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It’s much harder to tie a burner to a person than a smartphone with a plan and internet usage records.

MertsA 7y ago
On the contrary, if you're looking at a particular individual and devoting attention to it then it's generally pretty easy to identify someone based on a detailed record of their location. Case and point, if you've enabled location history for your Google account you can take a look at your own history and see for yourself just how easy it would be to identify someone given the power to subpoena surveillance footage, vehicle registration records, driver's licenses, etc. For my own data for the month of November right off the bat I walked to a nearby McDonald's and paid with a debit card. Even if they didn't have surveillance footage from all of the cameras in the restaurant they still have financial records of the small number of orders that were placed soon after I walked into the restaurant, that combined with the driver's license addresses and vehicle registration records in close proximity to my house would almost immediately identify me. Even just looking at where someone lives is enough to narrow it down to a tiny list of candidates and for >90% of citizens they are going to be on some record as having that address. In short, tax returns generally indicate where you live, as well as specifically state if any dependents that you claim also live with you. Then there's utilities which are just about impossible to avoid, then there's property records which don't need any subpoena as it's literally public records posted on a searchable website for most (all?) of the country. Voter registration data would also tie an individual to an address. USPS, UPS, and Fedex would be another easy way to come up with candidates, the list goes on and on but unless you're homeless you're going to be on a list somewhere. The next day after the McDonalds I drove to WalMart, where I again made purchases with a debit card and walked around in plain view of a plethora of surveillance cameras and again, just from the time of arrival and the time of departure you can narrow down the list of candidates to a relatively small list and I highly doubt any of my immediate neighbors also went to WalMart at the same time as me and left that WalMart at the same time as me. Also even if WalMart did not cooperate with any subpoena or if I paid in cash, it's not uncommon for private companies to drive around with a license plate reader through parking lots cataloging which license plates are present at a location for the purposes of selling that data to repossession companies looking for cars. I drove to that WalMart in a car registered in my name. After that there's a very obvious pattern indicating where I work and when. The company I work for files payroll taxes, none of my coworkers live anywhere near me, assuming it's just less precise positional estimates that a phone company would have for E911 purposes maybe they'd need to also look at the surrounding businesses as well but still, end of the day I think it's highly unlikely that my neighbors right by my house happen to also work right beside my employer. Right after that I travelled to one of our branch offices which would very strongly imply that I work at my specific employer and not the one in the adjacent unit. After that there's more visiting restaurants and gas stations and paying via a debit card as well as visiting my parents house. That's all in the span of a single week. Even with just a coarse history of the location of my phone it's absolutely trivial to identify me specifically. In fact, just off of the property records alone and some public records to determine employment history and family relationships I'd bet it'd be relatively easy enough to identify me by name even ignoring all of the different areas where police could simply subpoena payment records or surveillance footage. Location data, even coarse location data, is definitely enough to identify almost everyone if you're in a position to correlate that with additional records. Unless you have your burner phone turned off almost all of the time, it really doesn't matter if the phone provider doesn't have your name, there's so many other sources.

On the contrary, if you're looking at a particular individual and devoting attention to it then it's generally pretty easy to identify someone based on a detailed record of their location. Case and point, if you've enabled location history for your Google account you can take a look at your own history and see for yourself just how easy it would be to identify someone given the power to subpoena surveillance footage, vehicle registration records, driver's licenses, etc. For my own data for the month of November right off the bat I walked to a nearby McDonald's and paid with a debit card. Even if they didn't have surveillance footage from all of the cameras in the restaurant they still have financial records of the small number of orders that were placed soon after I walked into the restaurant, that combined with the driver's license addresses and vehicle registration records in close proximity to my house would almost immediately identify me. Even just looking at where someone lives is enough to narrow it down to a tiny list of candidates and for >90% of citizens they are going to be on some record as having that address. In short, tax returns generally indicate where you live, as well as specifically state if any dependents that you claim also live with you. Then there's utilities which are just about impossible to avoid, then there's property records which don't need any subpoena as it's literally public records posted on a searchable website for most (all?) of the country. Voter registration data would also tie an individual to an address. USPS, UPS, and Fedex would be another easy way to come up with candidates, the list goes on and on but unless you're homeless you're going to be on a list somewhere. The next day after the McDonalds I drove to WalMart, where I again made purchases with a debit card and walked around in plain view of a plethora of surveillance cameras and again, just from the time of arrival and the time of departure you can narrow down the list of candidates to a relatively small list and I highly doubt any of my immediate neighbors also went to WalMart at the same time as me and left that WalMart at the same time as me. Also even if WalMart did not cooperate with any subpoena or if I paid in cash, it's not uncommon for private companies to drive around with a license plate reader through parking lots cataloging which license plates are present at a location for the purposes of selling that data to repossession companies looking for cars. I drove to that WalMart in a car registered in my name. After that there's a very obvious pattern indicating where I work and when. The company I work for files payroll taxes, none of my coworkers live anywhere near me, assuming it's just less precise positional estimates that a phone company would have for E911 purposes maybe they'd need to also look at the surrounding businesses as well but still, end of the day I think it's highly unlikely that my neighbors right by my house happen to also work right beside my employer. Right after that I travelled to one of our branch offices which would very strongly imply that I work at my specific employer and not the one in the adjacent unit. After that there's more visiting restaurants and gas stations and paying via a debit card as well as visiting my parents house. That's all in the span of a single week. Even with just a coarse history of the location of my phone it's absolutely trivial to identify me specifically. In fact, just off of the property records alone and some public records to determine employment history and family relationships I'd bet it'd be relatively easy enough to identify me by name even ignoring all of the different areas where police could simply subpoena payment records or surveillance footage. Location data, even coarse location data, is definitely enough to identify almost everyone if you're in a position to correlate that with additional records. Unless you have your burner phone turned off almost all of the time, it really doesn't matter if the phone provider doesn't have your name, there's so many other sources.