If you need to communicate with people in your area and not be tracked; MeshCore software with LoRa hardware like the this https://lilygo.cc/en-ca/products/t-lora-pager is something to consider. Text only, completely offline
Because the most significant evidence we have lately is that in-person meetings or dead drops and other low tech means are how you avoid being tracked.
Turning on any sort of radio transmitter is just turning on a big flash light into the sky.
Turning on anything relatively uncommon is even worse: normal people have cellphones and use them. They don't use LoRa devices, there aren't a lot of LoRa devices and someone who only uses LoRa devices will stand out in any dataset.
How many cameras did you just go by? did you have your cell phone on you? how many networks did it connect too? how many bluetooth broadcasts did it passively send out? Not being tracked and being in public are slowly becoming an untenable duo.
But it isn't illegal to wear a hat and sunglasseses, for example, and it is common to do so.
Range can be 100+ miles though if you can establish line of sight. Depending on the scenario, a high elevation repeater could give several mobile devices pretty significant range.
If you run into someone who is regularly
- using encryption, obfuscation - failing to identify with a callsign - using lots of bandwidth - doing some sort of commercial activity.
then you get a group together, track them down, and report them to the FCC.
The thing people forget is that the primary goal of the ham system is to promote radio experience and experimentation. That is why there is such a wide variety of frequencies available.