There are portable hotspots, you know....

I am assuming you use a killswitch VPN to your trusted network. NYT for this journalist.

My proposed setup is 3 devices: hotspot, android device without baseband, dumbphone. Hotspot would be the weak link here, security wise, but is easier and cheaper to replace. Nothing on dumbphone would be encrypted.

If I were a journalist, I would consider this alternative to being hacked. Remember he even knew there were at least attempts to hack his devices, years in advance.

They are just biting the "apple is the most secure alternative" propaganda.

iMessage can run over data, right? It sounds like the bugs exploited here were iMessage and WhatsApp holes, not weird mystery-baseband flaws (which are harder to patch but only ever affect a fraction of the phones you want to sell the ability to compromise). So similar Android exploits would just go right through the hotspot and compromise the Android device that does everything.

The only way out of this mess is actually correct code on actually correct hardware. Maybe you have to run Linux and Android at the top to run existing apps, but somewhere below there you need a supervisor that makes security guarantees that are actually true. You can't just port a monolithic C kernel onto hardware that's struggling to be faster than the competition and call it good.

Journalists need to buy communications equipment that doesn't come with that "NO WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE" line in the EULA. Sadly, it is not for sale.

Just use a dumb phone and a garmin like journalists did in the early 2000s?

How do you communicate with your sources?

Texts from a burner? Disposable email address? Dead drop notes? Lurking in the shadows of a parking structure? Plenty of options that don't require a smartphone. Not like journalism was impossible before the iPhone.