8 ms·

Proposed H.R.4886 would require ID to buy prepaid phones and SIMs

25 points by jevinskie 11y ago

nodesocket 11y ago
I guess I don't see the problem with this. Prepaid phones (burners) are notoriously used by criminals.
- Nrsolis 11y ago
  Terrible idea. They are also used by investigative journalists trying to uncover government wrongdoing along with people trying to escape abusive ex-lovers. The desire for anonymity is not synonymous with criminal intent.
  - nodesocket 11y ago
    Let's be realistic, investigative journalists can get phones from their employer. People on HN always seem to bring up the fringe case... The small percentage. Ignoring the vast majority of actual use.
    - robryk 11y ago
      > trying to uncover government wrongdoing GP's point seems to be that it's pointful to avoid association of that phone with any news organization at all in such cases.
    - sathackr 11y ago
      well then for that matter lets just toss out the 1st, 4th, and 5th amendments, since they are mostly used by dissidents and criminals to escape prosecution.
    - sathackr 11y ago
      Oh, I might add, the vast majority of prepaid cell phone use is not criminal use [citation needed] I'd be willing to wager the vast majority of the use of most things currently being argued (encryption is the hottest one right now) is not criminal. So you want to force the majority use to give up their privacy and trust every retailer of prepaid phones with their personal information, because of the fringe cases of criminal use?
      - Nrsolis 11y ago
        My point exactly. The fact of the matter is that prepaid phone use (much like encryption) is used by people for pretty banal purposes: they want to make sure that their private life stays private. Maybe they are carrying on an illicit affair. Maybe they are running a side business their employer wouldn't approve of. Whatever the reason, people have a certain right to privacy. The burden isn't on US to demonstrate why we need privacy. The burden is on the GOVERNMENT to demonstrate why they need to pull back the curtain on someone else's privacy to further a legitimate government interest. That's the crux of every argument opposing the government keeping records (or forcing the record-keeping by business) on everything a person does in the course of their life. The VAST majority of prepaid phone use is legitimate and non-controversial. Why burden all of those uses with a specious need to identify themselves when conducting perfectly legal business? You don't need an ID to buy a hammer or a knife. Why should you need one to buy a phone?
    - marssaxman 11y ago
      The political scaremongers are the ones harping on about the fringe cases, to our general detriment. There's nothing wrong with a desire for privacy, and anyone who wants to buy a phone without having to provide a bunch of records should be able to do so.
  - gscott 11y ago
    Also if they had been bought within a certain time-frame it is not to hard to go back and get video of the purchase depending of where it was bought at. It isn't instant to find the person but not usually impossible. Walmart takes video of every purchase, correlates the items bought to the credit card, etc.
- mifreewil 11y ago
  nodesocket? Let me see your real Internet ID.
- greenyoda 11y ago
  Prepaid phones are also used by: - People who can't afford phone contracts and have minimal usage needs. - International tourists who don't want to pay roaming charges on their regular phone plans to make local calls while traveling.
  - deepnet 11y ago
    and whistleblowers.
- angersock 11y ago
  Are there a lot of reports on the use of these phones? Also, why should it be illegal to have an anonymous phone?
- EliRivers 11y ago
  Also shoes. Criminals use shoes in almost every crime they commit; we should make anonymous shoe buying illegal.
robryk 11y ago
Similar laws exist in many European countries and Poland is very likely to pass one soon. I guess that the ostensible reason for introducing this is to help against terrorism (it is in Poland). I fail to see how this should help in any way: in places with large population density (where terrorism is more likely) mobile phones with foreign SIMs are reasonably common (am I wrong here?), so a good workaround is to buy burner SIMs abroad.
- dogma1138 11y ago
  I was asked for an ID buying a pre-paid SIM card in Germany 3 years ago or so. Seems that the regulations are even more strict now and you need to register it to an address. https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowTopic-g187275-i116-k9148540-German_SIM_card_without_German_ID-Germany.html https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowTopic-g187275-i116-k914854...
  - endemic 11y ago
    Can't you just provide false info? Forged drivers license, etc.
- contingencies 11y ago
  Similar laws in China and Thailand.
- rahimnathwani 11y ago
  Before I could buy a sim card in Ahmedabad (the largest city in India's Gujarat state) in 2014, I had to show my passport, and also provide the name and contact details of a personal reference, who must be a resident of Ahmedabad. And, yes, the mobile phone company did actually call the referee to check that they knew me.
deepnet 11y ago
The rush to attribute blame to something technical and pass a quick fix law is obviously a tactic to draw attention from the real question: Why did the authorities so utterly fail to protect us ? The facts remain: 'Europol' knew ~400 radicalised EU citizens were at it. Turkish Intelligence gave the bombers name to the Belgians - seemingly ignored. The Belgians, before the Belgian bombs, interrogated the French bomber for only an hour, seemingly fruitlessly. This echoes previous tragic incidents where the vital intel was known and passed on but seemingly ignored or lost in the noise. For instance the Boston bomb where the older brother was known to have been radicalised at training camps by his ethnic government but the intel was not properly utilised by the American authorities who had him on their books but ignored the intel and seemingly considered him an 'asset' working for them. Or the Paris cartoonist deaths, again a radicalised native, known to the authorities to have been radicalised in jail when as a young drug dealer he was incarcerated with Al Quaeda's no.1 european recruiter. Where are the calls for a public investigation into the near total failure by the intelligence services to stop any plots they haven't trumped up ? They have near total electronic surveillance at great chilling effect to freedom and great inconvenience to the economy yet still fare worse against unsophisticated plots than we should expect. "Perhaps the real secret the spies don't want anyone to know is they are not very good at their jobs."* <sarcasm> Yet of course our protectors were flummoxed by 'burner phones', that no-one could have suspected (despite this been the MO of previous Euro Islamist Bombers - and a entire season of the Wire). If only we made something else illegal we would have got them... </sarcasm> Perhaps mindlessly handing more power and budgets over to these morons without any public oversight is the problem. We need real police, real detectives, acting on intelligence not more of the same. [*] http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9-3149-963f-47bea720b460 http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9-...
- dogma1138 11y ago
  That's by far not the worst thing, the 7/7 bombings had more intelligence, as US, French and Israeli sources gave many details including names and sigint intercepts one of the "suspects" was arrested and then released 24 hours before the attack happened he later slipped the police surveillance (which according to some reports was not even plain cloths but literally a police van trailing him) and rejoined his friends (who's names and details were also known) and went on with the bombings. Many European countries already have regulations around pre-paid sims and burner phones it just doesn't matter (especially when the terrorists are European nationals). The biggest problem is that overall in Europe security forces do not have the budget nor manpower to deal with neither foreign nor homegrown terrorist threats and in the current political climate the fear the media more than the actual terrorists.
sathackr 11y ago
next up: ID required to use one of the few remaining public pay phones. good thing VoIP service and public wifi hotspots aren't widespread, otherwise the proposed legislation would be pointless. Oh, wait...
xkcd-sucks 11y ago
If this passes, somebody's gonna make a buttload of cash selling grey-market anonymous prepaid phones bought before the ban
oxplot 11y ago
Hmm, here in Australia we've had this law for a long time.
banku_brougham 11y ago
I don't see how this helps, unless the government is also listening/logging all communications on all phones. All of the proposed protections from terrorism that I read amount to total information awareness by the state -- essentially an unrecognizable civic regime. And even then, how can it guarantee safety against a suicide pact? Total waste of time in my opinion.

25 points by jevinskie 11y ago

nodesocket 11y ago

I guess I don't see the problem with this. Prepaid phones (burners) are notoriously used by criminals.

Nrsolis 11y ago
Terrible idea. They are also used by investigative journalists trying to uncover government wrongdoing along with people trying to escape abusive ex-lovers. The desire for anonymity is not synonymous with criminal intent.
- nodesocket 11y ago
  Let's be realistic, investigative journalists can get phones from their employer. People on HN always seem to bring up the fringe case... The small percentage. Ignoring the vast majority of actual use.
  - robryk 11y ago
    > trying to uncover government wrongdoing GP's point seems to be that it's pointful to avoid association of that phone with any news organization at all in such cases.
  - sathackr 11y ago
    well then for that matter lets just toss out the 1st, 4th, and 5th amendments, since they are mostly used by dissidents and criminals to escape prosecution.
  - sathackr 11y ago
    Oh, I might add, the vast majority of prepaid cell phone use is not criminal use [citation needed] I'd be willing to wager the vast majority of the use of most things currently being argued (encryption is the hottest one right now) is not criminal. So you want to force the majority use to give up their privacy and trust every retailer of prepaid phones with their personal information, because of the fringe cases of criminal use?
    - Nrsolis 11y ago
      My point exactly. The fact of the matter is that prepaid phone use (much like encryption) is used by people for pretty banal purposes: they want to make sure that their private life stays private. Maybe they are carrying on an illicit affair. Maybe they are running a side business their employer wouldn't approve of. Whatever the reason, people have a certain right to privacy. The burden isn't on US to demonstrate why we need privacy. The burden is on the GOVERNMENT to demonstrate why they need to pull back the curtain on someone else's privacy to further a legitimate government interest. That's the crux of every argument opposing the government keeping records (or forcing the record-keeping by business) on everything a person does in the course of their life. The VAST majority of prepaid phone use is legitimate and non-controversial. Why burden all of those uses with a specious need to identify themselves when conducting perfectly legal business? You don't need an ID to buy a hammer or a knife. Why should you need one to buy a phone?
  - marssaxman 11y ago
    The political scaremongers are the ones harping on about the fringe cases, to our general detriment. There's nothing wrong with a desire for privacy, and anyone who wants to buy a phone without having to provide a bunch of records should be able to do so.
- gscott 11y ago
  Also if they had been bought within a certain time-frame it is not to hard to go back and get video of the purchase depending of where it was bought at. It isn't instant to find the person but not usually impossible. Walmart takes video of every purchase, correlates the items bought to the credit card, etc.
mifreewil 11y ago
nodesocket? Let me see your real Internet ID.
greenyoda 11y ago
Prepaid phones are also used by: - People who can't afford phone contracts and have minimal usage needs. - International tourists who don't want to pay roaming charges on their regular phone plans to make local calls while traveling.
- deepnet 11y ago
  and whistleblowers.
angersock 11y ago
Are there a lot of reports on the use of these phones? Also, why should it be illegal to have an anonymous phone?
EliRivers 11y ago
Also shoes. Criminals use shoes in almost every crime they commit; we should make anonymous shoe buying illegal.

robryk 11y ago

Similar laws exist in many European countries and Poland is very likely to pass one soon. I guess that the ostensible reason for introducing this is to help against terrorism (it is in Poland). I fail to see how this should help in any way: in places with large population density (where terrorism is more likely) mobile phones with foreign SIMs are reasonably common (am I wrong here?), so a good workaround is to buy burner SIMs abroad.

dogma1138 11y ago
I was asked for an ID buying a pre-paid SIM card in Germany 3 years ago or so. Seems that the regulations are even more strict now and you need to register it to an address. https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowTopic-g187275-i116-k9148540-German_SIM_card_without_German_ID-Germany.html https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowTopic-g187275-i116-k914854...
- endemic 11y ago
  Can't you just provide false info? Forged drivers license, etc.
contingencies 11y ago
Similar laws in China and Thailand.
rahimnathwani 11y ago
Before I could buy a sim card in Ahmedabad (the largest city in India's Gujarat state) in 2014, I had to show my passport, and also provide the name and contact details of a personal reference, who must be a resident of Ahmedabad. And, yes, the mobile phone company did actually call the referee to check that they knew me.

deepnet 11y ago

The rush to attribute blame to something technical and pass a quick fix law is obviously a tactic to draw attention from the real question: Why did the authorities so utterly fail to protect us ? The facts remain: 'Europol' knew ~400 radicalised EU citizens were at it. Turkish Intelligence gave the bombers name to the Belgians - seemingly ignored. The Belgians, before the Belgian bombs, interrogated the French bomber for only an hour, seemingly fruitlessly. This echoes previous tragic incidents where the vital intel was known and passed on but seemingly ignored or lost in the noise. For instance the Boston bomb where the older brother was known to have been radicalised at training camps by his ethnic government but the intel was not properly utilised by the American authorities who had him on their books but ignored the intel and seemingly considered him an 'asset' working for them. Or the Paris cartoonist deaths, again a radicalised native, known to the authorities to have been radicalised in jail when as a young drug dealer he was incarcerated with Al Quaeda's no.1 european recruiter. Where are the calls for a public investigation into the near total failure by the intelligence services to stop any plots they haven't trumped up ? They have near total electronic surveillance at great chilling effect to freedom and great inconvenience to the economy yet still fare worse against unsophisticated plots than we should expect. "Perhaps the real secret the spies don't want anyone to know is they are not very good at their jobs."* <sarcasm> Yet of course our protectors were flummoxed by 'burner phones', that no-one could have suspected (despite this been the MO of previous Euro Islamist Bombers - and a entire season of the Wire). If only we made something else illegal we would have got them... </sarcasm> Perhaps mindlessly handing more power and budgets over to these morons without any public oversight is the problem. We need real police, real detectives, acting on intelligence not more of the same. [*] http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9-3149-963f-47bea720b460 http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9-...

dogma1138 11y ago
That's by far not the worst thing, the 7/7 bombings had more intelligence, as US, French and Israeli sources gave many details including names and sigint intercepts one of the "suspects" was arrested and then released 24 hours before the attack happened he later slipped the police surveillance (which according to some reports was not even plain cloths but literally a police van trailing him) and rejoined his friends (who's names and details were also known) and went on with the bombings. Many European countries already have regulations around pre-paid sims and burner phones it just doesn't matter (especially when the terrorists are European nationals). The biggest problem is that overall in Europe security forces do not have the budget nor manpower to deal with neither foreign nor homegrown terrorist threats and in the current political climate the fear the media more than the actual terrorists.

sathackr 11y ago

next up: ID required to use one of the few remaining public pay phones. good thing VoIP service and public wifi hotspots aren't widespread, otherwise the proposed legislation would be pointless. Oh, wait...

xkcd-sucks 11y ago

If this passes, somebody's gonna make a buttload of cash selling grey-market anonymous prepaid phones bought before the ban

oxplot 11y ago

Hmm, here in Australia we've had this law for a long time.

banku_brougham 11y ago

I don't see how this helps, unless the government is also listening/logging all communications on all phones. All of the proposed protections from terrorism that I read amount to total information awareness by the state -- essentially an unrecognizable civic regime. And even then, how can it guarantee safety against a suicide pact? Total waste of time in my opinion.