[Scan-DC] Secret US spy program targeted Americans' cellphones

[Jordan Hayes]

> a cell phone can be bought in any drugstore for 20.00
> as a throw-away. Use it once in one location or even twice
> and toss it in the garbage and buy another one with a
> different IMEI number and card.

This certainly can slow things down, but don't forget what happens with 
this new "clean" telephone: it gets used to call the same set of people 
in your network as you did yesterday with a different phone.  So if I'm 
doing the analysis on this, I can "see" that this is what you're doing; 
instead of one phone making those links, it's now a different phone 
every few days.  Also you need to let your network know that this is 
you, so they can call you back, etc.  And people get lazy and sloppy and 
one day they get caught.

So it's not a panacea to just use throwaway phones.  And I'm sure it's 
part of the reason why those who are doing the tracking find it easier 
to scoop it all up and do the analysis later.

Anyway ...