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Posted by berlianta 3 hours ago

FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs(www.404media.co)
196 points | 123 comments
bsimpson 2 hours ago|
Here's the link to submit a comment to the FCC:

https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filings/express

Ran a quick search and found a whole bunch of news articles, but nobody includes info that makes it easy to route your comment. Feels like the beginning of Hitchhiker's Guide:

> It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard.

mcmcmc 1 hour ago||
This is the specific proposed rule to reference: https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-seeks-comment-enhanced-know...
kogasa240p 1 hour ago|||
Thank you
user3939382 1 hour ago||
Open to the possibility that I’m just cynical but my faith is very low that these comment processes are anything more than a regulatory requirement for the illusion of due diligence which legitimizes the actual corporate lobbying and security state actually making the policy.
JumpCrisscross 9 minutes ago|||
You’re wrong. Even if the regulator ignores them, they allow third parties to bring a suit under the APA.
pickleglitch 1 hour ago||||
They require your name and address, so they will have a nice database of anyone who dares voice an objection.
mothballed 1 hour ago|||
I'm nearly certain commenting, at least from my monitoring of commenting on ATF rulemaking, achieves the opposite of what the commenters hope.

While there is ~zero chance that commenting can help you, it absolutely is used against you as their lawyers sharpen their claws by crowdsourcing possible sources of challenge and use your comments to predict them and determine how to undermine such positions.

toast0 1 hour ago||
Great. As if telecoms can be trusted with customers' id. AT&T left my name, address, social security etc in an improperly secured database for others to have, and they tried to open accounts with it; they had retained the information after I closed my account, and they denied the information was coming from them for years before they finally admitted it and gave us all a quarter to call someone who cares and a year of credit monitoring.
downrightmike 55 minutes ago|
And your pin is 1234
garciasn 27 minutes ago||
Same as their, Samsonite I was way off, luggage.
throwaway85825 1 minute ago||
Wants to kill burner phones but somehow foreign phone scams are still rampant.
t1234s 40 minutes ago||
This is probably part of the larger scope of the system wanting to require ID to even boot a computer let alone connect to the internet.
dkdbejwi383 3 hours ago||
This is how it works in Australia, which means it's a pain for tourists as you need to provide a passport for ID and get it activated, as opposed to just grabbing one at an airport kiosk and being ready to go on your way to the taxi or train like most other places.
MarkusWandel 12 minutes ago||
Somewhat recently, tried to activate a SIM for a guest here in Canada, and while you could fill in anything you want for personal info, the only way to hook up (prepaid) billing was with a Canadian credit card number. Whoops. This was only for a month, so I put in mine and he reimbursed me in cash. Other carriers may still let you buy one-time payment cards for cash at retail; this one didn't.
willhslade 8 minutes ago||
I think this is where Airalo shines. I've used it while travelling and I think eSIMs, as annoying as they are, are the way.
naturalmovement 2 hours ago|||
> like most other places

Much of EU requires ID for some time now. France is a bit strange, requires registration after 23 days or something. Germany, Italy, Spain it's basically impossible.

The US is rather unique in that it does not require registration.

wan23 1 minute ago|||
> Much of EU requires ID for some time now

The US isn't in the EU

ivanmontillam 1 hour ago||||
Argentina doesn't also, you can just buy a SIM card off the newsstand.
joxdosba 2 hours ago|||
Huh? At least in Germany, Spain and France all of the smaller shops fill in fake info without even asking.

EU countries have had these requirements for years and years and never moved to actually enforce them.

naturalmovement 2 hours ago||
I wasn't taking blatant fraud into account. I'm sure that's possible everywhere. I'd bet you can buy cigarettes without the tax stamps in the same shop too.

Last I traveled the shop required a passport or uploading one to get an eSIM ahead of time.

joxdosba 2 hours ago||
Sure, but if you’re a tourist in e.g. Barcelona trying to get a prepaid SIM, odds are the shopkeeper will not ask you for your ID despite being required to.

> Last I traveled the shop required a passport or uploading one to get an eSIM ahead of time.

Sounds like you went to a carrier boutique and not one of the million independent shops.

naturalmovement 1 hour ago|||
I would think most tourists would trust a carrier-branded store over Honest Jochen's Tobacco Emporium where you may or may not get a working SIM after paying cash.
joxdosba 1 hour ago||
Trust? Sure. They’re still more likely to buy their prepaid SIM from the shop that also sells bongs, they are on every corner after all.
lifestyleguru 2 hours ago|||
Not a good example. In Spain they notoriously demand id/passport and make photo or copy of it, they do it "for the police".
joxdosba 1 hour ago||
That’s the legal requirement yes, I’ve never seen a shop insist on it. Most of them have autofill scripts for the KYC forms.
naturalmovement 1 hour ago||
Isn't the main topic of discussion here a legal requirement?

If everyone ignores it then what's the fuss about?

joxdosba 1 hour ago||
I’m just pointing out that in Europe the equivalent legal requirement is widely ignored, the same won’t necessarily repeat in the US, but it might.
LawnGnome 1 hour ago|||
Has this changed recently? I thought I heard about this several years ago, but the last 2-3 times I've visited (in the last couple of years) I've been able to pick up a prepaid SIM from Colesworth without any ID check.
ibejoeb 55 minutes ago||
It has been like that for at least 8 years, and probably longer. There are still stalls at airports, but you must provide ID.
LawnGnome 52 minutes ago||
Interesting. Seems like this isn't very consistently enforced, then.
ibejoeb 49 minutes ago||
You may have bought the sim card but never activated it. It's not the device itself that is restricted, just using it.
dgellow 2 hours ago|||
I mean. It’s the same, you just have to show your passport and fill a form. It takes 1minute to get it done, you can do it on your way to the taxi if you want. Though e-sim are more practical now
mothballed 2 hours ago||
I wonder what exactly are they hoping to achieve then? Anything that can be filled out in 1 minute in a taxi can be spoofed with an extra 30 seconds on the dark net buying dark IDs. So this does less than zero for crime, actually encourages more of it, while doing what exactly? It's madness.
nemomarx 2 hours ago||
Who says anything about crime? the goal is just so they can associate phone numbers with id cards in some fashion right?

If they want to know what tourists are posting about their country that's good enough.

voakbasda 1 hour ago|||
Like so many laws, nothing to do with stopping crime, but an obvious push to strip the populace of its rights.
philistine 8 minutes ago||
You do not have the right to a phone number without providing ID. If you're an American, those unwritten rights that come from other firm rights written down in laws and constitutions can always be argued, they're always being whittled down.

Rights for everyone are achieved through blood and toil, and if you truly want a right to anonymity and the digital tools necessary to achieve it, you will need blood and toil. Until then, we'll have to squeeze through fast developments that governments have yet to address.

mothballed 1 hour ago|||
"Law enforcement" and national security is given as the verbatim headline justification when you reference Australia's Communication and Media Authority[] for rules on ID collection.

  Carriers and carriage service providers (CSPs) must help law enforcement and national security agencies.

  ...

  You must verify a customer's identity before you activate a prepaid mobile phone service. You can do this when the customer buys the service or when they try to activate it. The Determination on identity checks for prepaid mobiles lists the ways you can check a customer's identity.
Unfortunately I can't dig up the original debate from 1997 on the Telecommunications Act when the requirement appears to have been introduced. Would be shocked if it did not include similar language from the representatives shilling the requirement, though.

[] https://www.acma.gov.au/support-law-enforcement-and-security...

NoMoreNicksLeft 2 hours ago|||
What problem were they hoping to solve with that legislation?
stackskipton 1 hour ago|||
Most of time it's billed as law enforcement fighting tool. If people can't have anonymous cell phones, once you capture one criminal phone number, you can quickly look at who they call and since they can't be burners, you figure out the criminal network.

Also, if you have restrictions of speech in the country, it's great way to de anonymize any speech government says is illegal.

logicchains 2 hours ago||||
The problem of citizens having anonymous internet connectivity.
chopin 1 hour ago|||
That's an illusion. Two days of location data and you can pin down the owner pretty well.

I thought about getting a SIM when Germany was about to introduce ID requirements. I quickly realized this being a moot point.

rusk 2 hours ago|||
The free anonymous internet was only ever a ruse to get people to use it so the CIA could spy on them. DARPA, folks, created a “free as in beer” global surveillance network and we all bought it.

Not that we didn’t get anything in return but the idea that the worlds foremost military industrial complex just gave this to the world because they loved us is laughable.

redsocksfan45 2 hours ago|||
[dead]
mc32 2 hours ago||
Don’t eSIMs solve this problem for tourists?
naturalmovement 2 hours ago|||
Apple — and now Google — have "solved" this problem for the government by removing physical SIM slots in US iPhones.
TylerE 2 hours ago||
Thus eSIM
ezfe 29 minutes ago||||
eSIM doesn't change local laws around cell phones - it's not magic.
RankingMember 26 minutes ago||
Yep, they'll still prompt for the info.
izacus 19 minutes ago||||
In what way? Activating it still needs KYC.
vfclists 1 hour ago||||
Doesn't an eSIM link the SIM to the phone's IMEI which is usually logged somewhere?
ezfe 30 minutes ago||
Yes, eSIM doesn't really change this conversation
nickphx 2 hours ago|||
Only if you do not require voice service.
iammrpayments 1 hour ago||
Had to buy one of these SMS activation services from a guy in Nigeria using a memecoin because claude decided to ban my account because they didn’t like my credit card brand and Claude requires sms activation for new accounts.

Guess these guys are going to make more money in the near future.

XYen0n 1 hour ago||
After the implementation of SIM card real-name registration in China, scam calls can accurately state your personal information.
Keyb0ardWarri0r 1 hour ago||
I'm always surprised how bad ideas spread faster than good ideas among our rulers. Here is a map of countries where an ID is required (or not) https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/sim-card-regist...
giancarlostoro 1 hour ago||
I wish they would kill spam calling and texting instead.
dawnerd 40 minutes ago|
Been getting two a day, clearly some ai voice robo call. We have all this technology yet these spam calls still persist.
a34729t 41 minutes ago|
We should allow privateers to go after spammers, and get the seized assets. And spammer is then tortured appropriately. Satan could run a successful single issue campaign on this in the most religious state in the US.
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