Comment by dfc
6 months ago
I am not sure I agree with this. I don't think that running out of battery or rebooting a phone is that rare.
But more importantly, if these events are noticeable and Alice does what you suggest she is probably going to highlight her location. Especially if she naively waits till she is 15 minutes from home to switch her burner on. Over time there will be a circle around her house of no burner phone network attach events.
I'd be surprised if my daily driver phone ran out of battery more than once or twice a year. It probably only ever reboots in exactly the same 24 hour time window as every other iPhone during iOS updates.
If Alice's threat model doesn't include NSA/KGB/MSS/MOSSAD, just being slightly less naive and switching on the burner at (or within a set distance from) some location other than her home is likely fine. I describe in another comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45009042 how I used to automate turning on a phone (well, a 3G WiFi hotspot) at a set distance from a nearby library.
But don't follow my advice if you're running a global drug cartel, or criticising Saudi Royal Families, or defending the rights of Palestinian children to not be bombed.
(I just realised my phone goes into and out of airplane mode when I get on and off planes, which narrows it down to one in a couple of hundred people for one flight, and likely uniquely identifies me with only two or perhaps 3 flights. But this is my daily driver phone with proper KYC identification, not a burner.)
What about elevators, parking garages, basements? Network Attach messages are fairly common in the mobile device logs I have seen.
Your "Recreational Paranoia" should include rebooting your iPhone more often.
> What about elevators, parking garages, basements?
If Snowden was an ex-colleage of mine, I suspect I or my co workers probably combine location data with network attach/detach messages, and can filter out "known blackspots" on a per network/carrier basis.
> Your "Recreational Paranoia" should include rebooting your iPhone more often.
Ah ha! But my recreational paranoia hobby includes having a perfectly normal "daily driver" phone - which gets left at home way more often than other people's phones.