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Posted by FergusArgyll 6 hours ago

A Call to Action: Stop the FCC's KYC Regime(blog.lopp.net)
276 points | 176 commentspage 3
frollogaston 4 hours ago|
Stopped reading at the slop image
terminalbraid 6 hours ago||
I will not be called to action by a page with a big slop image at the top.
josefritzishere 5 hours ago||
Leave it to the Trump administration to implement mass surveillance as the solution to spam.
joaohaas 5 hours ago||
>open link

>AI slop art right at the start

Instant close

sunshine-o 5 hours ago||
Phone numbers are just a liability:

- It is kind of expensive,

- You are forced to provide it to many official institutions,

- It is the default or mandatory insecure 2FA for many institutions,

- It always get leaked somewhere and is one of the most common/reliable identifier.

We still have them around governments and telcos love it and old people and scammers are its last users.

frollogaston 2 hours ago|
The cost is a feature. Kinda also the case with IPv4 addresses.
marstall 5 hours ago||
"force phone providers to collect identity information from ordinary people before they can acquire or renew service with a phone carrier."

don't see the harm in this? isn't this already the case for 99.9% of phoneline havers already?

dghlsakjg 5 hours ago||
You don’t see the harm in requiring telcos - famous for handing over data without warrants or court orders - being forced to have identifying data for every subscriber?

I can think of a half dozen ways that can get abused. Remember that in the states policing is decentralized. There is always some department somewhere willing to abuse their power. Look at how flock has been used to stalk partners, or how geofencing was used to sweep up everyone in the area of a protest, or how stingray is used to listen to all calls in an area. This is opening up avenues of abuse for almost no benefit.

mindslight 5 hours ago||
> famous for handing over data without warrants or court orders

More concretely, famous for supplying bulk data to the surveillance industry for a nominal fee. That is ostensibly the goals behind this development - all of these companies demanding phone numbers for "verification" and snake oil "2FA" want to reliably dox 100% of their users rather than just 80%.

Telemakhos 5 hours ago|||
Realistically, it is for 99.9% of people who have phones. The 0.1% have to go out of their way to buy, with cash or crypto, prepaid SIM top-ups on flip phones, and by doing so they stand out like a sore thumb.

Back in the days of rotary phones, not only did the phone providers have your name, they even listed it, your home address, and your phone number in the white pages of the phone book, and everyone in town had a copy of it. Before the rise of microcomputers which enabled data tracking and robocalls, which in turn gave rise to demand for privacy from spam, having that information out in public wasn't a problem except for edge cases like domestic abuse victims or people in a witness protection program. The 99.9%, though, are still getting tracked no matter what, and I sometimes wonder if we've sacrificed the convenience and confidence of the phone-book age for an illusion of privacy that relies on anxiety.

Hizonner 5 hours ago||
I grew up in the phone book age. We had one phone with a really long cable, but it wasn't long enough to take it with me everywhere I went. And, as you point out, nobody had robots to call it, either.
m463 5 hours ago|||
The big ones already force you to give SSN for service. Then they lose it in a data breach.
reddalo 5 hours ago||
The crazy thing is that a simple 9-digit number (that you must give away for many things) can ruin your life if it gets public.

The US seems so backwards at times.

0xbadcafebee 5 hours ago||
at times? we can't even decide if women are allowed to control their own bodies. we're now open to states stopping people with dark skin from voting, and we have giant internment camps where we keep innocent men, women, children because they have a spanish accent. vaccines are apparently not a worldwide health miracle, education is overrated, we're bringing back jobs in coal and oil, and invading/destabilizing latin american countries is back in vogue. in two years we might be so backwards that women's suffrage becomes questionable (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_backsliding_in_the_...).
drnick1 2 hours ago||||
> we're now open to states stopping people with dark skin from voting, and we have giant internment camps where we keep innocent men, women, children because they have a spanish accent.

Nonsense TDS.

0xbadcafebee 1 hour ago||
you weren't aware of the recent revocation of laws that prevent southern states from gerrymandering black communities out of a vote, in addition to voter ID laws?

there are many, many public reports of ICE detaining individuals merely for having a spanish accent. they've detained US citizens multiple times, even deported some, because they were hispanic.

I highly recommend reading the news...

torstenvl 4 hours ago|||
Please don't spew hyperbolic slop in the service of ideological warfare. Thats not what HN is for.
lazide 5 hours ago||
Almost no one has physical phone lines anymore. It also used to be a given because they had to send a physical paper bill to someone, and hence needed an address.

Neither of these are true anymore.

Also, the tone is set from the top.

Do you think the current admin cares about actually tackling fraud and abuse?

naturalmovement 5 hours ago|
"Call to Action" is a needlessly impotent threat. Like high school students walking out of their own lunch period to protest the loss of salisbury steak on the menu.

Most major telcos worldwide outside the US have strict KYC rules, this is not a battle you are going to win, because there are very few legitimate reasons in support.

logicchains 4 hours ago|
There's a very strong legitimate reason, the right for privacy online.