Drug Dealers Swapping Down To Old Cellphones To Stay One Step Ahead In The ‘Tech Arms Race’ by Tim Cushing.
From the post:
…in the UK, some criminals have discovered one way to stay a step ahead of the cops is to take a few steps backward.
A dealer in Handsworth, Birmingham—who would only give his name as “K2″—told me: “I’ve got three Nokia 8210 phones and have been told they can be trusted, unlike these iPhones and new phones, which the police can easily [use to] find out where you’ve been… Every dealer I know uses old phones, and the Nokia 8210 is the one everyone wants because of how small it is and how long the battery lasts.
Old tech beats new tech, at least in some business ventures. The 8210 has 50-150 hours of standby time and an infrared port to quickly beam data from one phone to another (handy for burners or compromised phones). But other than its connection to cell towers, the phone provides no other means of connectivity: no Bluetooth, no WiFi, no WLAN. Nothing.
Full marks for imaginative thinking about technology, although the best line in the post belongs to a copper:
…They’re durable, cheap and unlike today’s smartphones, aren’t “just GPS ankle monitors that double up as pizza-ordering devices,” as Vice’s Mike Zacharanda puts it.
Too late for this year but is anyone interested in a kickstarter campaign for an iPhone as GPS ankle monitor public service spot for the SuperBowl in 2016?