Top 10 apps for anarchists in 2024
There's been some talk about apps for activists, so I thought I'd write a list of my favourites.
They're all available on F-Droid (like Google Play but for free software).
They don't require any of your information:
- no phone number,
- no email address,
- no nothing.
1. Organic Maps
🗺️ An easy-to-use offline map (as opposed to Google Maps which requires you to be always online), Organic Maps even has offline address lookup and route planning! This means that whatever you look up and your saved locations aren't sent anywhere.
One downside is that official bike routes aren't clearly labelled, but check out Trekarta for that.
2. Alibi
📹 If you're filming in a hostile environment, the stock camera app is not always the best choice. Someone else can stop your recording by pressing the lock button. Or maybe you don't want others to know you're recording.
Alibi can record video and audio in the background, even when the phone is locked, and save it on demand.
A similar app is FadCam.
3. Share via HTTP
☁️ Even today, sending a large file from one phone to another is a puzzle. If we want to avoid surveillance capitalist megacorps then Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive are no-go.
Even if you find a cool file sharing app, your friend probably has an iPhone and the app isn't on the App Store because the developers don't have a bag of money to pay the corporate overlords for permission to share their app.
Well, you're in luck because Share via HTTP has blazing fast transfers over your local WiFi hotspot. Much faster than Bluetooth. The recipient only needs to have any web browser available, so sending to an obsolete iPhone or Blackberry is no problemo.
4. Guerrilla Mail
📩 Want to get tickets for EvilExpo24 but don't want to give them your email address? Get a temporary email address in literally a second by opening Guerilla Mail.
5. Seal
🦭 Seal can download videos from almost any website. Useful for archiving documentation and research that could otherwise be lost.
6. InviZible Pro
👁️🗨️ Disguise your IP by routing the internet traffic from (some of) your apps through the Tor network with InviZible Pro.
7. LibreTorrent
🌀 Netflix, Amazon and Disney are on the boycot list, so now is the time to cancel your subscription and start torrenting films and series instead!
Search for torrents with the Torrents-csv app, and click on the result to download it with LibreTorrent. Remember to use a VPN, like RiseupVPN or CalyxVPN.
8. Briar
🧅 Yes, Signal with its end-to-end encryption is a vast improvement over proprietary spyware messengers, being mostly free.
However, Signal does ask for your phone number; it uses Google Play Services for notifications; and it relies on centralized servers in the USA, so if those go down, Signal goes down world wide.
Briar is refreshingly different. The Briar servers can't be taken down, because there aren't any; instead your phone is the server (with what is called an Onion Service). This means your and your friend's phones must both be on at the same time for messages to be sent between them.
If the internet is completely shut down, Briar can pass messages via Bluetooth or WiFi hotspot.
Sadly, iOS does not allow for such cool apps, because Briar needs to keep the connection open in the background instead of relying on push notifications from a centralized server, so this one is currently Android and desktop only.
9. FindMyDevice
📲 With FindMyDevice you can remote control your device via SMS or Signal messages to, yes, find your device by getting a reply with the coordinates. You can also remotely wipe your device or take photos. Access is protected by a PIN or by chosen contacts.
10. ObscuraCam
🫥
ObscuraCam is allegedly supposed to be able to blur faces in videos:
Turns out it doesn't work. So don't download it anyway.
For anonymizing videos, with enough persistence, I'm almost sure it'd be possible to get something like deface to run inside Termux.
It's still #10 on this list to encourage someone to make an easy-to-use free app that blurs faces in videos. We need that.