Apps for Communicating and Organizing in the Age of Trump
By Tommy Collison
On January 20, Donald Trump will gain control over the most powerful surveillance system in history. Worried? Here are some steps you can take to protect yourself.
The U.S. government has a long history of targeting activists. Agents spied on Martin Luther King Jr., bugging his hotel rooms in an attempt to find out personal information which could be used to discredit him. More recently, the FBI spied on Black Lives Matter activists.
U.S. intelligence agencies have unprecedented power to gather information on millions of American citizens. This information includes our communications, banking info, and web browsing data. We know that the National Security Agency (NSA) collects data on who you talk to, when, and where you call from.
To be clear: This is not targeted monitoring of suspected criminals. This is the collection of everyday information belonging to millions of American citizens who aren’t suspected of a crime, much less convicted of one.
Trump has called for a database of Muslim-Americans. He’s said that women who get abortions deserve “some sort of punishment,” and he’s condemned the peaceful protests which dogged his campaign and which erupted around the country over the last week.
Vice President-elect Mike Pence supports discrimination against the LGBT community, and the 2016 GOP appears to support therapy aimed at “turning” LGBT teens straight. The UN Human Rights Council has labeled such therapy “torture.”
Many people are afraid that Trump and Pence will use agencies like the FBI and the NSA to target Americans. For this reason, it’s worth taking steps to communicate and organize more securely. These steps are free, easy to use, and quick to set up.
If you take one of these steps, you’ll be making yourself a lot more secure. The prospect that Trump would increase surveillance of everyday Americans is real, but the situation is far from hopeless.
Two-Factor Authentication — keeping your accounts safe
Two-factor authentication makes it harder for someone to break into your email or Facebook accounts. It sends a code to your phone, which you type with your password on your computer. To get into your account, an attacker would need two things: something you know (your password) and something you physically possess (your phone). This is the single biggest thing to do to improve your security.
For a list of services with two-factor authentication and instructions on how to set it up, click here.
Signal — encrypted calls and texts
Signal is a free messaging app which allows you to communicate and organize more safely than using SMS or a Facebook event page.
Your Signal calls and chats are encrypted from end to end, and the app collects as little information as possible, so that the government doesn’t get much information if they subpoena the app’s developers.
When you download the app, you can see a list of your contacts which already have it installed, and you can start chatting securely with them immediately. The app supports group chats, making it a good choice for organizing.
Signal is available for iPhone and Android.
The Tor Browser — a more secure web browser
Your web habits and location can often be tracked when browsing the internet, but it’s still possible to browse the web anonymously and avoid many types of mass surveillance.
The Tor Bundle is a free web browser which is designed to allow you to surf the internet with more anonymity than a regular browser. Using Tor is no different to using Chrome or Safari, but it’s more secure if you’re looking up sensitive information.
The only differences are that Flash won’t work and webpages might take a few seconds more to load
You can download Tor here.
Tommy Collison (CAS, 2017) is an activist and a journalism student. He’s currently writing a book about hacking and online information.
[Image via the author.]
