Zine by Megan Piontkowski. Available here as of this writing (Google Drive link)
My friend recently shared a zine they found on how to report ICE. It’s a handy 6-page guide that includes instructions to text or call the local ICE watch hotline. It also warns you not to share to social media if it could be police as to not incite panic. You can also DM/Follow local ICE Watch pages on Instagram. The link contains city-specific ICE watch numbers and pages for each city. It includes instructions to ask for someone being detained for their full name and date of birth so their family and lawyers can help them, and what to report on the officers, following SALUTE: Size of the group, Actions they’re doing, Location, Uniforms they’re wearing, Time and date, and Equipment, vehicles, or weapons they have.
It’s a handy zine, and you can find it here. But, be warned, it’s a Google Drive link. Now, lots of people may be using that link, but Google keeps all data. That could be what files you accessed, how long you were on, if you downloaded or printed anything. That means that Google could have information they’d gladly give to ICE or some other force of Trump’s will. They do tend to be eager to comply. It’s a risk in a world that’s becoming increasingly authoritarian, where simply believing things like “genocide is bad” or “skin color shouldn’t label you a criminal” can put you in Trump’s crosshairs as a potential “antifa terrorist.”
We’re going to have to be a lot more careful online.
So for any would-be zine makers and information sharers, here are some better options than Google Drive to share information without handing everyone’s data directly to the Trump regime.
In This Article:
The Options
Proton Drive
The first thought that came to my mind was, “Why aren’t people using Proton Drive for this?” Proton Drive, like Proton’s other products, focuses on privacy and security. They have encrypted storage solutions that allow you to share a file or a folder with a link. You can read more about Proton Drive here. There are apps for your phones and even a folder integration for your computer so you can treat your remote drive like a local folder, just like you can for your iCloud drive. It’s a lot easier than you’d think, and you don’t have to involve Google at all.
Proton Drive is likely my top choice here, but there are others.
Send and Wormhole
Send is sponsored by Thunderbird, and is a fork of the original Firefox Send. Mozilla does have a dedication for privacy, and you can expect it of the projects they started and now sponsor as well. You can upload files that are end-to-end encrypted, and set them to expire. This allows you to share links to your files and set them to expire, which can make tracking users who accessed those files trickier, even if they’re storing anything about usage statistics.
Wormhole was born out of the cancellation of Mozilla’s original Send app. Files are deleted after 24 hours, content is encrypted end-to-end, and nothing is tracked.
Obviously these solutions work less for printed media, as they’re ephemeral. However, they’d work great for sharing in a Mastodon post, for example.
Maybe: iCloud
You can encrypt your iCloud end to end so not even Apple can view the contents using their Advanced Data Protection. This is a trickier process to share items. You have to share them, select collaborate, not sharing a copy, then set it to view only in the drop down, then share it to yourself to get a link, then share that link. It’s a lot trickier. Apple may not be able to see the contents, but thanks to that share link potentially being public, anyone could figure out what is in it and then, if Apple is tracking users, figure out who downloaded it. While Apple doesn’t seem to have any need to track people downloading files, they still might, so it’s best to avoid this option if you can. Still, it’s probably better than Google, for now. That could change over the years with the Trump regime becoming increasingly involved in restricting the speech of American citizens.
No, Encrypting Before Uploading Isn’t Enough
Encrypting your file before uploading it, then giving people instructions how to decrypt the file separately could work. But all it would take is a little investigation into where you shared the file to find the decryption tool, see you’re sharing anti-fascism text, and put you on a list. Don’t trust platforms that will track people using your service, no matter what.
Some options like Mega or Filen often come up, but are sometimes struck down for having poor local encryption. You can enhance this by encrypting the files yourself though. There are a number of encryption apps available on all platforms, but my favorite tool is just to make an encrypted drive image in macOS’s Disk Utility and add the files I want to share to that, then sharing the encrypted drive image itself. The people receiving it will need a password, but at least it can’t easily be scanned by anyone else.
Encrypting locally can offer you some protection, but if your content gets the attention of too many people, it may be pointless.
Yes, It’s Necessary!
“Oh, they won’t be looking for me” you might exclaim. But they are. They’re making lists that they’ll use if you get caught at a protest to elevate your charge. They’re seeking out different people who they could crack down on at a later date. Never trust someone making a list, and never subject yourself to that kind of surveillance.
Reports are in that Trump is considering the Insurrection Act to consolidate power. Stephen Miller stated Trump will have “plenary authority,” that is to say, wide-reaching control and limitless power. Apple and Google pulled their ICE tracking apps without edict, Trump just asked them threateningly and they complied. No one is safe, and no platform will be safe unless it is established to be so. Policy is not safety, security is. If you can’t control the access, encryption keys, and storage of something, it is not safe, no matter what the company’s policy says.
Take your privacy seriously, before you regret it. Use safe browsers, like Firefox or Safari. Use a VPN service like ProtonVPN. Encrypt everything and limit your reach to trusted people. Do not endanger yourself. Think about every piece of data you share, and how even accessing something, like a file on a Google Drive, can say a lot about who you are and what your political beliefs are. Those political beliefs, if they’re against fascism, could be a crime soon enough. When once we were a country that would fight wars against fascism, now we support it, and we are not safe.
Be safe now, or you’ll never be safe again.