I used to work in the telecommunication industry, been lurking here for a long while, finally made an account today. Here are some thoughts for our non-smartphone-savvy pedes: What to expect during protest regarding your phone: First, as more people gather your data service will slow down. Then, on-going calls will get dropped for no reason. Later on, call completion will begin to fail both for incoming and outgoing. Once people gather in sufficient numbers expect little and erratic cellphone service. This is due to the local cell towers being overloaded by too many customers. The last thing to give out is SMS because it runs on it own control channel. You should be able to get SMS messaging in and out albeit with some need to retry failed messages. Phones may behave strangely, such as alternating between full signal strength and no signal, or going into roaming and back to your provider repeatedly. Expect any apps that require Internet connection not to work or go into offline mode, such as Google Maps and your web brower. Many modern messaging apps (Signal, iMessage, etc.) need Internet access and will not work. what to do about it: First, don't panic. This is expected behavior when there's not enough cell tower capacity. It doesn't mean that they taken the grid down. If you don't need the phone and aren't expecting a call keep it in airplane mode, this saves bandwidth for other people and your phone's battery. The non-stop handshaking with and getting kicked-out of the cell towers due to congestion drains your battery. If you need mapping to get around (ie. Google Maps), find and download one of many alternate apps that let you pre-download the maps to your phone (not Google.) GPS will work fine, but the data connection to the Internet will not. So you need to have the maps downloaded locally on your phone. Test and familiarize yourself with the app beforehand and download the maps you'll need ahead of time. If you need to communicate and can't get a call out, use SMS. Retry as needed. Don't use the multi-recipient or group message feature. That changes the SMS to a MMS. MMS requires a data channel which is much harder to get during congestion and will fail. Don't use fancy messaging apps that require Internet access. If your phone supports wifi-calling you might be able to get a call out by enabling wifi-calling and dropping into a place that offers free wifi (you might have to login to the place first.) If not too many people are doing the same and the wifi isn't too shitty you just might get enough Internet bandwidth for a voip call. If you never done this test out at home and at your local McDonnalds or somesuch, not all carriers/phones support it. You can also move away from the crowd. How much away depends on cell tower placement, but probably by a lot. The idea is to reach another cell tower that isn't as congested. DC should have a lot of towers including microcells in some buildings. Ask around and look for people that are successfully talking on their phone, then move nearby. If traveling in a group, try to have at least one phone from each major carrier among you: Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint. (Yes, Sprint is T-Mobile now, but many of their antennas are still up.) Each carrier has their own antennas and radios on the towers, some have more capacity. So some might fare better and while you might not have service on carrier X, carrier Y might still work. As a last resort, you can try messing with the mobile network settings: Things as enabling/disabling roaming, forcing the phone radio to use older tech such as 3G, 2G, UMTS, 1X, etc. This will probably not work but you can give it a try. Just remember the original settings so you can restore back. If you just need to be able to communicate locally consider CB-radios. If you can get a hold of licensed-band radios such as those used by private security and construction companies even better. Remember to test them out beforehand. If you want to keep your participation in the protest from BigTech: If you have an Android phone, Google knows were you're at. Same with iPhone and Apple, Facebook, Tweeter et al. There are ways to de-Google an Android phone, but it requires rooting it and side-loading apps and it's not for the uninitiated. As a mitigation you can turn off location services when not needed, and also go into your Google account and turn off history there, but your are trusting Google word on this. The moment you turn location back on you'll show up on Google. Same when you open Facebook or Tweeter. If you're still going this route, search online on how to properly stop Google location history, and do it. For good measure also delete and disable all other history, such as web search and youtube history. Also uninstall or disable Facebook and Tweeter (unless disabled they can still run in the background.) A better solution is to get an old Android phone and factory reset it. Make sure it's a full factory reset as when you're going to sell or donate it. If unsure search online or ask a techy friend to do it. When setting it up back again after reset, don't use your Google account but create a new throw-away Google account for it. Don't use your real name or information. You'll have to get your contacts over by other means than Google-sync. If your are paranoid do the phone setup on public wifi, not at your home. Install only the apps you need. Don't install Facebook, Tweeter, etc. or setup them with a new throw away account with fake info. Bring this phone and not your $$$$$ iPhone or Android. This is what I would do. Peaceful protestor pedes can stop reading here and skip to the last two paragraphs. The following is for those who may get to enjoy the possibly wilder aspects of the protest. For the very paranoid, get a pre-paid burner phone. The cheapest can be had for about $20. Expect plenty of inconvenience using them as these are bottom-of-the-barrel cheap: throwback to the 1990's with just basic comms and minimal to no apps. Don't activate at store counter, but buy the prepackaged ones you can activate online or by phone. Try activating online (public wifi) and don't provide real info. Some of the activation websites have become smarter about fake information and will not let you activate with obviously fake info. If you have a knack for social engineering you can try by-phone activation and pretend to be an illegal or somesuch with no SSN, credit, fixed address, etc. Customer support can (and will) manually activate the phone with very little info, less than what's asked online. Make sure you have enough prepaid balance and do not purchase the balance with your credit card as that defeats the whole purpose, but buy recharge/refill cards with cash only. Note that only the burner phone option offers some protection from government and only if carried out with strict opsec. The main angle here is just to keep BigTech from easily identifying and tracking you not to keep the spooks at bay (that's on another level hard.) If you think you might witness trouble and want to record it: See if your phone supports recording video from the lock screen (without having to enter the PIN.) Enable it if available as this will be very handy if you need to film something quickly. Make sure you video recorder/camera app is on the first/landing page after the lock screen so you can reach it quickly. Practice recording video quickly. Do the full action: taking the phone from your pocket/purse, pressing power, unlocking/PIN (if needed), activating app, pressing "record", etc. Repeat. Make sure there's ample space on your phone for several minutes of video. Test it out. Try recording and see how many minutes you can record before the phone fills up (don't forget to delete the test recordings.) Because Internet access will be near non-existent during the protest don't worry about streaming video anything. Just store on the phone and keep the phone (don't get arrested.) If you get arrested: Know that police can take your phone if they arrest you, and that they will take it. Know also that police can and will freely search your phone if unlocked; and if locked they can persuasively ask for the PIN, and claim that you must give it to them. Know that your are not legally required to give your PIN to them, only a judge can require that (and even then the law is unsettled.) Know that if the police/prosecutor wants to mess with you, they can hold your phone even if they release you with no charges, and then stonewall returning it or even "lose it." Therefore, DON'T bring your expensive phone with your family pictures, bank account app, work emails, full contacts and call history, etc. If things get wild you might lose it and it can end up on enemy's hands. You don't want your family and boss receiving death threats and prank calls from your phone or getting doxxed. Make sure you have at least a PIN on your phone. Make it 6 digits instead of 4. A strong password is better. Fingerprint, face or pattern security alone is not as good and can be defeated. Use more than one method (ie. PIN + fingerprint) if you can handle the inconvenience. You can undo all of this later when you return home. Should you phone fall in the wrong hands they will have to work at it. That's it and Godspeed on the 6th pedes!