Until they make THAT (switching off your phone for 1 or 2 cells and turning back on 1 or 2 cells over) a crime. And start compelling cellphone companies to provide them with the records of everyone who does that. And start targeting those people. Like structuring [0].

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/us/law-lets-irs-seize-acco...

A warrant to query everyone's geotagged cell phone records? That's a long way from traditional warrants to obtain a suspect's call log or to tap a suspect's phone...

I don't have a link handy or even recall what the situation was, but I recall reading of at least instance where law enforcement acquired cell site "dumps" of every connected phone. What I mentioned isn't too far off from that.

You might be referring to this story from Lebanon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/the-hezbollah-con...

Why would you shut off your phone? Just leave it behind.

Anyone doing a operation like theorized here would probably know to use burners.

A tracking device is a tracking device. Burners tend to be anomalies when it comes to activation/deactivation locations/times, payment methods, contacts communicated with and the locations/times that they're used.

If they're smart they'd want to minimize the electronic trail they'd leave behind and ditch the phone completely.

I'd love to be the lucky person who fits the profile of being in the right place at the wrong time.

My immediate thoughts were that these incidents were committed by anti-technology folks, looking to disrupt the tech focused population. In my mind, these folks don't even own cell phones.