of a particular region. And that's an overly simplistic way to even look right at that region, but that's also a why. And that doesn't explain or excuse anything. And I also don't know if that. improves what it feels like to have lived through that, that's just an observation, right? And I think sometimes, you know, sometimes the most awful things that happen, there is a

simple answer, again, which is unsatisfying, which is just we live in a society that is full of bias and hate and power differentials. True, but I can see how that's not the most satisfying answer, particularly if you you've been in a situation that has like upended your life, right? Like if you're like, oh, someone got a picture of me at a protest and now I am unable to live a normal life, having the answer be like, oh, well, we live in a society that's full of hate that people, somebody identified you as an easy target to pick on and that's what they did. I could see how that could be unsatisfying, but it goes back to what you said about.

Sometimes the why is not necessarily worth dwelling on. Totally. And this is something where I'd like to say, like, that also doesn't excuse the harm you're facing. Like, you shouldn't be facing that, right? Like, that's something that no one should be exacting or putting on to you for you to experience, which I think is why Sam and I really do focus on victims, their care, what are the ways in which systems inadvertently or, you know, via their own design, create flaws and vulnerabilities and spaces for harm.

because I don't need to know the why to focus on the victim. We don't need to know the why to support someone. And even for us, I think even if I were to put on my research hat, the why isn't also a satisfying thing for me to seek personally, even in a research context. So you might be listening to this and think that it sounds like I'm trying to dissuade you from showing up to a protest IRL because you could find yourself a target for this kind of harassment, surveillance,

and criminalization. But Caroline and Sam don't see it that way. In fact, they say that you should still make your voice heard while also having a good understanding of the realities of our surveillance landscape and what's at stake. When I reached out, I thought this conversation was going to be a lot more simple than it ended up being. And I think that is reflective of the need to talk about

this whole conversation in a way that is surveillance literate, right? That like really takes into account the full sense of like why experts like yourselves make certain recommendations to people, how it connects to a larger criminalization and surveillance landscape when it comes to things like protest and dissent. And so I wonder like, do you think we live in a surveillance literate society? And do you think people have a good sense of like how these things are all connected? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely not.

We do not live in a surveillance literate society. I mean, there's just the capabilities of state and non-state actors is not really completely understood. I feel like people are oftentimes protesters or activists, shall we say, are oftentimes operating with a knowledge base that's maybe like five, 10, 15 years, even sometimes backdated. So, or sometimes people will just be like, oh, well, the adversary, maybe the state, we'll say that's the adversary in this example, is so advanced. that why should I even bother? Like, they can read everything that I'm doing. They can read by mind, basically. They're just that capable.

Not the case. The opposition is oftentimes not as sophisticated as we think, and there are things that we can implement best practices in digital security and privacy that we can implement that will keep us safer, and it's like super simple stuff like you signal with disappearing messages for communications like don't just use text messages or or phone calls like super simple stuff like that we'll keep people safer like you said in the beginning of this podcast like don't have a face unlock on

your phone or fingerprint unlock on your phone because the cops if you are arrested can just take the phone and hold it up to your face and then unlock your phone. Stuff like that. But backing up a little to surveillance, you know, the capacity for surveillance is really increased with the proliferation of AI-assisted facial recognition or, you know, HD cameras that can do like a thousand X zoom and still have like 4K. quality, or even like we could talk about all the different optics that are on like helicopter cameras, police helicopter cameras that can like see in thermal, in infrared, in different

heat signature patterns, in, you know, movement outlines and stuff like that, to where they can also like zoom in to where they can essentially see protesters screen on their phone from a helicopter, that type of stuff. Or just like super stuff that's been around for like decades. Like police poll cams that they'll just like stick somewhere and people just won't notice. Or Applars, automatic license plate readers to kind of map like where people are driving around. All of these things, they exist. They're in the real world and they're used by law enforcement on a daily basis almost.

And this is just like the physical world that we're talking about. This isn't even the digital world. world where we're talking about like them having the capabilities of seeing all of your social media accounts interlinked and and essentially pulled together in one little package deal that is maybe like this is Sam like this is his Facebook, this is his Instagram, this is his Tumblr, this is his MySpace from 15 years ago. They have these capabilities, but we can do things to prevent this. them from having fuller access to them. We can make things private. We can have burner accounts,

burner emails, burner phone numbers, things that aren't maybe directly associated with us. And again, this does boil back down to best practices in digital security and privacy. Yeah, I have heard the feeling like, oh, the state, they have everything about me, why bother. I've heard that described as like a kind of nihilism, like surveillance, where you're like, it doesn't even matter anymore. I get it because the list of ways the state surveils us is vast. And I could see, I could, I totally understand that as a reaction. But Sam, you're so right.

Like, there are still things we could do, basic steps that we could take to maintain privacy. And I think the state, it kind of like is counting on us being like, oh, well, there's no point of doing any of this. I may as well just leave my phone unlocked. I may as well just, like, not wear a mask. I may as well just whatever because they already, you know, they already have everything. It is, it is, there are things you can do. And the state totally benefits from us thinking that that's not true, that there's nothing we can do, despite the fact that I do understand that as a, as a reaction.

Totally. And I think there's something else also here, too, where, um, I want to highlight what I'm about to say sounds contradictory. And I'm going to try my best to say it in a way with nuance. Lay it on us. The state is very powerful, and I think also at times people overestimate or don't totally understand how the tools of the state work. So they have a lot of data on us, but also, like, there's a lot of things that surveillance

technology can't do that I think often people misunderstand that it can do. And I think that isn't to say we should all take a sigh of relief. You know, I think we should all be, like, breathing in and out constantly, you know, trying to quell different levels of anxiety. And I say this is a highly anxious person. Same. But one of the things I think is important, and I'm thinking about this in like a protest context, is, you know, like the state has a lot of data on a lot of people, as we learned from like Edward Snowden and like the prison program, for example. but also there's like so much data that at times it can be hard to identify people. And that's the other end of security nihilism that I see is people being like, I'm just a drop

of data in a very large data bucket. And for me, it's like, well, you never know when the state is going to decide to look at you. And if you have any marginalized identity, then you know already that bad actors of the state, like a local police force, they don't need very much to decide to look at you. In fact, they need almost nothing to decide to arrest you, to like, you know, fuck up aspects of your life, et cetera. And that's only getting more and more worse now, especially in the United States. If we look at the overturning of Roe v.

Wade of attacks on gender affirming care, like, it's so difficult to sort of just do things we should be able to do. One of the things I want to highlight, this is something I think we've seen a little bit in our training is people sort of at times sort of assume, that, let's say, like, police surveillance is magical or that, like, AI is magical. It's not, there are things we actually can do to be safe. And I think that's, like, what I want to sort of emphasize. This is, like, the space of nuance. Like, we should be afraid. And also, there are things we can do to try to, like, mitigate and reduce these harms and be safer. And

we should do those things. We should especially do those things. And we should do those things if we're also in community with marginalized community members. So like I'm a white non-binary person. You know, I was born in the United States. For me going to a protest, unmasked, even though it's COVID, so actually you should all be wearing masks out there anyway. But like if I were to go hypothetically unmask, which I wouldn't do, like me getting arrested is very different than someone else getting arrested.

But I shouldn't be worried just about me. I should be worried about the people I'm standing with, right? And I should be worried about how I've saved those people in my phone. And I should be worried about what kinds of things can be done with just a little bit of, like, nudging from the police, right? And this is where understanding security measures and privacy measures and having good, what Matt Mitchell calls, like security hygiene and digital hygiene is really important. Right? like disappearing messages using signal, not bringing my phone at all to a protest. These are really helpful things versus going to a protest and thinking you need like a ferdy bag and a mic jammer

and all these things, but then let's say you're connecting to public Wi-Fi and you're messaging and you're posting on Twitter. Like that has almost negated the other things. You also don't necessarily need something like a mic jammer if you, like, you know, if you don't have malware on your phone, right? So I think that there's these things where people sometimes sort of overestimate the capabilities of some of the tools that the police have and then underestimate how little evidence the state needs to seize your devices or be able to engage with your phone. And so I think it's this balance of understanding where does like security on the device stop and like good protest tactics start like my good physical security right and I think these are very much

intertwined and I think that's also another level of complexity we've been dealing with like we've also worked with activists who are really nervous and like want to put their phone in the freezer or the microwave and you know that's something too where it's like I totally hear that you're scared if you want to do that. I can understand how that makes you feel safer. But the issue more is like, let's talk about what would be happening on your phone. That would cause that to happen. And also that there's an even more serious question of that means there's something on your phone that is in listening in all other different instances. And so if you're really worried about that, then the problem is something we need to look at on the phone, right? The problem is

spyware or malware on your phone, right? And that's something we need to deal with immediately. And I think that's also something that I think is very difficult to understand or work through if you aren't a technology expert. And that sucks because, you know, we want people to have the most accurate and like salient information as possible. And it, I think a lot of barriers to this is having to be constantly updated with how technology works. What are the different kinds of tools and apparatus of the state? And then how do you get that information into people's hands?

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Highlights are trending, opinions are flying, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athlete themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear. The laughs, the drama, the triumphs, the moments that never make the highlight real. From viral moments to historic games, from buzzer beaters to controversial calls, we break it down, give you context, and ask the questions everybody wants answered.

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because I definitely went to a meeting where we all put our phones in the freezer because somebody saw it on the Snowden dock and then I definitely logged on to Starbucks Wi-Fi. I had a whole conversation about what we talked about. via Starbucks Wi-Fi, via just SMS messengers, like, oh, well, like, the more, like, it felt cool to put our phones in the freezer, but I took no other security steps that day, and in fact, did things that were, like, risky, that, you know, a little common sense, basic considerations would have probably been more effective or made a bigger impact on my

security, or made a bigger impact on my security than, like, let's all put our phones. in the freezer. And I think, Caroline, you made a point about people not being tech experts. I wonder, you know, in 2024 with the ubiquity of smartphones and facial recognition technology and doxing and like all of these technological innovations and advancements, do you think that folks feel a barrier to protest or to speak up and use their voices because it seems like, oh, this is so much, this is so opaque, some of the guides and way that people talk about technology and security feels not accessible. So I'm just going to not show up because who has the time?

I wonder, is that something that you've seen in your work? So I haven't personally seen that. And some of that I will highlight might be from where we sit as an organization because we tend to work with other community organizations. We tend to work with human rights defenders, journalists, activists, and then members of the general public who like want to engage with. this knowledge. So I would say that like I haven't seen necessarily a deterrence. What I have seen is people showing up but still being scared and or showing up and then something bad happens

and they weren't prepared, let's say, for for what was happening. And I want to highlight that's not their, that's not their fault. Like we live under surveillance capitalism. How software and hardware has been designed is not the fault of the user or the vulnerable individual. That's the fault of capitalism and big tech and like a lot of not regulation we have in the United States, right? And so I think luckily at least, you know, again, also we're speaking from a very specific sort of space convocation or a lab in which we are often engaging with people that are, you know, human rights defenders, journalists, activists, community organization.

So we haven't seen a hesitation, but what we have seen is people recognizing that there are skills and tools that they need that they don't have. And they're seeing that also in real time, I think right now, because of the amount of doxing attempts that are happening on social media. And so I think that's weighing into our people are now a bit more aware. There's been many stories, as Bridgeta, as you pointed out with Bill. Reuters renting buses and putting people's faces on them or putting people's names on them. And I think that is causing folks to reflect and be like, oh, like, that could be me.

And I still need to show up. I still want to show up. But how do I, how do I create or maintain some safety knowing that that is a potential outcome? So that's a little bit more of, I think, what we've been seeing. I started this conversation wanting to use the focus or framing of like campus protesters, campus activists and what's happening on campuses right now. But have you seen these same tactics being used to target anybody?

Like people who are not necessarily protesters who maybe work for companies that are like deemed to woke or have in some way have been like perceived as ideologically against the bad actors who are doing the doxing. Like is this the kind of threat that really all of us might need to be aware of whether or not we've ever set foot on an IRL protest on a campus? I would say so. I would say with how, like, you know, regardless of the country you live in, with how politics have been going over the past few years, it is always good. It's very important to be thinking about your own digital footprint, the amount of data that's out there about you,

and how it can be used or misused to harm you. I think that that's something we all now, especially really need to be thinking about. I don't want people to listen to this episode and think every threat that we have discussed is something that they personally, like, will be, are likely to become a target for. Like, I don't want people to be paranoid. I want people to be informed and smart, right? And I guess, like, in your work, how have you prepared people to understand, like, their specific needs in this whole conversation? Oh, gosh, I think this is one of the hardest things. This is where, this is why we do, I think, really targeted workshops. But Sam, do you want to weigh in? The answer is threat modeling. Oh. I knew you were going to say that. I was going to say that. Sam is going to say it. Well, we all have different threat models, right? And what Caros threat model is going to be way different

than mine and what Bridget's is is going to be way different than Caros. Threat modeling is the process of trying to figure out the possibility or process. of a threat that the person may encounter and weighing that, weighing the consequences of that threat on the, on how realistic it is that it will happen or will not happen. And I think that people can try to figure out what their personal threat model is by considering, like, who the bad action. that they may encounter are and what their capabilities are and then what they're trying to protect. So that may be student protesters that want to keep their anonymity. And so maybe they will not bring their phone to a protest or maybe they will wear a mask or cover their tattoos in order to not be identified physically. So that's just like one example of a threat posed to campus.

And this threat modeling process can really be used for all aspects of life. You can threat model everything in your daily life. I mean, just to build on that, like one thing I want to highlight is we all threat model every day, as Sam is saying, like you can use it in your everyday life. you do. Like when you decide to cross the street, not at not at the light, you are threat modeling, right? When you're sort of making a decision around how you're going to like get home or go to go somewhere, that is like a form of threat modeling. And I think, I think that there, this is, I think this is what gets really tied into then trying to understand a bit more about surveillance

literacy and like security literacy and privacy literacy is really important. Threat modeling is incredibly important. It's how you can decide, you know, it's how you can maintain some safety. What I think is harder, one of the challenges is also helping folks feel safe and secure around threat modeling. And some of that now comes down to how do we understand like the tactics and tools of our adversaries. That's not understanding their why.

right? The why doesn't matter, but it's understanding like what are they using. And so I think for for folks that are going to actions, please go. Please try to wear something that sort of helps anonymize you. So I would not recommend wearing your, you know, Cal State the year you're graduating shirt or like your really awesome job. jacket that you made that's one of a kind. I would recommend wearing something that's a little bit more plain. I would really try to cover your face, cover your tattoos. I would recommend leaving your phone at home if you feel comfortable doing that. You know, I think this gets into a different space if we're talking about folks that are either there to observe or

document. There's a lot of great guides out there on how to document a protest safely. Some of that, you know, we point to our friends at Open Archive and Witness who have really great guides written for human rights defenders on how to document actions and safely upload them. We recommend following that. You know, please check out different safety guides that have been put out, pretty recently from the EFF or the markup in terms of how to stay safe at a protest. We're updating and creating a new anti-doxing guide, and we're also putting out guides hopefully soon. But a big thing is, you know, maybe don't bring your phone with you. And if you have an iPhone and you need to bring your phone, consider turning it off,

putting it at lockdown mode and turning it off. Yeah, we'll actually hear from EFF's technologist who wrote that guide next week about some concrete tips for digital security at protest. So folks should definitely tune in. But are you all working on any guides that folks should know about? One thing is like, you know, if you turn your phone on and you've brought with you at the protest and you're like tweeting about where you are and you're taking a photo of where you are, that might negate a lot of the safety tips that you've already gone through, right?

And so one thing to consider is also like, can you put that out later? Can you scrub metadata from it? are you doxing accidentally your fellow protesters? Like are their faces covered? You can use signals face blurring tool, which they have. You can blur out people's faces. That also helps strip the image of metadata. So there's like all these different things you can do.

And I think it's worth doing those and going to the protest. I think some of this is also shifting our own concepts of what it means to sort of document and protest safely. And I think some of that is recognizing that like going to the protest is almost more important than publishing an image that you were there. I think there's other ways to talk about being there. And that's not to discourage people from posting, but rather it's to say threat model and really think about what's in this image. You know, what does this image reveal? What does this image reveal about me?

was it reveal about other people? Could someone be identified who is, you know, who I'm protesting with? How could this negatively impact them, right? I think it is thinking about some of those things as we engage in collective action. And so those are like some of the tips I want people to like think about, which is, you know, make a plan with your friends later of when you're going to meet up and pick a time. and make sure you know how to get there. And if you don't show up in a certain amount of time, maybe that's a signal to them that something has happened

and have that conversation. And these are like really safe ways to still go about and engage in this really necessary, I would argue, like civic action that we need to be engaging in. And that's just a really great way to cut down on ensuring your phone isn't, you know, contributing to this ongoing surveillance apparatus. Or just turn your phone off and don't turn it on until it's over. Caroline, Sam, thank you so much for being here.

And, like, truly, thank you for your work. We need folks like you who are making it easier and safer for everybody to use their voices right now. So I hope this gives people a sense of how they can do that. Thanks for being here. If you're looking for ways to support the show, check out our merch store at tangoody.com slash store. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangoity.com.

You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoity. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of IHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. Edited by Joey Pat. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd.

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