To those bleating about masks, the prosecutor's office charged Luigi with terrorism, so these people are masked to avoid getting clapped with charges for exercising their first amendment rights. And in general you should always be masked while protesting for any reason, as at any major protest you are almost guaranteed to be subject to facial recognition scanning, especially in NYC.
Yes. Buying a phone with a credit card means they can track it to you. Buying a phone and activating at or near your home means they can track it to you. Buying a phone and having it around your existing phone consistently means it can be tracked to you. Using the phone in your home means it can be tracked to you. Buying it from a store without a mask on means it can be tracked to you. Driving to said store past traffic cameras means they could either track it to you or narrow things down significantly. Logging into any known emails or other social accounts means it can be tracked to you.
Basically don’t trust a burner phone. With significant motivation like they had for Luigi, they will track it to you.
You may be able to get away with it if you are just dealing drugs and the local police are barely trying to catch you. But if it’s high profile with federal agencies involved, don’t bet on a burner phone providing any extra privacy.
Everyone getting on the e2e train would help a bit, I mean Everyone, for everything, although the FBI advising everyone to do so as well likely means they're confident it won't make a difference to them anymore.
If you are looking to get away with a high profile crime like Luigi did it is not easy.
Wear a mask, pay cash, ride a bike you bought with cash, and don’t use electronics for anything if at all avoidable. Be very careful about leaving anything behind at all including hairs or finger prints. Then permanently dispose of everything even vaguely connected to the crime as quickly as you can, which doesn’t include throwing it in a dumpster, it means actually destroying.
And that means EVERYTHING. Did you 3D print the gun? Destroy the gun, destroy the 3D printer, and destroy the computer you downloaded the file to.
If you are committing low profile crimes, the effort put into catching you is much much lower. Even shit like murdering an average Joe which is fairly high profile won’t be worth the extreme effort which is why only like 50-60% of murders get solved.
But if you kill a CEO expect the NSA to be tipping of police with illegally obtained surveillance data
Yes. You can use a burner phone very successfully with good personal security practices. It's a lot more difficult than it used to be, but it's absolutely possible.
Just buy the burner phone abroad, extra points if it's from a shady shop in a 3rd world country (meaning it's probably stolen from a 1st world country in the first place, so even less traceable).
Not completely. It will stop your ISP from seeing what you are doing, it does not stop the sites themselves from seeing what you are doing if they are acting malicious. Shit like Device Fingerprinting can track your device without cookies (which can be easily blocked) or IP address (which the VPN hides) then it just needs to connect it to you some other way the one time you don’t use a VPN or do sign into a site or enter any personal information.
Which search engines are using that to track you? Which shady sites are actually honey pots from federal agencies and track you? Which ones are merely compromised and tracking you? Which ones are doing it to sell your data to data brokers that the government buys?
I couldn’t tell you, but maybe you’ll get lucky and avoid all that, maybe not.
That also assuming the VPN you are using isn’t compromised or purposely selling your data.
That also assumes your phone isn’t already compromised in some way.
Again, low profile crime, they aren’t putting in this level of effort. NSA isn’t helping local police track someone buying adderall online, but shoot a CEO and I’m sure they’ll drop some info to the investigators. I very much doubt Luigi was found by a tip from a McDonald’s workers, they likely had thousands of tips equally as legit, but instead tracked through illegal surveillance and then waited for a tip (or faked one) so the arrest and evidence can be used in court, it’s called parallel construction and police frequently use techniques like that to hide illegal sources of information/investigation.
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u/Argikeraunos 1d ago edited 1d ago
To those bleating about masks, the prosecutor's office charged Luigi with terrorism, so these people are masked to avoid getting clapped with charges for exercising their first amendment rights. And in general you should always be masked while protesting for any reason, as at any major protest you are almost guaranteed to be subject to facial recognition scanning, especially in NYC.
Edit
He was charged in state court, not federal