Throw Away Your Cell Phone
Only half kidding with this one ...
I have been using Google Voice as my only public facing PSTN number since they became available - so 202-642-1717 was mine when Project VIGILANT formed in the spring of 2009. The last carrier number anyone knew for me was a prepaid phone that was stolen by a certain D.C. resident’s dope head little sister in the fall of 2011.
Ten years later I Gave a Bounty Hunter $300. Then He Located Our Phone by 404 Media’s Joseph Cox became the thing I gave to everyone as the rationale for them converting to Google Voice … and taking other measures as well.
Please watch this Wired investigation about visitors to Jeffrey Epstein’s island, which is a nine minute exposition on the MUCH more serious nature of the problem today.
Attention Conservation Notice:
This is going to be life or death stuff in country where another pedophile, Matt Gaetz, was seen as a credible choice for attorney general. Read and heed … or learn the hard way. I can write good articles about folks who serve as negative examples for others.
The Big Picture:
This isn’t a theoretical problem, it’s not just Epstein, and this article is mostly a problem statement. I do NOT have a full featured solution for this, other than fleeing to Europe, a notion which becomes a bit more attractive with each passing day.
The 2000 Mules crockumentary used cell phone data to back the assertion that there were 2,000 people in Georgia engaged in ballot stuffing. There was one guy who dropped off ballots for his household, which is perfectly legal, and the rest of their “investigation” was nonsense.
There’s a new Joseph Cox article, Heritage Foundation Claims to Use Location Data to Track Trump Shooter's Movements, which is similar in spirit to the Wired Epstein investigation. They made some really hinky use of the data, “connecting” the shooter to an FBI office, in order to gin up a conspiracy theory.
Location tracking, meet abortion bans – authoritarians have too much power was just a few weeks ago. If you go to Planned Parenthood for *ANY* reason, anti-abortion nutters are tracking your phone.
These are just the really notable ones I could recall off the top of my head, I’m sure there’s much more of this going on out there.
First Amendment:
Here’s the actual text of the 1st Amendment.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
We refer to this as the free speech amendment, but there are two other natural rights whose protection are memorialized. The government may not interfere with peaceable association and assembly.
Those two rights face a dire threat from the unrestricted access to phone data. If you’re doing nothing wrong, you should be safe, right? Not during the Obama or Biden administrations, and absolutely not during our imminent fascist transition.
Countermeasures:
What can you actually DO about this problem? The Wired presenter had a number of suggestions
Limit ad tracking.
Disable location services.
Use an ad blocker - Brave browser does well here.
I would add my usual prescriptions to that list:
Convert to Google Voice for your public facing number.
Replace post paid phone with anonymous prepaid.
Only give carrier number to services that require KYC, like banks.
Only VPN I’ve seen with a solid “fail closed” client is Mullvad.
Switch away from PSTN to using Signal as much as possible.
There is still some merit in having a second phone.
The problem is that the things you can just do once are numerous, but even checking all the those boxes does not make you bullet proof. I am constantly noticing potential issues, mostly to do with the ever tightening anti-fraud policies adopted by the various sites and services I use. The companies focus on protecting their bottom line, and all too often that means intentionally failing to protect users.
The second phone still solves a lot of problems … but not the tracking as described in the Epstein piece. You run multiple devices in one location, or take them with you mobile, they’re entangled enough that it creates a trail.
Conclusion:
I am patiently waiting to see if this theoretical half price studio apartment that is on the verge of falling into my clutches actually becomes reality. I don’t think anyone knows the carrier numbers of any devices I have, but I’m taking no chances. They’ll all be turned off when I leave, then new SIMs will be installed at the new location. I’m on my third Google Voice number since I idled 202-642-1717 ten years ago and I’m starting to think I ought to roll that as well.
If money were no object I’d factory reset my iPhone, sneak into the attic, use that power plug way at the back, and just leave it here when I go. There’s enough clutter here that it’ll continue running as long as I keep paying for it. Now if I could just figure out that TailScale internet exit stuff …
I’m really starting to think that the only way to avoid the cellular dragnet is satellite internet. The operator still has data on you, of course, but it’s not continuously shoveled to every data broker out there. You’d need some sort of device for calling, but there are plenty of options
The U.S. needs something like Europe’s GDPR, but now it’s a Catch-22 problem - we can’t use the things we need to push for change without using the very services that need to be regulated. And it will not happen until 2029 at the very earliest, assuming we even manage to hang on to our democracy till then.