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At protests you should not bring your smartphone but instead rely on anonymous drvices such as Meshtastic.
If you want to bring your smartphone to a protest, set Airplane mode and communicate with others through Bluetooth or WiFi networks using Briar or Bitchat
Bluetooth and WiFi can be tracked as well, even with "anonymized" WiFi MAC addresses.
May I ask you how? Or if you have more info? No criticism here, honest question. Afaik the only way to do that would be to fingerprint a behavioural pattern, which albeit possible is surely more secure than cell communication.
The "find my" networks still function with randomized macs and "fully" powered down devices
Meshtastic with 3 jumps would be stretching for actual communication. Plus Bluetooth is even worse for security. Direct connection might be a better way to use the device.
I've had meshtastic for about 2 ish years now and its still being worked on.
What is unsafe about cell communication is that there is virtually no way to prevent being tracked. Bluetooth is not necessarily more secure but has several advantages:
It's amazing how many times I saw this knowledge being spread, together with thousands of umbrellas and hard hats during the Hong Kong riots from day one with "Hong Kong, add oil" as their first slogan combined with very mild mannered arguments (we don't know if it could lead to more serious things) against the extradition law which was supposed to affect maybe half a dozen people per decade, all serious criminals. A law almost every country has on earth that the US used against the daughter of the owner of one of the largest companies in the world, for the flimsiest of reasons, in contrast to the walled-off-to-arrest-one-particular-teen-girl-axe-murderer-to-be-shipped-to-Taiwan-law Hong Kong tried to implement.
How many people have been affected by the Alien Enemies Act again?
And how did the ~~The protests were call "No kings" remember that? Remember that it was called NO KINGS "Unbiased. Straight. Facts" SAN? Do you remember that? No? Okay, well...~~ "anti-ICE" ~~it is~~ protests go?
Because apart from the shocker that you were being surveilled, I think the protests needed a little bit less "Zero demands, not one more" chants and a little more 'We demand and protest until we win and get what we want' kind of thing.
Isn't Bluetooth easy to intercept?
Super easy. You can also do basic triangulation with some specialty hardware.
But we're talking about a protest where bad actors (the police) just want the names of its attendants. Our phones scream to everyone "I am [name surname] and I am here!". Bluetooth instead says the same but with a lower tone of voice, so less people can listen. Also, with little configuration you can instruct it not to broadcast its identifier.
Not at the same scale as mobile traffic
Bluetooth by definition doesn’t go much past 10-20 meters