cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/40154928
I doubt its even environmentally/economically sustainable for a whole crowd of millions to just buy burners to discard after every protest. Too much ewaste. Is there a strategy that everyone can use without generating too much ewaste?
Apple’s “find my” network can find your phone when it’s turned off, because the phone continues to transmit low-energy Bluetooth which other devices in that network receive and report. So if you’re in a crowd with a switched-off iPhone and other people have their devices on, it’s still possible for your location to be tracked. There may be other modern phones that do this too, continuing to transmit low power signals to nearby devices. If you really don’t want to be tracked, you can’t be sure Airplane Mode or turning the phone off will be sufficient.
Airplane mode on Apple has two sub-toggles: wifi and bluetooth (the main toggle controls the cellular antenna). With all three toggled off, find-my does not work. The device just shows up as “offline, location unknown, last seen at…” on the map. Something to watch out for though: for some reason Apple will turn bluetooth back on after a couple days without asking, even with airplane still on. Also, an app running in background could in theory record the GPS coordinates and transmit them to home server once connection is reestablished.