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I was thinking along the lines of „the state wants to oppress the protestors and makes it illegal“, but if you just want to avoid surveillance at a legal protest, yeah, you’re right.

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Going into a protest with illegal communication devices is almost a direct sabotage of the protest's intent. It gives law enforcement a legitimate reason to act, even if almost certainly ex post facto. And it paints the protest as wilfully illegal--you went in intending to break the law.

If you're protesting an oppressive regime then it's likely most privacy respecting methods are illegal.

If you're attending a protest with a phone, the cell tower ping will deanonymize you anyway.

The state has every reason (for itself) to demand perfect law-abiding behavior. The abstract Protest’s intent does not.

“If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear” right? That’s the same logic politicians are using to make spying on populations legal.

"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." - Ed Snowden

No one was arguing this.

It’s possible to have encrypted communications without fucking up public parts of the spectrum.

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