Resilience Amid Diffused Surveillance During a Political Movement in Bangladesh

In July 2024, Bangladesh witnessed a historic, student-led uprising where social media became both a tool of mobilization and a site of repression. While surveillance is often framed through Bentham's vertical Panopticon model, our study extends the discourse on lateral surveillance. Drawing on 23 interviews with protesters, activists, and digital organizers, we examine how lateral surveillance operates within a political movement in Bangladesh, where discipline is enacted not only by the state but also through peers, kin, and intimate social ties. Participants described living under constant fear while also developing creative strategies of resilience, from improvised encrypted systems and panic deletions to cultural tactics like satire and hidden speech. We contribute to security and privacy literature on activism by highlighting the need for designs that strengthen safety, anonymity, and collective resilience in fragile and repressive contexts.