Planning mobile communications for actions/organising [tactical activity]

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The following are guiding considerations for groups who are organizing and participating in actions and relying on Messaging Apps. Using this guide, you can facilitate discussions to support groups in considering the kinds of communications they are having and to design group management, message and device protocols that meet the safety needs for that communication.

This activity has 3 stages:

If groups have not yet chosen the messaging app they want to use, you may want to do the activity Discussion, input + hands-on: Choosing mobile apps

Learning objectives this activity responds to

Who is this activity for?

This activity is for participants with varied levels of experience in using mobile phones. If participants include individuals who will be group admins for messaging groups, plan to implement the designs in the workshop.

Time required

This activity will require about 60 minutes to map and design and up to 3 hours if you will be installing messaging apps, mapping and designing, and implementing.

Resources needed for this activity

Mechanics

Mapping communications and assessing risk

Consideration: Privacy

Consider that you may have different types of messages to communicate via signal and that some messages can be more public than others. Map the kinds of communications you have and design groups to match your privacy considerations.

What kinds of communication are you doing and what considerations do you have around who has access to communication? Suggest that participants consider these different groups. Ask them if they have more types of information -- for example, is there information that only 2 people should know, that only one person should know and document and not share?

WHO EXAMPLE COMMUNICATIONS
1 needs to be kept among a very small circle of people who know each other location of lead organizers
2 is vital for volunteers to know or for small groups to coordinate around changes in crowd location
3 can be shared openly rally start time, groups who endorse this action publicly

PLAN: Design groups and settings

Work with participants to design groups to correspond with the different types of communication.

Guiding suggestions around group design: We suggest starting from these design questions. We have included example suggestions for group management and settings for some common types of groups. Ask the participants what about this will work and what will not, facilitate the group in modifying the designs to respond to parts that do not work.

Membership

VERIFICATION: Know who you are talking with 

For a type of communication, how will you verify who you are talking to?

Message security - settings

Discuss, based on the sensitivity of the information you are communicating, what agreements do you want to make about how people are using message settings?

Common group design templates

1. Small very strictly verified groups for sensitive information

Consideration/Risk: That people will join groups who you don't know and don't want to have access to information that is not okay going public.

2. Pods - small groups

Consideration/Risk: That people will join the group and send information that is not useful or intentionally incorrect.

3. Open group, public Information

Consider information on this channel to be public information in real-time. While information from any of the other groups could be leaked or shared outside of the group, this is a group that you automatically consider to be public.

Device security

If your device is taken, prevent others from pretending to be you and reading your information like signal messages, contact book, email etc. For more detailed facilitation guidance around device security, see the activity: Back it up! Lock it! Delete it! a.k.a. Someone took my mobile: Border crossings, arrests, seizure, theft

Power and service

What if people can't use SIGNAL or your chosen App, Phones, Internet, for any reason - power, busy network, shutdown etc. Do you have backup or redundant internet access - a portable wifi hotspot for instance (if it uses cellular data that would also go down)? Is there an offline plan? Will your hub have a power-charging station for volunteers?

Additional resources


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Revision #6
Created 16 April 2023 04:08:39 by Kira
Updated 28 July 2023 14:51:35 by Kira