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Sunday, April 01, 2012

Cell phones & the police

WASHINGTON — Law enforcement tracking of cellphones, once the province mainly of federal agents, has become a powerful and widely used surveillance tool for local police officials, with hundreds of departments, large and small, often using it aggressively with little or no court oversight, documents show.       
The practice has become big business for cellphone companies, too, with a handful of carriers marketing a catalog of “surveillance fees” to police departments to determine a suspect’s location, trace phone calls and texts or provide other services. Some departments log dozens of traces a month for both emergencies and routine investigations.
With cellphones ubiquitous, the police call phone tracing a valuable weapon in emergencies like child abductions and suicide calls and investigations in drug cases and murders. One police training manual describes cellphones as “the virtual biographer of our daily activities,” providing a hunting ground for learning contacts and travels.
    

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And this is the reason why you need a throw-away cell for your truck if you don't want Big Sis up in your fucking business tracking your day-to-day travels.
Go down to your local Radio Shack (wearing your ball cap and sunglasses of course) and check out their pre-pay phone and plans. Seeing as you're only going to be using this phone for calls and text (use your smartphone for accessing the internet and shit like that), keep it simple and cheap. You can find a phone ranging anywhere from 97 cents to $299 but what the fuck, we're not talking status symbols here, we're talking about simple comms. Besides, all the expensive phones allow you to access the internet and email and as soon as you sign into anything that's connected to you, the phone number that you accessed if from is now officially yours in the eyes of the law. Buy a phone with talk and text only for 10 bucks.
When making your decision, check the brochures and find out which systems has the best network coverage for your area. AT&T has pretty good coverage for the entire nation as does Sprint and Verizon. Virgin and Boost Mobile, not so good but their rates are cheaper.
Check the brochures for rates, minutes and expiration dates. You can buy minutes for small amounts like $5 to $20, but those minutes will expire after 30 days. At about 25 bucks and above, you get 250 minutes and they don't expire for 90 days. Some plans offer minutes that don't expire for a year for $100. A good choice for somebody such as myself (I use less than 100 minutes a month on my contract phone) would be the $25 plan.
I should say now that if your minutes run out, you're not obligated to run right out and buy minutes to keep the number active. You can throw that motherfucker in a drawer for months and you'll still have the same number when you add minutes again.
Also consider how easy it is to refill or add minutes to your phone. At the Radio Shack, you can buy the minutes WITH CASH and the clerk can add them for you or you can buy them at a different location every time and add them yourself for security purposes.
Pick your phone and minute plan, inform the salesdude of your choice and head to the counter feeling all sneaky and covert and shit. When you get rang up, the clerk will activate it for you. He'll ask your name and phone number. Give him a fake name and for the phone number, be a smartass and tell him that you don't have a phone, that's why you're buying that one and then look at him like he's fucking stupid or something. Or make up a number.
Pay attention to this part: When it comes time to pay - and if you paid any attention at all to what I just told you it'll be less than a pair of twenties - PAY CASH. Remember, you're trying to keep Big Sis off your ass and out of your business. PAY FUCKING CASH. Never use you credit or debit card on anything to do with this phone. Ever. Always PAY CASH.
Okay. after you've PAID CASH, you'll find your phone number on the receipt. The first thing you're gonna want to do is call it from your contract phone to make sure it works. Do not do that. I will repeat: Do. Not. Do. That. Do not connect your new Secret Squirrel phone to yourself in any way.
So now you've got a phone that you can use while you're out and about while Big Sis thinks you're sitting on your ass at home watching Predator Quest.

Nothing here is illegal, risky or unusual. You see poor folks and homeless people with cell phones? That's how they got 'em.
Thugs and dope dealers have been doing this for years and years for conducting business on phones that can't be traced back to them. Remember years ago when you only had your connections' pager number and he'd call you back from a phone booth and then suddenly he gives you his phone number so you can call him direct? It wasn't because he developed a new level of trust for you, that's when he got a throwaway cell phone.
If you decide to use your phone for taking care of business, you can take the extra step of just buying a new phone and tossing your old one out when your minutes run out or expire instead of buying more. You'll get a new number and you'll have to pass that on to your contacts but if it's for something slightly illegal or underhanded (not that I would condone such a thing) you shouldn't have more than a couple of contacts anyway. Besides, they'll be doing the same thing to keep shit secure.

So there's your lesson for the day.
Remember, no form of communication is completely secure but nobody says you gotta make it easy on the bastards. Make 'em work for it, man.

UDATE: As always with an "instructional" like this, read the comments. Sometimes readers come up with ideas that I overlook or don't know about. For instance Kerodin mentioned synching your bluetooth to both phones accidentally. I don't own a bluetooth, refuse to own one and don't know shit about them.

13 comments:

  1. This is one of the biggest problems in the Liberty Movement - most such folks are used to playing by the rules. Doing anything off-book just "feels" sinister. We've got to break those chains. ;)

    ...and be careful to avoid a burn-phone with Blue Tooth. If you are tech-illiterate (as am I) you might just make a connection between your real ID and your burn phone just by setting them side-by-side or connecting to something at work wirelessly...

    Kerodin
    III

    ReplyDelete
  2. Remove the batteries from your cell phone to avoid tracking during that time.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ya left out "Hoodie".

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hey, thanks tons for this info...this can also work for being anonymous on Facebook...when they ask for a phone number to verify your account give them this one...

    JB

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anon - except that it'll then be tied in to your ISP and then you.
    Be careful. Don't use it to log into anything and access anything with your name or electronic ID on it.

    ReplyDelete
  6. you said:

    "...I should say now that if your minutes run out, you're not obligated to run right out and buy minutes to keep the number active. You can throw that motherfucker in a drawer for months and you'll still have the same number when you add minutes again."

    Maybe.

    I tried that, and a couple months later, my relatives were getting some drug dealer when they called my number. Turns out (some??) phone companies sell the SIM IDs if they don't get re-upped with fresh cash after some unspecified length of time.

    ReplyDelete
  7. $7 bucks a month, guess my number.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Consider using something like this....

    http://safestmonster.com/signal-blocking-bag.html

    That way you don't need to remove the battery. While in this bag the
    phone is "incommunicado", they cant' trace you...just remember though, if they can't trace you you can't recieve phone calls.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Google Voice is some really good stuff also.

    ReplyDelete
  10. A. Watch a movie called Erasing David. Fascinating and scary as hell. This movie is a 'must see' if you're at all serious about anonimity.

    B. The feds already can turn on the mic in your cell phone and listen to anything you can hear in the room, even when the phone is off and in your pocket. They busted and convicted some Mafia guy this way and some court already ruled it legal, even without a warrant.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Hog, yes they can turn your phone into a microphone just not while it's off. It has to be on and connected to the cell system, but not being used. Your phone's camera can be remoted too to transmit what it's seeing. They can see who you called and who's called you, text's and emails.

    BTW, I will not confirm nor deny that I may or may not have been involved as one of the previously mentioned pronoun people in or out of a specified or un-specified area of operations in an undisclosed location.

    ReplyDelete
  12. And yes I have numerous burn phones for North America, One for Korea and a GSM worldwide for Europe, Africa, Asia and the middle East.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Virgin uses the Sprint network and they work fine, used them for years.

    Trackphones and the like don't fare so well outside of major areas, Cricket sucks outside of their network. They're fine if you don't travel out of your area much, but that's about it.

    ReplyDelete

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