As cheap as burner phones are these days, it seems the easiest route is to buy a decoy Android and fill it with plausible-looking innocent data, and leave your real phone home when going on vacation.

I don't understand why you think there's a need to fill it with plausible-looking innocent data.

Why can't you just take a new phone and say, "it's empty because I got a new phone"?

> This regulation is clearly made by people who don't understand the technology and capabilities...

Staying ahead of them with a technological trick is only a partial, temporary solution, though. Eventually you can expect that there will be an attack, whether purchased (see GreyKey) or legislated, on the workaround. What should happen is that the whole arms race should be nipped in the bud by outlawing this kind of data collection coercion. But I don't have a lot of hope about getting that genie back into the bottle.