How Does Police Surveillance Work at Protests?

Cities around the Bay Area — and the country — are preparing for “No Kings” protests planned for Saturday, timed to coincide with President Donald Trump’s military parade in Washington, D.C. 

The demonstrations are expected to draw major crowds nationwide, building on the momentum sparked by Los Angeles protests against increased immigration enforcement by Trump’s administration.

The White House has been attempting to crack down on the demonstrations — most notably by deploying the National Guard to southern California. (Currently, the courts are deciding the legality of Trump deploying these troops within the state.)

While police are expected to be at Saturday’s protests, protesters should also expect a “widespread use of mass social media surveillance,” according to WIRED’s Andrew Couts, who oversees surveillance coverage.

This kind of technology is not new, but it is “becoming more powerful and less expensive for police departments to obtain,” Couts told KQED Forum.

Digital privacy advocates have been sounding the alarm about such surveillance by authorities for years now. Most recently, a New York Times report claimed the Trump administration is working with the data analysis software company Palantir to build a database of all American citizens. (Palantir has denied the accusation.)

So what technology do police have in their arsenal — and what kinds of risk assessments should anyone make before heading to a demonstration themselves?

KQED’s Alexis Madrigal spoke to Couts about what to know about protesting and surveillance.

• Jump straight to: Should I bring my phone to a protest?

How could police already be surveilling me? 

Facial recognition software like Clearview AI is used by hundreds of police departments across the country, like the El Cerrito Police Department in Contra Costa County.

According to Clearview AI’s website, the software promises “quicker identifications and apprehensions” by using online sources like public social media.

In the past, Couts said facial recognition systems would rely on government image databases like passport photos, driver’s licenses or mugshots. Now, software like Clearview AI uses facial recognition technology by “vacuuming up everything that’s posted online,” he said.

“We’re seeing facial recognition just being far more widespread and really advanced, in that even wearing a mask or sunglasses doesn’t necessarily protect you from being identified by facial recognition technologies,” Couts said.

In 2023, a watchdog group called on the state’s Attorney General Rob Bonta to investigate Clearview AI, saying the company does not comply with California’s “right to opt out” provisions of its consumer privacy act.

“Clearview AI technology functions by automatically scraping images off the web without regard for whose images are being scraped or whether the scraped images are of people who have previously prohibited Clearview AI from using or disclosing their biometric information,” the report reads.

Along with privacy concerns, advocates say facial technology is less accurate when identifying people with darker skin and women.

“‘Evidence suggests [facial recognition technology] may be least accurate on those it is most likely to be used on — African Americans,’” the Consumer Watchdog report reads. “The ‘real-world consequences’ of such errors, it suggests include ‘the investigation and arrest of an unknown number of innocent people and the deprivation of due process of many, many more.’”

There are legal protections around this technology. For example, California police officers are unable to pair footage from their body cameras with facial recognition technology. Cities like San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley have also banned the use of facial recognition technology by city agencies.

However, according to an investigation by the Washington Post, San Francisco’s police department has attempted to get around the ban by asking officers from neighboring cities to run photos of suspects through their programs. And last year, San Francisco residents voted for Proposition E, which allows the city’s police department to install public security cameras, use drones and loosen other requirements around surveillance technology. The city also has plans to install hundreds of automated license plate readers across the city.

Drones are used in other parts of the Bay Area as well. The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California has recently sued Sonoma County, alleging the county has an unconstitutional and invasive use of drones to spy on residents as part of law enforcement efforts without a warrant. According to the lawsuit, the drones have been deployed more than 700 times, allegedly capturing at least 5,600 images and specifically targeting residential areas and private properties.

Couts added that police can also, in general, gain access to your personal data. The data could be accessed using a subpoena or warrant, but it could also be accessed by buying data from third party data brokers like LexisNexis, he said.

“Your phone is constantly recording all types of things, all the time,” he said. “This data is being sent to third party data brokers. It’s being sent to Google, Apple, all of the above. And police can gain access to that information.”

Should I bring my phone to a protest?

Couts said that weighing whether to bring your phone to a protest is probably “one of the biggest, most direct” decisions you could make with your safety in regards to protest surveillance.

If you want to be completely anonymous — that is, for your phone to have no geographic record that you’d been in the same space as a protest — you would need to leave your phone at home, Couts said.

But in addition, protesters should also “assume that you are being recorded constantly,” he said, whether you have your phone with you or not. You should also assess whether or not you want to post on social media, he recommended.

“It’s not just your phone — it’s everybody else’s phones,” he said. “It’s the videos and live streams and photos that everyone else around you is taking, in addition to police body cameras and any other kind of police surveillance that’s happening.”

Why might I want to keep my phone with me at a protest regardless?

For many protesters, recording police activity is a vital tactic to provide evidence of any potential misconduct, and to offer counternarratives to official police accounts. (KQED has a thorough guide on your rights when filming police encounters.)

Not having a phone with you can also impede your ability to communicate with your networks of friends or family during a protest, or to call for help if you are injured, Couts warned.

If you do choose to bring your phone to a protest, digital privacy advocates suggest that you limit location tracking and make sure it does not connect with a Wi-Fi hotspot being used by law enforcement. (It is possible to “intercept data, inject malware, or steal sensitive information” through an unsecure WiFi network.) You can do this by keeping your phone turned off, putting it on Airplane Mode or even putting it in a Faraday bag — a type of sleeve or backpack that prevents any signals going to or from the device.

Advocates also stress the importance of disabling face and fingerprint recognition on your phone. This makes it “more difficult for officers to physically force you to unlock your device,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Be aware that police usually need a warrant to search your phone, even after you are arrested.)

Couts noted that you could also consider investing in a second phone — one that doesn’t have as much personal information on it, like your email and social media accounts — and bringing that to a protest instead of your regular device

“So if law enforcement gets access to it or forces you to give them access to your phone, it’s not going have as much revealing information on there,” Couts said.

More resources about protesting and your privacy

• Privacy Guides
• The American Civil Liberties Union
• Amnesty International
• WIRED
• The Markup
• Electronic Frontier Foundation