question: What makes burner/trap phones untraceable by the police?
comment: The phone is easy to trace, the person using the phone is not. There is nothing magical about the phones specifically, it's how they are used. Burner phones are bought by companies in huge batches, and don't require any plan or contract to use. So there's not a great way to know who is using that particular phone. They are also cheap enough to throw away and "burn" every so often to keep a pattern of use from being determined. Even if you could narrow down the phone was purchased at Walmart on a certain date, there wouldn't be a great way to know which one of the hundred that were sold that day is your suspect.
passages: The Chicago Police Department bought dirtboxes to eavesdrop on demonstrators during the 2012 NATO summit, and used them during the 2014 Black Lives Matter demonstrations. In 2015, it became known that the Los Angeles Police Department had purchased the devices.
  
  Section::::Technology.
   In Hollywood, Florida, Stingray like devices have been purchased and placed in the trunk of an unmarked car with 4 small cell antennae and have been monitoring ENTIRE apartment complexes. In June and July of 2019, using FOIA and an IMSEI catcher as residents at 2225 Van Buren Street, Hollywood Florida, stumbled upon a Winnebago that anonymous source at Hollywood PD notified the Sun Sentinel journalists and Miami New Times, which featured the story and the lack of appropriate warrants. (click to view Google Street View which shows the Winnebago parked at the residence in JUNE 2015 - which would be the stem of a 4 year long investigation). 
   The European Union requires its member countries to retain certain telecommunications data for use in investigations. This includes data on calls made and retrieved. The location of a mobile phone can be determined and this geographical data must also be retained. In the United States, however, no such requirement exists, and no standards govern how long carriers should retain data or even what they must retain. For example, text messages may be retained only for a week or two, while call logs may be retained anywhere from a few weeks to several months. To reduce the risk of evidence being lost, law enforcement agents must submit a preservation letter to the carrier, which they then must back up with a search warrant.
   BULLET::::- June 2009 (Edmund, OK) First recovery of a stolen phone recovered even after SIM card removed
  
  BULLET::::- August 2009 (Brooklyn, NY )First recovery of a stolen computer utilizing Wi-Fi positioning and web camera hardware
  
  BULLET::::- September 2009 (Oakland, CA) A business was broken into and multiple laptops stolen, one had GadgetTrak installed that led police to a house where multiple stolen laptops were discovered as well as methamphetamine
   BULLET::::- Since early 2011, some Sprint users who used the app to find their lost device were sent to a 59-year-old man's house in Las Vegas, Nevada. Multiple people insisted that he had their device and the police were called multiple times. The man eventually had to put up a sign by his door saying that he had "no lost cell phones".
   Base station survey data can be used to further narrow the past locations of a cellular device if used in conjunction with historical cell site location information ("HCSLI") obtained from a wireless carrier. HCSLI includes a list of all cell sites and sectors accessed by a cellular device, and the date and time each access was made. Law enforcement will often obtain HCSLI from wireless carriers in order to determine where a particular cell phone was located in the past. Once this information is obtained, law enforcement will use a map of cell site locations to determine the past geographical locations of the cellular device.
   In most states, police can get many kinds of cellphone data without obtaining a warrant. Law-enforcement records show, police can use initial data from a tower dump to ask for another court order for more information, including addresses, billing records and logs of calls, texts and locations.
  
  Section::::Hidden cellphones.
  
  Section::::Hidden cellphones.:Bugging.
   All UK Police forces, including the Metropolitan Police Service actively check IMEI numbers of phones found involved in crime, against the National Mobile Property Register (NMPR). The NMPR draws its information from many property databases. One of the databases consulted is Immobilise, which allows optional (and free) registration of devices by the public. Such registration ensures that a device coming into police possession may be easily reunited with its registered owner.
   In fact, a publicly available policy assessment report from Mexico showed that mandatory SIM registration introduced there in 2009 had failed to help the prevention, investigation and/or prosecution of associated crimes. As a result, policymakers decided to repeal the regulation three years later.
  
  A prepaid phone number specifically purchased to be used briefly and then replaced is known colloquially as a burner phone or burner. A Los Angeles technology company currently offers a mobile application of the same name that replicates this functionality for a smartphone.
   Trap and trace device
  
  A trap and trace device that captures incoming phone calls to a particular number, similar to a how pen register captures outgoing phone calls.
  
  Section::::Description.
  
  Title 18 of the United States Code defines a trap and trace device as follows:
   Section::::Agency use.
  
  Section::::Agency use.:Law enforcement.
  
  , the U.S. Marshals Service Technical Operations Group has used the device, fixed on manned airplanes, to track fugitives, and has said it can deploy it on "targets requested by other parts of the Justice Program". The devices are operated out of at least five U.S. airports, "covering most of the U.S. population". It is unclear whether the U.S. Marshals Service requests court orders to use the devices. 
  
  The Marshals Service has used dirtboxes in the Mexican Drug War, tracking fugitives in coordination with Mexico's Naval Infantry Force and flights in Guatemala.
   BULLET::::- In certain countries, the prepaid SIM card can be sold in a shop like any other goods. There is no need to register them at point of sale, unlike postpaid phones who have to credit check the user before allowing them to purchase and enter into a contract.
  
  BULLET::::- As prepaid services can often be topped up using cash and vouchers, there is no way to trace the payment and thence determine the identity of a prepaid phone user from payment records.
   BULLET::::- : A communication device for the Buddy and an extra power source or the Phone Braver. Its model number is AD-S003.
  
  Section::::Characters.:Police.
  
  The is the branch of the Police who are investigating high-tech crimes and the events relating to the "walking cellphones."
   In 2016, Professor Laura Moy of the Georgetown University Law Center filed a formal complaint to the FCC regarding the use of the devices by law enforcement agencies, taking the position that because the devices mimic the properties of cell phone towers, the agencies operating them are in violation of FCC regulation, as they lack the appropriate spectrum licenses.
  
  Section::::Countermeasures.
  
  A number of countermeasures to the StingRay and other devices have been developed, for example crypto phones such as GMSK's Cryptophone have firewalls that can identify and thwart the StingRay's actions or alert the user to IMSI capture.
  
  Section::::See also.
   In other cases, the IMSI or equivalent identifier of a target is not known to the StingRay operator and the goal of the surveillance operation is to identify one or more cellular devices being used in a known area. For example, if visual surveillance is being conducted on a group of protestors, a StingRay can be used to download the IMSI or equivalent identifier from each phone within the protest area. After identifying the phones, locating and tracking operations can be conducted, and service providers can be forced to turn over account information identifying the phone users.
   Section 16 provides that only an “eligible judge” may issue a warrant although an eligible magistrate may issue a retrieval warrant or a warrant that authorises the use of a tracking device only. Section 51 provides that the Attorney General must be notified that an application for a warrant is to be made.
  
  Section::::Eligible Judges.
   Cellphones can easily be obtained, but are also easily traced and "tapped". There is no (or only limited) encryption, the phones are traceable – often even when switched off – since the phone and SIM card broadcast their International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI). It is possible for a cellphone company to turn on some cellphones when the user is unaware and use the microphone to listen in on you, and according to James Atkinson, a counter-surveillance specialist cited in the same source, "Security-conscious corporate executives routinely remove the batteries from their cell phones" since many phones' software can be used "as-is", or modified, to enable transmission without user awareness  and the user can be located within a small distance using signal triangulation and now using built in GPS features for newer models. Transceivers may also be defeated by jamming or Faraday cage.
   Another solution is the use of ferromagnetic cell phone detectors. This technology detects the presence of the ferrous metal components (antenna, vibrator, speaker) that are in cell phones. The reliance is then not on the location of signals, but in the recognition of the physical phone itself which cannot be masked by internalizing or hiding on the person.
   Law enforcement have used mobile phone evidence in a number of different ways. Evidence about the physical location of an individual at a given time can be obtained by triangulating the individual's cellphone between several cellphone towers. This triangulation technique can be used to show that an individual's cellphone was at a certain location at a certain time. The concerns over terrorism and terrorist use of technology prompted an inquiry by the British House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee into the use of evidence from mobile phone devices, prompting leading mobile telephone forensic specialists to identify forensic techniques available in this area. NIST have published guidelines and procedures for the preservation, acquisition, examination, analysis, and reporting of digital information present on mobile phones can be found under the NIST Publication SP800-101.
   Similar offences are created to prohibit the use of the other devices dealt with under the Act. Section 9 makes it an offence to install or use a tracking device to determine the location of a person or object. Exceptions to criminal liability are (i) authorisation by warrant, (ii) authorisation under Australian commonwealth law or (iii) “lawful purpose”. The scope of the last defence has not been considered.
   Mobile phones are also commonly used to collect location data. The geographical location of a mobile phone (and thus the person carrying it) can be determined easily even when the phone is not being used, using a technique known as multilateration to calculate the differences in time for a signal to travel from the cell phone to each of several cell towers near the owner of the phone. The legality of such techniques has been questioned in the United States, in particular whether a court warrant is required. Records for "one" carrier alone (Sprint), showed that in a given year federal law enforcement agencies requested customer location data 8 million times.
   In the United States, there is a limited constitutional guarantee on the privacy of telecommunications through the Fourth Amendment. The use of location data is further limited by statutory, administrative, and case law. Police access of seven days of a citizen's location data is unquestionably enough to be a fourth amendment search requiring both probable cause and a warrant.
  
  In November 2017, the United States Supreme Court ruled in "Carpenter v. United States" that the government violates the Fourth Amendment by accessing historical records containing the physical locations of cellphones without a search warrant.
  
  Section::::See also.
   Using the records of the Panama City Walmart, which showed the cash register and the time of purchase of the phone card, Mount Washington police were able to find surveillance camera footage of the purchaser of the card. The Massachusetts investigation had gone cold when their surveillance video failed to show the purchaser—the cameras had been trained on the store's parking lot and not on the cash registers.
   Although possible evidence stored on a phone may be destroyed with either remote wiping or data encryption, Roberts noted that is "the ordinary operation of a phone's security features, apart from any active attempt by a defendant or his associates to conceal or destroy evidence upon arrest." He then argues that a warrantless search is unlikely to make much of a difference: Cell phone data would be vulnerable to remote wiping from the time an individual anticipates arrest to the time any eventual search of the phone is completed... likewise, an officer who seizes a phone in an unlocked state might not be able to begin his search in the short time remaining before the phone locks and data becomes encrypted. Roberts then cites several common examples to turn off or prevent the phone's security features.
   In 2007, StingRay devices assisted the Oakland Police Department in Oakland, California in making 21 arrests, and in 2008, 19 arrests were made in unison with the use of StingRay devices.
  
  StingRay devices are often used in combination with Hailstorm towers that jam the mobile phone signals forcing phones to drop down from 4G and 3G network bands to older, more insecure 2G bands.
  
presuppositions: Burner phones are untraceable. burner phones are untraceable 
corrections: Burner phones are easy to trace, but the people using them aren't. the phone is easy to trace, the person using the phone is not.
raw_presuppositions: Burner phones are untraceable. burner phones are untraceable 
raw_corrections: Burner phones are easy to trace, but the people using them aren't. the phone is easy to trace, the person using the phone is not.