You can get pay-as-you-go SIM cards fairly cheap.

Depending on the amount of security you're after, it could be worth getting a PAYG SIM card just for demos but you've got to make sure that numbers are stored to the card rather than the phone's internal memory.

Your advice about having an alternative SIM is OK if police are searching the physical phone for text messages. However if you are concerned about surveillance involving your mobile phone company, you should be aware that text messages (and phone calls too I would think) send a SIM ID *and* the phone IMEI. On that basis, sending a message using your contract phone but a PAYG SIM will still be easily traceable to you.

The best approach is to buy a PAYG phone with cash and only top it up with vouchers bought with cash, and use that alongside your regular phone. However you can't get away from the fact that it is still a location-tracking device. If you have special need to be careful - and that's a personal judgement - only put the battery in when you are away from your house to collect messages or to make calls. That said if you live in a highly populated area - such as flats in a city - then you have less reason to worry - the location tracking is not very sensitive AFAIK and it's a right royal pain for the authorities to get the data. If you're a Climate Camp activist and not part of a terrorist cell then it's probably too much hassle for them.

It should be obvious but also be careful when sending personally-identifiable information in text messages - telephone numbers, addresses, email addresses, account numbers etc. In theory the same goes for voice content as software now can transcribe voice content quite reliably - however this often can't be avoided and the best thing to do is not to worry about it too much. Remember: our worrying is what some upper echelons of the police want!

Ultimately for the activist there is a anti-surveillance/convenience trade-off. Don't get paranoid as this makes you less effective in your chosen field. Be careful but, unless you are doing activism that is targetted for the harshest oppression, tolerate a bit of surveillance rather than re-organising your habits completely to avoid it.

Just my tuppence worth...

DO BRING A PHONE TO CAMP!

If you can, bring a new PAYG phone, don't fill it with your friends numbers, don't use it from home and don't call your mum on it.

Don't ever put your normal SIM in your new phone or your new SIM in your normal phone.

Use the phone at the climate camp to:

keep the legal team informed about arrests and stop & searches

keep the media team informed about protests and actions

keep yourself informed about things going on around camp and beyond

call for help in a medical emergency

At last years camp, while being held up for two hours at a road block, I overheard a transmission on the police radio which reminded all officered two switch off/disable any personal devices using bluetooth or wifi. I thought this a little strange and came up with three possible reasons:-

a) They thought we might use our naughty hacking skills to steal data from their officers smartphones etc

b) They were planning on trying to steal data off our phones and didn't want to confuse the issue by including their officers in the data mining.

c) They didn't want the police and protesters playing wifi enabled two player games against each other.

Make of this as you will but be aware that even the most basic bluetooth snarfing, which can be carried out by anyone, is capable of exposing peoples names or nicknames and rough proximity.

Best turn it off.

Reading previous posts I thought I should give some advice from actual experience with the powers that be.

Mobile phones can be triangulated very easily and quickly. This is successful and accurate to within 50 metres. Switch off and take battery out to be certain of outwitting them.

They can examine mobile phones forensically and any calls, texts, whatever, can be retrieved this way. I don't know how long they can go back but it is days at least and I suspect much more.

Look at Virgin Pay as you go. SIM cards are cheap and they don't insist you register them. Minimum top up is £5 so you can ditch them frequently.

My advice would be to leave at home, or buy a new SIM card just for use there and ditch it afterwards.

> Mobile phones can be triangulated very easily and quickly. This is successful and accurate to within 50 metres.

True, but irrelevant. If you were going out on a mid night mission to torch a slaughter house then you'd certainly want to leave your phone at home rather than leave evidence of your trip for the police to find in the data stored by your mobile phone company. But we are talking about spending a week in a field with taking part in workshops, skill sharing and a publicly advertise mass action. The police will know you are there. They will film, stop and search everyone attending. If for some reasons you don't want them to know you are attending then you should stay at home.

> They can examine mobile phones forensically and any calls, texts, whatever, can be retrieved this way. I don't know how long they can go back but it is days at least and I suspect much more.

True. All text messages, and data about calls what calls were made, received or attempted, along with information about what cells were in range at any given time, are retained by the mobile phone companies for several years. That's the law. However, we are not talking about some kind of special forces investigation into a terror suspect with links to smuggler of uranium, we are talking about board cops hassling people for a week along a stretch of country road and pissing people off by trying to extract information they have no right to,

> My advice would be to leave at home, or buy a new SIM card just for use there and ditch it afterwards.

My advice would be to seek better advice. Putting a new PAYG SIM in your phone is a handy way to leave your phonebook at home but does nothing to address the other issues raised by the overly paranoid commenter. All phones transmit a unique serial number, along with the SIM number, whenever they communicate with a cell repeater. Putting a new SIM in just adds another SIM to those already associates with your phone and the data readily cross referenced by anyone interested in your communications.

My advice would therefore be, DO TAKE A PHONE WITH YOU to climate camp, you will find it very useful. If you can afford it, take a new PAYG phone with a new SIM. If you can't do that, follow the advice given at the start of this thread: delete the contents of your addressbook (leave a copy at home), delete the call register and stored text messages, and set up the PIN security to prevent the cops casually browsing through your phone while they search you.

What a load of bollocks, the police will nick you if they think you have dome something wrong, all this James Bond shit with phones is just a distraction from the real event.

Grow up for fucks sake

To suggest that being aware of current police tactics is `Too much 007` shows a level of, at best innocence at worst ignorance that has sunk many a ship! Perhaps we should wake up to the real and present danger we continue to face from the `Insecurity Services` Let us not forget that it is also possible with the right software to make a mobile into a rather effective tracking and listening device. This is not 007 its 2008, so wake the flup up.

No pas aran !

Old grip has it right, the *#06# is the same thing your advised to do when you buy the thing so that you can register it.

The cops using it have naff all interest in your nearest pizza house and are looking for mismatched IMEIs, if you block it they will have to wonder why, and then you might get lifted for suspected theft, then your off the demo and they get overtime, they win you loose.(the papers will record "arrested for suspected theft", nothing else, no one will know about the demo, message lost,no public sympathy)

Triangulation is a power ONLY used in two cases, ONE terror suspects as we would all rather avoid getting blown up if we can help it. TWO missing persons, i.e kids and vulnerable persons. They have to get the authorization of a very high ranking cop to do it, and it all gets logged for public scrutiny.

As to data theft.......far too Jason Bourne

sorry for bubbles burst

"Harry Roberts" falsely claims that, "it all gets logged for public scrutiny."

It may all get logged, but this is not for public scrutiny.

If the public can scrutinise this stuff, to check that it is being done properly, then "Harry" will be able to point us to a web site, or report, where we, the public, can do our scrutinising. He can't point us to a web site, or a report, because there is none.

There is a "wise man", or rather there are several "wise men". All are employed by the government, provided with terms and conditions by the government and report to the government. The amount of scrutiny they provide is limited. If Indymedia is doing links these days their reports are available at www.ipt-uk.com/default.asp?sectionID=16 for those who want to read them. If Indymedia is not doing links then search for the Investigatory Powers Tribunal. Decide for yourself how much scrutiny the public do, but I will be very surprised if your answer is anything other than "none".

Remember this when reading the rest of Harry Roberts posting.