Every American Now Needs A Burner Phone

The teenagers running around our house (we assume they’re ours since they’re eating our food) are tethered to their cell phones. Their schools have tried to ban them, but that didn’t work. They will set them to the side or have an important conversation, but they’re never out of reach. Even when they go to bed at night, their phones are right there beside them in case a friend has insomnia or something. Their phones are more important to them than their ID or bus pass.

Adults find it easy to talk about teenagers as if they’re creatures from another planet, but what they are is magnified images of ourselves. They see us using our phones, they hear the language we’re using, and they simply magnify it, trying to be adult by being more adult than the adult. That makes sense, doesn’t it?

The difference, however, is what we have on our phones, the apps we use, and the information stored in them. Our teens have TikTok and a couple of other social media apps, email for checking school announcements, and a messaging app so we can tell them when it’s time to eat. Adults, though? Statistically, fewer than 20, but there are older people with phones who skew the numbers lower than reality. We have apps for every fast-food joint between home and the office. We have multiple delivery apps, so we can see who has the best deals. We have apps for UPS, FedEx, and USPS, so we’ll know when to expect our packages. We have Amazon and several other shopping apps, several of which we don’t actually use but downloaded ‘just in case.’ We have apps to buy movie tickets, apps to edit pictures and videos, social media apps, apps that let us book flights and hotel rooms on the run, banking apps that let us make sure we can pay for those flights and hotel rooms, and four different medical apps because heaven forbid that our doctors all use the same app.

That might seem like a lot, and it can be, but in addition to all of that, many people have work apps on their phones. The app may be critical to what they do, but they also provide access to sensitive client information, company plans not meant to be public, and other ‘insider’ information.

Most smartphones can also provide at least a recent list of where you’ve been. How long they keep that information depends on your settings.

They also keep a record of your contacts, who you call and text the most, their phone numbers, and possibly their addresses. Your emergency contact person is there. Extended family phone numbers are there. Most are listed by their names, but some people assign nicknames to their friends, and to a stranger looking at their phone, the names seem weird.

We are all more deeply attached to our phones than we care to admit. There have been warnings as to how they might be affecting both our physical and mental health, but now there’s a new warning that is far more ominous. Your cell phone can make you a target for law enforcement.

“Don’t do anything wrong, and you don’t have anything to worry about,” comes the tired response. That’s never been true, and now, you can be stopped and searched anytime you are outside your house under the guise of being a suspected alien. When you are stopped, they legally have full access to everything that is on your phone.

Everything.

Many companies are now mandating that their employees carry burner phones when they’re away from the office. The European Commission has just announced that it is issuing burner phones to officials traveling to the United States, a measure usually restricted to countries like China or Russia. Canadian companies, who tend to do a lot of business with US companies, are now telling anyone who crosses the border to carry a burner phone so that they are not accidentally risking internal company info.

The time has come to wake up to the reality that we are not remotely free, not in this America. Not now. With the reality we’re dealing with, then thinking about ways to protect your privacy makes sense, and carrying a burner phone could be seen as a practical step.

The main appeal of a burner phone is data segregation. Think about your regular smartphone – it’s basically a record of your life: contacts, private messages, emails, photos, Browse history, social media apps, location data, maybe even notes or documents that reflect your personal thoughts and political leanings. If authorities are actively looking for any hint of specific viewpoints considered problematic, then carrying that main phone makes all that deeply personal information potentially vulnerable during any interaction.

A burner phone, which is usually a simple, inexpensive device often used with prepaid service and not linked to your main accounts or identity, wouldn’t contain that vast history. You’d use it just for essential communication when you’re outside your home or office – basic calls, maybe texts. It wouldn’t have your years of browser history, your social media apps reflecting who you follow or what you like, or your private chats discussing sensitive political topics. You can pick one up at the grocery store or the convenience store on the corner. They’re not expensive.

The argument for carrying a burner is a rational one: if you were stopped and subjected to any kind of viewpoint-based phone check, the burner phone wouldn’t offer up the personal data trail or potentially “incriminating” political content that your main phone might. It creates a buffer. It minimizes the amount of personal information and potentially targeted political expression you carry with you, reducing your exposure. It’s a way to maintain a necessary communication tool while keeping the contents of your primary digital life, including potentially targeted political views, more private and less exposed during casual encounters outside your trusted spaces.

Are we overreacting? The prosecutorial power of the state is vast. Even without a conviction, even without an indictment, a criminal investigation can upend a person’s life and potentially bankrupt them with legal costs. In the Anglo-American tradition, the danger of overweening state power is cabined in many ways: the requirement of a grand jury, the presumption of innocence, the right to trial by jury, the ban on star chambers, and many other protections. But these all rest ultimately on the public’s sense of fairness and what’s right.

Let’s assume that someone in the Punk administration decides to harass me. They could invent a crime. They could say that I had spread the “false and baseless” claim that the 2020 election was not stolen and therefore sowed “chaos and distrust in government.” Or they could become fanciful and allege that I have terrorist ties, as they said about Rumeysa Öztürk, the Turkish grad student who was hustled off the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts. What then?

Republican members of Congress, if asked about my detention, would say that “We have to trust the president’s instincts.” The Wall Street Journal editorial page would say that this is not ideal because just think of what Democrats might do with this power. And the right-wing media would dredge up every critical word I’ve ever written about Punk, which is volumes at this point, to show that, after all, I had it coming.

Do I have it coming? Do YOU have it coming?

If we ‘wait to see how this all plays out,’ it will be too late.