Activists Need Secure Communications and Real Encryption
Sometimes, being a political activist is dangerous. Many activists widely celebrated today were under massive surveillance and pressure during their life; the FBI had a dossier on Martin Luther King Jr. and tapped his phones because they considered him a threat to national security.
Before activists become universally praised for their stances, they are monitored and face a wide variety of threats. It could be from their government, powerful private sector enemies, or even counter-activists.
If you’re an activist and somebody is monitoring your communications, it could put your cause and other activists at risk. In other words, the best encrypted messaging apps can protect you, fellow activists, and the causes in which you all believe.
Military-Grade Encryption
The phrase “end-to-end encryption” gets thrown around lightly by apps purporting to offer impenetrable encryption but end up getting hacked all the same. Encryption is a complicated topic that the average person doesn’t have to understand fully to appreciate that platforms offering “encryption” aren’t all equal.
The world’s leading cryptographers encrypt instant messages and all other phone content with proprietary protocols like ChatMail Advanced Messaging and Parsing Protocol (CAMP), which encompasses both PGP and Elliptical Curve Cryptography. Look for a platform that can identify internal and external users and default to the safest encryption options, and gives internal users more secure features, like encrypted voice, pictures, and self-destructing messages.
Secondary Security Features
The best encryption in the world won’t help if there’s a backdoor to your phone’s content. That’s why the leading platforms have a suite of secondary features to fill in any security gaps.
Look for a platform that lets you set Tamper Proof duress passwords, so your device will have all its sensitive information instantly deleted if someone tries to access your phone without authorization. Self-Destructing messages (or pictures and notes) get destroyed on both devices after a set amount of time, and can’t be favorited, forwarded, or saved.
Activists often share sensitive photos, so they must use phones that don’t store cached image data but still use the best image quality with the smallest file size.
Ease of Use for People Worldwide
Finally, what good is security if the platform is too cumbersome to be used for everyday purposes? The world moves quickly, and people need confidentiality without jumping through a million hoops.
Now, the best encryption platforms are easy for anyone to navigate and don’t require switching apps or struggling with encryption. Because activists usually care about the same issues facing people far away, they need a platform that works in many languages, such as English, Russian, French, Spanish, German, and more.
Activism transforms lives, and there are countless worthy causes worldwide. Social justice is often strongly and violently opposed before it is embraced and isn’t fully embraced by powerful institutions in society, even when it appears to be largely accepted. Activists should find the right encryption technology to keep their communications private for their safety and to protect their peers and their cause.
