Burner phones have a lot more info about you than people think.

Or at least I know that in one court case there was a nice big 8x10 of the defendant purchasing a burner phone. Apparently a lot of Point of Sale systems, especially where they sell burner phones, are wired to take a nice portrait of you when you purchase. I didn't know that at the time, and apparently, neither did the defendant.

That, combined with the location of his phone matching the location of his license plate around town did him in.

So if you try the burner phone thing, someone else has to buy it, and you should never take it with you to places where there are likely to be security cameras. And you also might want to refrain from driving with it in your vehicle.

Not sure if I want to live my life like I’m planning a bank robbery at any minute. Seems more effective to petition your representative to restrict use of this data.

the fucked up part is that the government is apparently living their life as if you're planning a bank robbery any minute.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much difference between that and just trying to enjoy a modicum of privacy.

Well the assumption when proposing a plan is that we want the plan to actually accomplish something. If we don't care about effectiveness, then "ignore the problem and hope it goes away" is clearly the best option.

If you're being targeted by the government, this is something you should be aware of. Using today's convenient tech can get you locked up or killed.

However, if state persecution isn't part of your threat model, a burner is one layer of indirection that might make tracking and identification difficult for surveillance companies.

If Edward Snowden is to be believed then you can only be sure your phone is truly off when the battery is out.

Yes, sadly phones with removable batteries seem to be antiques now.

There are still plenty of slightly-used phones with removable batteries that work quite well. Galaxy Note 3 and 4 (possibly 5?) for a start. I recently got a Moto E5 brand new and it too has a removable battery.

Not even then; many electronic devices (PCs, for example!) have coin-cell backup batterys or large capacitors to keep RTCs and the like running during a battery replacement (or mains power outage).

Since radio and gps use a lot of battery, I wonder if a coincell could really power them.

You don't actually need to transmit the data off a backup battery, just store it and ship it out once a proper power supply is reattached. (You lose the data if someone destroys their phone, but that's a much narrower range of scenarios than "turn it off, but for real".) I don't recall GPS recievers being particularly power-intensive, but there's plenty of other sensors to log, most notably the microphone.

You don't use your phone for navigation a lot do you? It drains the battery very quickly.

I mentioned radio, because wifi / cell tower triangulation can be used to infer location.

If you take this "burner" to your home or place of work it would be trivial to identify the owner.

People with burners would have strict rules like keeping the battery disconnect except for when they actually need said phone.

RMS doesn't even have a phone. He asks other people to use their phones if he has to make a call.

He also only browses the internet by emailing himself text/HTML from a remote server.