OFF THE WIRE
The sort of phone you might throw away
Photo by Koichi Kamoshida/Getty Images
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On Wednesday, the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald reported
that, in compliance with a court order, Verizon has been giving the
U.S. government data on all phone calls made over its wireless network.
If Verizon is turning over its records, then you have to imagine other
mobile companies are doing the same thing. So, is there any way to use a
mobile phone in the United States without having the government take
note? Can prepaid “burner” cellphones—popular among international
travelers, people with bad credit, and the drug dealers from The Wire—help protect you against government surveillance?
To a point, yes. There’s really no such thing as an untraceable call.
If the government wants to monitor or collect data on your
communications, it can almost always find a way. But prepaid disposable
cellphones will make you harder to track, as they don’t require users to
sign up for a calling plan, with all of the handing over of personal
information that entails.
The big advantage that burners have over traditional wireless phones
is that the user’s personal data isn’t logged at the point of sale or by
the service provider. Unlike at, say, the Verizon store, where buying a
cellphone plan involves signing a contract and submitting to a credit
check, you can pay cash for a burner and leave the store without showing
your ID. If you wear a hoodie, sunglasses, or a fake beard (or all
three!), you can stymie surveillance cameras. And if you use a funny
accent, the clerk will think you’re from France.
All this will make it more difficult for the government to determine
who you are. But don’t get too confident in your anonymity. First of
all, calls made on burners are generally transmitted over existing networks.
(No, the people behind “Barry’s Burners” probably aren’t erecting their
own cell towers to transmit your calls.) Most prepaid cell service
providers are what’s known as mobile virtual network operators, or MVNOs. (Traditional carriers like Verizon also offer prepaid plans of their own.)
That essentially means they buy space in bulk on existing wireless
networks and resell it to consumers at a low price. If your burner
operates on Verizon’s network, Verizon is probably turning that data
over to the NSA. Sorry.
Second, it’s not difficult for the government to determine your location based on your burner’s communication with cell towers. In 2006 the DEA arrested a man named Melvin Skinner,
who was caught transporting 1,100 pounds of marijuana across the
Southwest. The government was able to catch up with Skinner by tracking
the signals being emitted by his two prepaid cellphones and subsequently
triangulating his location. (They had previously traced the burners
back to Skinner. He probably didn’t use a French accent at the
convenience store where he bought them.) Skinner appealed his conviction
on the grounds that the tracking of his cellphone signal constituted a
breach of privacy. In 2012, however, a federal appeals court ruled that
people using prepaid cellphones had no “reasonable expectation” of
privacy, and that the government was free to track away. So if you’re
going to use a burner and don’t want it to get connected back to you,
you probably shouldn’t use it at your house, or your place of business,
or any other location with which you have an identifiable connection.
And when you use a burner, you have to remember to leave your real cellphone at home. In 2009 a medical student named Philip Markoff
was arrested and charged with murdering a woman in a Boston hotel.
Markoff had allegedly used a prepaid disposable cellphone to contact the
victim beforehand; he had allegedly used similar tactics in another
incident where he robbed a different woman at a different hotel. Both
times, Markoff had had his real cellphone in his pocket, and, even
though the phone was off, it was still communicating with cell towers.
Police were able to determine Markoff’s identity in part by gathering
information based on the signals emitted from his real cellphone. So
keep that in mind.
In conclusion, burners can give you a measure of anonymity, but
they’re by no means untraceable. If you’re looking for total assurance
that your phone calls won’t be tapped, I recommend using two tin cans
and a length of string.
