Especially those that actually believe all the cloak and dagger stuff is really protecting them from discovery if the government really wants to catch them.

Thanks. If a guy hasn't really looked into it to the point he's sure he understands, he's probably at greater risk with his methods of concealment than he thinks.  
 
I know it took me some research to get comfortable that I knew the risks of my methods of communication. It can be done but, along with the intense attention to detail that's required, it gets expensive pretty fast. To start, you'd have to have a good discrete source for burner phones and switch the very regularly. If you're not doing that, none of the rest of what you do is more helpful than to slow them down.  
 
In many cases, according to literature, they're looking for low hanging fruit, so slowing them down is enough. But in a serious case? No, they're going to find you unless you've been hypervigilant.

They can even spy on kids who don't even have hi tech devices.

I'd seriously only expect to be able to hide from a spouse or SO.

That's probably the smartest approach.  But seems like some think they are doing a whole lot more. Nothing wrong with finding a comfort level but also worth understanding just what is out there.

The author doesn't say it, but it sounds like the French Gov. has a few licenses for Pegasus software they want to use... on their own citizens. Did Poindexter move to France?

I've been saying this for years, if the Gov't really wants you, they will get you.
 Stay low profile and you'll have no problems.

I can't see them (the Feds) wasting resources, time and money going after individual clients.  

 
You probably have more to worry about when it comes to local stings.

Stingrays are used by government and those devices simulate cell towers and force your phone to connect to them and track your imsi even if you're on always-on vpn (highly recommended in all circumstances nonetheless)  

 
Generally government won't use these or any other form against one John or a single escort. They are aimed more at organized groups or trying to pinpoint specific person who they know uses a phone in a confined area.

I think I mentioned this before, but was in Washington DC for tourism and my cellphone kept getting incoming calls while in the DC area.  Stopped as soon as we left.   Don't know for sure, but suspect various agencies, foreign and domestic, intercept cellphone traffic. Not sure why they called the number.  But it was pretty unusual.  I only rarely get unknown callers otherwise.

THIS.  
Know your rights. Know your provider. Think with your big head, not your little one.  
Unless you are seeing ladies that are connected to large organized crime rings the feds will care zero about you getting your pecker sucked. Your local PE gets grants from the federal gov. to fund stings to curb "sex trafficking". They will be more than happy to plaster your ugly mug all over the local news outlets to show how great of a job they did rounding up the horny men in their community. Be smart with who you see, and be safe.

I think the basic message from the article is that is just a false belief.

 
I do agree that generally LE has very little interest in going after people engaging in consensual P4P. I also think that in most cases where people get exposed it's got nothing to do with their phone. The burner phone produced zero protection. However, in the case of LE there has been a pretty obvious pattern of trickle-down of such capabilities much as has been seen with military equipment going to State and Local police forces as a cost offsetting measure -- often to the detriment of those living or transiting the local area.

 
I know you are not ignorant or unable to consider trajectories of technology related to big data, ML and AI and general system security gaps.  But the article seems to suggest that these functions are really more covert back doors than some type of software hacks or simple security flaws/poor coding from a security perspective.

 
But who are you making yourself anonymous for? I don't think it is the government based on how easily it can control your phone and all the other resources that could be brought to bear should you become of interest. Anonymous for the agency? They have fairly low tech ways of finding our who you are, what you drive, where you live, where you work, if you have a wife or kids.... All they need for that are a couple of people with time on their hand to follow you around and perhaps take some pictures. I don't think they care enough to do that but if they did, like with the government that burner phone is doing pretty much nothing.

 
I suspect most people are more worried about family, SO/wife and the like. But how many guys with burner phones or their hidden phone and hobby emails and accounts have gotten caught? I think it would be interesting to know if the frequency there is pretty much the same for, for lack of a better name, the burner population and the non-burner population. While I have no idea what the reality there is, I do know that people that seem nervous generally attract more attention to themselves. Given that, I would not really be surprised to find out there was a higher frequency of guys in the burner population getting caught than in the other population. But that's just speculation. The point of the post was just to make some a bit more aware of what they are really up against so they can just give some though to whether of not the extra effort was actually getting them what they thought.