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Chinese telecoms must use "AI and other technical means" to identify phone users

244 points by sahin-boydas 7y ago

dang 7y ago
All: if you comment in this thread, make sure your comments are substantive and that they stay off the nationalistic indignation track. That is all too easy to fall into, and it's off topic here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- jakeogh 7y ago
  @dang I sincerely appreciate what you do. Euphemistically, it's not easy. Please consider unflagging: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21679829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21679829 Code is speech.
corporate_shi11 7y ago
When a nation is a superpower, it is able to influence the behavior of weaker states. It will exert its influence for a variety of reasons, but it is inevitable that with power comes the exertion of influence. China will use its power to prop up autocratic regimes across the world and export its technology and methods to make such autocracy possible and sustainable. China represents a threat to global democracy which must be recognized and must be treated as such.
- arkitaip 7y ago
  I am hoping that the EU can devise a plan to fight China ever-increasing threats to democracy AND re-introduce manufacturing as a strong industry in all of the Union. It's obvious that individual European counties simply cannot withstand China on their own.
  - petre 7y ago
    The EU is too slow to react, lots of disagreement, lots of debating.
- vezycash 7y ago
  It's probably going to supply the tech if Nigeria's social media bill passes - Death penalty for 'Hate Speech' on social media.
- whoevercares 7y ago
  Just saying, historically Han ethnicity is pretty bad at expansion and exert influence overseas otherwise WWIII would happen many years ago. Of course no one knows if that’ll change as China rises in modern age
  - eznoonze 7y ago
    They will fail, but not without lots of damage to the world and themselves. All thanks to Xi Jinping's expansionist ambition.
    - azinman2 7y ago
      Why will they fail? So far they’ve been executing pretty well for the past 20-30 years...
      - eznoonze 7y ago
        Past 20-30 years as you said. Past performance is not a guarantee of future success. They don't have the same officials now as they did for the past few decades. Check out who the current ruler is and its background. This guy is a hardcore dictator who doesn't want to listen to any idea beside his own. And he's only got an elementary education. That's a recipe for failure.
        whoevercares 7y ago
        I have to agree with you. All leaders before him are pretty well educated for their time being.
        AnimalMuppet 7y ago
        From Wikipedia: > From 1975 to 1979, Xi studied chemical engineering at Beijing's Tsinghua University as a "Worker-Peasant-Soldier student". The engineering majors there spent about 15 percent of their time studying Marxism–Leninism–Mao Zedong thought and 5 percent of their time doing farm work and "learning from the People's Liberation Army". So, university education in chemical engineering, with 20% political content. Still, not "only an elementary education".
- eznoonze 7y ago
  Not just propping up autocratic regimes, but they also infiltrate democratic countries by providing funding/support to naive and/or corrupted politicians in the West.
- braythwayt 7y ago
  Without agreeing or disagreeing with them, we should accept that people have said exactly the same things about the USA, about the Soviet Union, about Russia, about Britain... And on and on. I am not trying to play “whatabout,” but I do ask: Is there anything different about China’s behaviour as a superpower? Or are we just seeing a shift in which superpowers have world influence? At the moment I write this, the front page of HN has an article about China and facial recognition... But also an article about US schools monitoring student emails. Which seems to me like training a generation of citizens to understand that they live in a prison without walls.
  - kiba 7y ago
    US schools is about certain school districts, not national policies.
    - braythwayt 7y ago
      “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” —Dr. Martin Luther King, Letter from Birmingham Jail. https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/documents/Letter_Birmingham_Jail.pdf https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/documents/Letter_Birmingham_Jail...
      - corporate_shi11 7y ago
        You miss the point of the comment. Comparing the CCP federal structure to a local school district is a laughably inappropriate comparison.
  - corporate_shi11 7y ago
    I think comparisons like this ignore something fundamental, which is the values that both countries champion. The USA is a democracy and has by and large championed democracy around the world. China is ruled by a 1974 style dictatorship, a country ruled by a single Party not the rule of law. Comparisons between the US and the CCP conveniently ignore this, yet it is what really matters. Law enforcement will always exist in a nation of laws, yet the simple fact that law enforcement exists both in a dictatorship and in a democracy does not lead us to conclude democracy and dictatorship exist on an equal moral footing. The underlying values matter.
- oefrha 7y ago
  I can think of another superpower that’s been propping up “democratic” regimes across the world, not hypothetically, but for decades. (Apparently dang won’t like this comment, and rightly so, so this will be my last comment on this thread.)
  - corporate_shi11 7y ago
    America has been a champion for real democracies across the world for decades. It has propped up autocracies in the past, but those pale in comparison to its global support for democracy.
    - take_a_breath 7y ago
      America has also disposed of plenty of democratically-elected regimes (Panama, Iran, Chile, Guatemala, Brazil, etc.). I’m not sure who gets to determine if that ”pales in comparison” to its support of other democracies, but it did happen.
      - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
        Sure it did, and it's a shame to the US that it happened. But the US did also prop up democratic regimes. Now, in contrast, China and Russia... did they ever help democracy, anywhere?
givinguflac 7y ago
When I was younger I wanted to visit China. Currently I have no plans to ever do so, China is a scary country.
- EliRivers 7y ago
  You're not the first person recently to express such. Have you considered "the other China"; Taiwan? It has much of what you might have hoped to find in PRC (depending on what you were hoping to find there), and perhaps lacks some of what you might not like.
- dang 7y ago
  Ok, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN, and definitely not nationalistic flamebait. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - serf 7y ago
    I think 'nationalistic flamebait' should be better defined; as time goes on it feels as if any negative comment about any world power is being pigeon-holed into that category, and I think that's incorrect. It's important to talk about the worlds' woes. Shining light onto issues is how they're resolved. This thread's topic is about yet another step to reduce anonymity in China. This trend of full-disclosure with regards to any kind of society move ( getting a cell phone, paying a bill, boarding a bus, etc ) IS scary, regardless of the country that employs it. Lots of countries, not excluding China, have terrible human rights violations that need to be talked about. These kind of issues do make the place a scary proposition to visit for foreigners and tourists -- and furthermore I share the commenters opinion; as a younger person I wanted to travel around China, as an older person who has witnessed recent events, I no longer want to. It's not flamebait, and it's relevant to the thread; these kind of societal decisions sway tourists like myself away from your coutry, regardless of which country it may be. Can't we reserve 'nationalistic flamebait' for the really ludicrous and racist comments that float around the nation-based threads, rather than the useless anecdotes?
    - 7y ago
tanilama 7y ago
Does this affect foreigners? If I have a AT&T plan, it should work out-of-box in China via roaming? Hope that is the case...
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  Phone plans from outside don’t roam easily in China, and its super cheap to just by a local China mobile SIM, so most people don’t bother. Well, now it might be a bit more difficult, but typically foreigners just need their passports to get one.
- ComputerGuru 7y ago
  Verizon TravelPass covers China for $10/day
- z2 7y ago
  Always roam when in China for short trips. The way cellular networks work is that roaming plans tend to route back home, so that your access is unfiltered. The plan could affect foreigners but it was hard for years already, in that most cellular stores require a Chinese ID to register monthly service (not all take passports). I used to get the salesperson or security guard to lend their ID in my stead, and this is exactly what this policy seems designed to prevent. Hotels and train stations have operated under facial authentication for a couple of years too for Chinese nationals. This seems to be along the same vein, to ensure the person is who the ID says they are. In other words, it's handing over the ID-checking from a person to an awkward police-sanctioned box.
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    The China Mobile stands in the airport that sell SIMs take passports...you’ll find them in international baggage claim, and also in the terminal. I’ve only successfully roamed with T-mobile on WiFi. Maybe its better now?
    - CharlesColeman 7y ago
      > I’ve only successfully roamed with T-mobile on WiFi. Maybe its better now? I roamed on T-Mobile pretty successfully using a cell connection last year, but I had to buy a $20 1G data pass and some other passes for it to work. It was worth it for the reliable unfiltered internet access. My current T-Mobile One plan was worse for this than my old grandfathered (Select Choice?) plan, which could limp along at 2G speeds out of the box and only needed the data pass for usable speed.
MrBuddyCasino 7y ago
They are already monitoring the chat apps. If you say unseemly things, expect this: https://twitter.com/intypython/status/1200466904734785536?s=21 https://twitter.com/intypython/status/1200466904734785536?s=... Edit: changed link to original source
- aldoushuxley001 7y ago
  Your video is what I expected it to be, but I didn’t think it was going to be that bad. This is the cultural revolution all over again
- analyst74 7y ago
  This looks horrible, is it confirmed to be true? Why would HK police release video like that, I imagine they would like to keep the interrogations and tortures under the radar?
  - CharlesColeman 7y ago
    > Why would HK police release video like that I get the impression that the video is from the mainland, not Hong Kong. The device he's strapped in looks like a "tiger chair": https://www.news.com.au/world/asia/tiger-chair-sick-torture-tactics-in-chinese-prisons/news-story/c6681dd9adc7a45ac7681d18d5af5816 https://www.news.com.au/world/asia/tiger-chair-sick-torture-... Edit: I was looking for a better version of this video on youtube. I couldn't find one, but I did find this English Agence France-Presse story that answers the question of why they'd release a video like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8PgCUap1Vg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8PgCUap1Vg
  - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
    The problem with releasing a video is the outrage it provokes. The benefit of releasing a video is the fear it provokes. Not saying this is the case here, but obviously if you calculate outrage cannot grow substantially greater than it already is, might as well try provoking some fear. Of course it might very well be false, this is just my idea as to why someone might release it if real.
- 7y ago
elliotlee 7y ago
I searched for the law. They need a photo id for a new phone number to reduce phone scams. I think it is good.
- stri8ed 7y ago
  Spammers don't use cell phones to make their calls. Most often they just spoof calls using random peoples phone numbers. This would have no effect on spam calls. (I assume you mean phone-spam when you say phone scam?) Not to be paranoid, but you really created a HN account just to add this comment?
  - throw476543 7y ago
    I’m not the person you asked, but I create throwaway accounts when commenting on sensitive topics so I don’t get harassed irl and since you can’t delete accounts on HN.
- EpicEng 7y ago
  Oh, look; a brand spanking new HN account backing China on this one! Yes, why would it be bad news for an authoritarian government to strengthen its hold on its people. Those spam calls are so annoying! BTW, those spammers aren't sitting there on cell phones making calls.
  - dang 7y ago
    You can't attack a new user like that, regardless of how strongly you disagree with them. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here. The damage of punishing someone innocent is orders of magnitude greater than the benefit (or pleasure) of scourging villains, so please err on the side of being a welcoming community member. The last thing HN needs is to stew in its own juices with "Keep Out" signs nailed to the clubhouse everywhere.
    - EpicEng 7y ago
CalChris 7y ago
Are we any different? I want to think so but drivers licenses and passports are scanned photos. The California DMV even sells this information.
- jariel 7y ago
  Yes, 'we' are very objectively very different. The motivations, objectives and operational realities of DL's and Passports are all fundamentally different. Even the DMV's sale of data, however unseemly, is in a different category of 'questionable'. The most interesting artefact here is not the difference between the systems, but popular notions of moral equivalence among intelligent people.
- proc0 7y ago
  Just look up videos on youtube of westerners who live in China so that you can easily understand the giant chasm of difference between the cultures and system. Even if CA does something similar, there are ways to keep your privacy protected, especially if you're willing to go out of your way and get a lawyer. In China you're basically owned by the government and good luck trying to find workarounds without feeling like you're a wanted criminal.
  - thereare5lights 7y ago
    > especially if you're willing to go out of your way and get a lawyer. That is out of reach for the vast majority of Americans
oh_sigh 7y ago
This doesn't seem much different from Spain, where I need to scan my passport to buy a SIM, and they already have my face on record?
classichasclass 7y ago
Not that there's any moral equivalence, but when I'm in Australia visiting in-laws, I have to provide my passport or similar ID to get my PAYG SIM activated. I just have them swipe it at the airport and my SIM is on in 10 minutes. My wife admits it's a lot easier in the States to get a PAYG SIM; AT&T doesn't care who she is as long as there's money in the account. I'm not sure why Australia does that, but it's really annoying.
- aplummer 7y ago
  It's to track crimes associated with burner sims. * Not trying to justify it either direction.
  - vbezhenar 7y ago
    I wonder does it help? I'm sure that it's easy to find some homeless person, who don't know you and register SIM for his ID.
    - nl 7y ago
      It helps a lot. It isn't for tracking homeless people. It's for building network graphs of calls from burner phones to organised crime people. Most of the time the burners are useless, but once you have a cluster of them you can automatically do data matching on them all, and sometimes (often!) they got lazy on a couple and used the same identities to buy them. Once you have a few using the same identity then you track that identity down. The friction in forcing identification means that lazy criminals at the bottom of the structure at some point forget to do it.
- deogeo 7y ago
  There absolutely is moral equivalence - they're trying to cut off all means of anonymous communication. It's difficult to get a SIM without providing ID in the EU as well, and you have to provide ID when renting a room. I wish the media were always sensitive to privacy erosion, not just when China does it. I guess using Chinese surveillance tech is a roundabout way of getting them to pay attention, as happened with the Hikvision cameras.
namewasmypw 7y ago
Please don't link to tweets by fascists. The information is valuable so you can link to the original source instead of the tweetspam that gives this shithead exposure.
- nerdponx 7y ago
  Do you have a link to the original?
- dang 7y ago
  We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21685294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21685294 and marked it off-topic.
gregimba 7y ago
Traveling to Germany I had to provide my passport to get a SIM card. When I was going through customs stateside I had a photo taken with my passport. Not sure if this is the new standard but other countries are implementing the same laws/procedures and while I disagree with china we shouldn't hold them to a different standard than other nations.
- Vesuvium 7y ago
  There are countries where getting a SIM card always required an ID or passport.
- jariel 7y ago
  "we shouldn't hold them to a different standard than other nations." We are not. Border security is a legit issue, it's why we have passports in the first place. They are an international standard, almost nobody objects to. A nation has a reasonable right to require ID in order to purchase a SIM, particularly from foreigners. The issue with China is that the 'photo' in question will be used to to train the AI such that they can identify every citizen, at any time, in any situation and control everything about them and their lives at any given moment. The 'double standard', if anything, is the fact that so many things the US decides to do is held up to extreme scrutiny and consternation by anyone, even when there are reasonable grounds, whereas it seems there are so many people interested in applying an ambiguous moral duplicity with China. Particularly among those interested in developing deeper business interests in China ...
walrus01 7y ago
Canadian here: Ezra Levant is far, far right. He was part of the now defunct Sun news Network. This may be a case of a broken clock being right twice a day. He's basically the Canadian version of Breitbart.
- MrBuddyCasino 7y ago
  Ah too bad. As a European I have never heard of him, and the original source wasn’t linked. Thanks for the heads up. Update: changed link
- dang 7y ago
  We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21685294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21685294 and marked it off-topic.
  - MrBuddyCasino 7y ago
    thanks!
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
usaar333 7y ago
I'm confused about the enforcement here. I just bought a temporary sim from https://www.3gsolutions.com.cn https://www.3gsolutions.com.cn (which I've used multiple times before when visiting) and didn't provide any id.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  That isn’t really unusual for china. Often times, they just introduce a law without any plan on enforcement, and everyone just ignores it until they can’t anymore. It really isn’t a problem as China isn’t a rule of law country, everyone is used to this.
- yorwba 7y ago
  The SIM you bought was almost certainly registered by an employee of the company. Unless you do something that makes the authorities want to find the person behind your phone number, it's unlikely they'll get in trouble.
  - bowmessage 7y ago
    Wow, that’s brazen. Explains how I was able to top up my WeChat wallet through PayPal once before a visit, though.
rpmcmurdo 7y ago
The irony is that the people complaining about this are the same ones who are gleefully sharing their personal details and narrative on social media, and Facebook in particular. The only difference between mass surveillance in the US and China is that 99% of the US population happily opts in or doesn't care.
- JPKab 7y ago
  I don't disagree with you, but government compulsion makes this a different animal entirely. The bigger context is that in the US, there is SUPPOSED to be a system in which companies can successfully resist government demands (remember that Apple did this to the FBI when they wanted to crack a criminal's phone passcode), whereas in China, that cannot happen. So yes, people give away their data for stupid conveniences, but Facebook/Google etc aren't supposed to share the data with the government. They have done so, as Snowden revealed, so this is by no means a perfect system. What really upsets me about China's system is the bigger system of social credit this ties into. You can't get on flights want your score gets too low. The guy exposing fake martial arts masters isn't allowed to leave the country.
  - gruez 7y ago
    > So yes, people give away their data for stupid conveniences, but Facebook/Google etc aren't supposed to share the data with the government. They have done so, as Snowden revealed, so this is by no means a perfect system. Can you elaborate on what you mean by "aren't supposed to"? The phrase sounds like there's a law prohibiting them from giving data to the government. But AFAIK the third party doctrine says you have no expectation of privacy for data that you hand over to third parties, so they're free to hand over data to the government. The only reason they don't is because of possible blowback from customers.
  - mindslight 7y ago
    There is much less "government compulsion" in the US, but in its place is still de facto compulsion. In general, comparisons with the US are difficult because in the US large corporations are given the power of defining much of societal policy. Saying that "Facebook/Google etc aren't supposed to share the data with the government" only makes sense in some abstract sense of it wasn't supposed to be like this. But power tends to coalesce - the only "supposed to" is in some abstract moral stewardship sense, a responsibility that has been long forgotten by the business community, if it ever existed in the first place. Facebook/Google want to agglomerate data from the financial surveillance bureaus, and the (nominal) government buys the proceeds from both of them in a "free market" transaction. And then on the output/control side, companies use these surveillance databases to weed out "undesirable" customers, with their competitors following in lock step lest they end up with even more undesirables.
ParanoidShroom 7y ago
Registering a sim card in Vietnam also requires your photo to be taken. Is this an Asia thing ?
- dogma1138 7y ago
  When I bought a prepaid SIM card in Germany a few years ago they took a photocopy if my passport is not quite.
- em500 7y ago
  It's not an Asia thing: https://prepaid-data-sim-card.fandom.com/wiki/Registration_Policies_Per_Country https://prepaid-data-sim-card.fandom.com/wiki/Registration_P...
- vbezhenar 7y ago
  Kazakhstan implemented identification for SIM cards few years ago, just ID, no photo. Also recently it implemented identification for IMEI numbers as well. I'm not sure why, apparently they want to fight phone stealing, but I'm not very convinced.
proc0 7y ago
I feel there are rising tensions in China between their pseudo-free market and their apparent attempts at controlling and micro-managing the lives of their people. It would seem the rise of their consumer economy would also give rise to a demand for more freedom on a day to day basis to allow for innovation. It's interesting to see China going simultaneously in both contradicting directions.
- asdff 7y ago
  I can't imagine the cognitive dissonance required to go to university in the U.S. for 4 years then return to China after being exposed to uncensored media.
crazygringo 7y ago
The title sounds intentionally provocative -- "face scanned" appears to be just "have their photo taken". I can't find a single source that suggests anything more than that. Which isn't much different from having your photo taken for your driver's license, passport, or at the border, all of which the US does. Burner phones are mostly associated with criminal activity, so tying phones to identities feels like a legitimate function -- which many countries do. And if criminals are trying to register phones through identity theft, this seems like it would be an additional protection. If you're concerned with privacy, that's what encrypted communications are for, and if you don't want to be tracked by radio, then don't take any phone with you.
- anigbrowl 7y ago
  It would be valuable for technologists to be mindful of the difference between explanation and exhortation, lest they be seen as shifting the moral/legal burden for the operation of a social system entirely onto the shoulders of the individual users who have the least control over it.
- dang 7y ago
  Ok, we've put "photo taken" in the title above. Thanks.
  - kevcampb 7y ago
    It's not "photo taken" https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/12/02/china-tightens-cyberspace-controls-introducing-mandatory-face-scans-phone-users https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/12/02/china-tightens-cybersp... A China Unicom customer service representative told AFP that the December 1 “portrait matching” requirement means customers registering for a new phone number may have to record themselves turning their head and blinking.
    - dang 7y ago
      Thanks—that's a better article. I've switched to the AFP version of it. (Submitted URL was https://www.technologyreview.com/f/614781/all-new-cellphone-users-in-china-must-now-have-their-face-scanned/. https://www.technologyreview.com/f/614781/all-new-cellphone-...) Reading it closely, though, the evidence on the face-scanning point seems weak. The source is a customer service representative who said may. That's two weak points: a customer service representative is not who you'd normally ask about policy, and "may" also means "may not". Also, that's the only thing that particular source is quoted about. I'm not sure what to do, because there doesn't seem to be anything unambiguous in the English-language press. All the articles I've looked are reporting on the same directive that was issued in Sept and took effect Dec 1. So I guess we'll quote the directive in the title above. If anyone can suggest a more accurate title we can change it again.
epx 7y ago
In Brazil, was taken a face picture when lost a phone and had to get a new SIM card, no change in number or contract.
stelonix 7y ago
Thank you! The amount of anti-China jingoist sentiment these past months has been unbearable for anyone who does not share a bipolar world view. EDIT: "bipolar" as in "us vs them"
- deleted 7y ago
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- dang 7y ago
  We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21685327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21685327 and marked it off-topic.
Erwin 7y ago
SIM cards bought in Italy have long required showing photo ID in person and also some kind of SSN like number used for various financial transactions. I needed to acquire that fiscal SSN when buying wine from an Italian web shop but weirdly it's a computed value, not a unique ID you get from some organization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_fiscal_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_fiscal_code
- ryannevius 7y ago
  Aside: While there are services that will generate a Codice fiscale that fits the format of what the government will issue, the legal path requires visiting the Agenzia Delle Entrate.
- frollo 7y ago
  The Codice Fiscale is supposed to be a unique value you get from the State (via the Agenzia delle Entrate), but the whole system is so outdated and badly designed that most websites just check that the inserted code corresponds to the data you inserted.
- qxnqd 7y ago
  SIM cards bought in Spain require you to show your ID card, which means the authorities can link such SIM to your name, your face, and your fingerprints.
  - int_19h 7y ago
    It's very common around the world in general. That doesn't make it right, of course - it just means that the surveillance state is more widespread than commonly assumed.
azifali 7y ago
All cellphone users in India also have their biometrics (Aadhar) linked to their phone numbers.. This has been a requirement for a while now..
throw476543 7y ago
At first I got the impression a photo was required when buying a new cellphone, but this appears to be just for new numbers. China already requires an ID to get a number, so I don’t see how requiring a photo will help them track people even more? Maybe it gives them an updated photo? However, if you don’t get a new number every few years, then it’s useless. My own country requires a photo ID to get a number and I’ve been to several other countries that do as well. I guess I’m just used to it now. Similar to how we put our photos on resumes, but my American friends were shocked by that.
- officeplant 7y ago
  Photo's on a resume is still a pretty strange request in America because it factors into possible discrimination. However identification is required in the US only when starting a contract phone servie (for Credit inquiries). If you don't want your name attached to the phone number it has to be prepaid. Which always made me chuckle considering the two most common people to give us obviously fake names for prepaid phones were drug dealers and police. I've had days working in phone retail where someone came in and started a prepaid line under "John Doe" and paid for it out of a roll of 100's in their sock. Then an hour later I've got an officer in uniform handing me a name and address he needs put on a cheap burner prepaid phone.
- yorwba 7y ago
  > China already requires an ID to get a number, so I don’t see how requiring a photo will help them track people even more? If the photo taken to get the number doesn't match the photo on file for the ID, they can now blame the seller. That creates an incentive for the seller to actually check the ID.
mytailorisrich 7y ago
China has been requiring IDs to buy SIM card for at least 20 years. Chinese also already have ID cards, 'hukou' (a sort of domestic passport), etc. so I would imagine that the government already has everyone's face on record. Thus, this seems about enforcing the requirement to provide ID when buying a SIM, because enforcement of rules can be problematic in China. Which reminds me... They are (obviously?) having problems collecting sales tax. So at one point they are issuing formal receipts as vouchers that eg. restaurants had to buy form the tax office. A sort of advance payment. When a customer asked for a receipt the restaurant gave them a number of these vouchers. The smart idea is that they had turned these vouchers into scratch cards to encourage people to request a receipt...
brndnmg 7y ago
In South Africa we have had to abide by FICA act for many years already, months of bank statements, identity document, proof of address etc., there has already been abuses of this information to identify corruption leaks to reporters...
dfcagency 7y ago
I had to provide a passport to purchase a throwaway T-Mobile data SIM in Germany. Seems normal to me.
s9w 7y ago
In Germany you can't have a SIM card without registration (address, ID and everything).
NedIsakoff 7y ago
I live in China for over 10 years and I don't see the purpose of this. Remember that this doesn't apply to roaming users or people buying Travel SIM for China, but those people are not a big worry. To get a SIM card right now in China you need to have valid identification. The only ones that are acceptable are: 1) China Resident Identity Card; or 2) non-Chinese passport. Both of these already have photos.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
devy 7y ago
Just offering another perspective than most others had done here: I grew up in China and have been in China a few times in the past 10 years - the amount of Robocalls and phone scams was overwhelming (in fact, it was so bad that dual SIM mobile phones became popular because you can have a disposable SIM card for non-essential website registrations and one for family members that you keep private use). I had my identity stolen after somehow I went into China Mobile pop-up service storefront in PEK airport to get a local SIM card. People on the line on my back was so close to the counter and peeking application forms with all sorts of private data, which made me very uncomfortable. There are also organized gangs that are operating in selling people's private identity data like mobile phone numbers. Later it made sense how my identify was stolen in retrospect. Also, mobile phone number is essentially Chinese citizen's digital identity in a way in that 99% of the website/online services use mobile phone number instead of emails for authentications and 2FA. It's nearly impossible to sign up for any Chinese website without giving your mobile phone number to complete the sign up. Given China's mobile-centric Internet boom, the amount of phone scams and frauds and identity thefts going on and all businesses (including financial institutions) are relying heavily on, it's a reasonably measure to counter fraud with real identity tying in with mobile phone number issuance. So no I don't think it's a political motivated move, even though the side effect is making the abuse much more convenient.
- Enginerrrd 7y ago
  >It's nearly impossible to sign up for any Chinese website without giving your mobile phone number to complete the sign up. No wonder the robocalls and phone scams are overwhelming.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    It's essentially the equivalent to western use of e-mail addresses, and e-mail spam was solved by a combination of technical hurdles, deep message inspection, bayesian statistics and penalization of anonymity.
    - Enginerrrd 7y ago
gruez 7y ago
for point of comparison: map of European countries that require ID to buy prepaid sim cards[1], worldwide list[2] [1] https://i.imgur.com/cCFX1wC.jpg https://i.imgur.com/cCFX1wC.jpg [2] https://prepaid-data-sim-card.fandom.com/wiki/Registration_Policies_Per_Country https://prepaid-data-sim-card.fandom.com/wiki/Registration_P...
- x__x 7y ago
  It's been 10+ years since I signed up for a cell phone. What is required today when you get a new account at the major carriers today in the US?
  - dylz 7y ago
    SSN and hard pull at all postpaid carriers, even if you bring your own phone. Most major[0] stores I've seen check ID at checkout time before activating a prepaid SIM. [0] Go to any immigrant-dense area, look for a corner store, and you can probably just top up in cash and ignore this.
bllguo 7y ago
China's decisions are easy to understand if you grok the underlying motives. HN should know better than most how things become more difficult at scale. Governance at China's scale is a different beast. Clearly the way the CCP is tackling it is by prioritizing efficiency and the good of the whole, over individuals and personal liberties. If you want to effect change then think about how you might make a case against that philosophy. The west certainly isn't doing a good job right now. Not sure if democracy has ever looked worse than it does today.
- wait_a_minute 7y ago
  Tiananmen Square 1989, comrade
- kerakaali 7y ago
  I feel it's important to make reference to primary material [0] to bring more attention to CCP goals. It certainly helped me in becoming aware of their actions as another major state actor. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_Number_Nine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_Number_Nine
devy 7y ago
Interestingly, there is another post about a tangential topic about privacy and data collection. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21684708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21684708
EGreg 7y ago
I already wrote about this in the past and assumed it was the case in the USA. Hard to get a burner phone in person these days. As long as our infrastructure is run by centralized or federated organizations, this is what will be the case. I suggested sending in homeless people to get the phone if it’s a prepaid one. But more to the point, if you want anonymity in such a regime, you have to commandeer other people’s accounts and hope they don’t get in trouble. This is what botnets do, etc. But you may be able to use payphones or libraries or hotel phones etc. as long as you cover your face, fake your gait etc. and even that may not be enough when we are talking about heartbeat signatures, infrared signatures and so on. Timing attacks, style of writing analysis etc. can also be used to easily out someone these days. Anonymity is quite fragile. Read more about the mechanics here... it goes back to the Digital Imprimatur of 2003 which started it all for me http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=114 http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=114
Shivetya 7y ago
I am not going to defend it nor denounce it. Having reread Oath of Fealty recently I am really of the belief it won't be long before we end up with heavily monitored enclaves simply out of a desire of many to not put one thought into their own safety and security if surrounded by like minded individuals who all give up privacy in order to guarantee the safety and security of the group. All the photo apps today that are associated with youth involve many many pictures of themselves they tag with identifiable information so it is not a big leap to think that this level of privacy is not something they consider a big deal. To them their image is their identity and they want to be recognized. Privacy would only mean protecting what they chose not to make public. There certainly is this odd occurrence where we have many denouncing loss of privacy who at the same time ask the government to do more for them which requires giving up more information to more groups. It really comes down to, which items of your identity are public and private. your image certainly is public and why would you in any sane society be afraid of that association?
aaron695 7y ago
Interesting, slightly credible claim they got caught jaywalking through facial recognition and had their account automatically deducted with a fine. They are unsure how - https://youtu.be/taZJblMAuko?t=1535 https://youtu.be/taZJblMAuko?t=1535
2OEH8eoCRo0 7y ago
I've had past accounts shadow banned for what I assume is posting in threads like this.
- dang 7y ago
  If you want to mention specific links we can take a look at what happened there. Without links, though, a comment like this doesn't add much information. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21685327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21685327.
- PavlovsCat 7y ago
  I read so many [dead] comments, now it's time to give back and write some \^_\^
zeroes 7y ago
Getting a SIM card in Taiwan also requires a photo taken at the computer (for foreigners) in addition to passport. In HK, you can buy sim for roaming use in mainland and Taiwan without any form of registration.
dangCanGetRaped 7y ago
Open war will be the only way to resolve this. It doesn't look like anything less will clamp down on invasive technologies. People will start killing themselves and each other to escape the designs of such bitter hell.

244 points by sahin-boydas 7y ago

dang 7y ago

All: if you comment in this thread, make sure your comments are substantive and that they stay off the nationalistic indignation track. That is all too easy to fall into, and it's off topic here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

jakeogh 7y ago
@dang I sincerely appreciate what you do. Euphemistically, it's not easy. Please consider unflagging: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21679829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21679829 Code is speech.

corporate_shi11 7y ago

When a nation is a superpower, it is able to influence the behavior of weaker states. It will exert its influence for a variety of reasons, but it is inevitable that with power comes the exertion of influence. China will use its power to prop up autocratic regimes across the world and export its technology and methods to make such autocracy possible and sustainable. China represents a threat to global democracy which must be recognized and must be treated as such.

arkitaip 7y ago
I am hoping that the EU can devise a plan to fight China ever-increasing threats to democracy AND re-introduce manufacturing as a strong industry in all of the Union. It's obvious that individual European counties simply cannot withstand China on their own.
- petre 7y ago
  The EU is too slow to react, lots of disagreement, lots of debating.
vezycash 7y ago
It's probably going to supply the tech if Nigeria's social media bill passes - Death penalty for 'Hate Speech' on social media.
whoevercares 7y ago
Just saying, historically Han ethnicity is pretty bad at expansion and exert influence overseas otherwise WWIII would happen many years ago. Of course no one knows if that’ll change as China rises in modern age
- eznoonze 7y ago
  They will fail, but not without lots of damage to the world and themselves. All thanks to Xi Jinping's expansionist ambition.
  - azinman2 7y ago
    Why will they fail? So far they’ve been executing pretty well for the past 20-30 years...
    - eznoonze 7y ago
      Past 20-30 years as you said. Past performance is not a guarantee of future success. They don't have the same officials now as they did for the past few decades. Check out who the current ruler is and its background. This guy is a hardcore dictator who doesn't want to listen to any idea beside his own. And he's only got an elementary education. That's a recipe for failure.
      - whoevercares 7y ago
        I have to agree with you. All leaders before him are pretty well educated for their time being.
      - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
        From Wikipedia: > From 1975 to 1979, Xi studied chemical engineering at Beijing's Tsinghua University as a "Worker-Peasant-Soldier student". The engineering majors there spent about 15 percent of their time studying Marxism–Leninism–Mao Zedong thought and 5 percent of their time doing farm work and "learning from the People's Liberation Army". So, university education in chemical engineering, with 20% political content. Still, not "only an elementary education".
eznoonze 7y ago
Not just propping up autocratic regimes, but they also infiltrate democratic countries by providing funding/support to naive and/or corrupted politicians in the West.
braythwayt 7y ago
Without agreeing or disagreeing with them, we should accept that people have said exactly the same things about the USA, about the Soviet Union, about Russia, about Britain... And on and on. I am not trying to play “whatabout,” but I do ask: Is there anything different about China’s behaviour as a superpower? Or are we just seeing a shift in which superpowers have world influence? At the moment I write this, the front page of HN has an article about China and facial recognition... But also an article about US schools monitoring student emails. Which seems to me like training a generation of citizens to understand that they live in a prison without walls.
- kiba 7y ago
  US schools is about certain school districts, not national policies.
  - braythwayt 7y ago
    “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” —Dr. Martin Luther King, Letter from Birmingham Jail. https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/documents/Letter_Birmingham_Jail.pdf https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/documents/Letter_Birmingham_Jail...
    - corporate_shi11 7y ago
      You miss the point of the comment. Comparing the CCP federal structure to a local school district is a laughably inappropriate comparison.
- corporate_shi11 7y ago
  I think comparisons like this ignore something fundamental, which is the values that both countries champion. The USA is a democracy and has by and large championed democracy around the world. China is ruled by a 1974 style dictatorship, a country ruled by a single Party not the rule of law. Comparisons between the US and the CCP conveniently ignore this, yet it is what really matters. Law enforcement will always exist in a nation of laws, yet the simple fact that law enforcement exists both in a dictatorship and in a democracy does not lead us to conclude democracy and dictatorship exist on an equal moral footing. The underlying values matter.
oefrha 7y ago
I can think of another superpower that’s been propping up “democratic” regimes across the world, not hypothetically, but for decades. (Apparently dang won’t like this comment, and rightly so, so this will be my last comment on this thread.)
- corporate_shi11 7y ago
  America has been a champion for real democracies across the world for decades. It has propped up autocracies in the past, but those pale in comparison to its global support for democracy.
  - take_a_breath 7y ago
    America has also disposed of plenty of democratically-elected regimes (Panama, Iran, Chile, Guatemala, Brazil, etc.). I’m not sure who gets to determine if that ”pales in comparison” to its support of other democracies, but it did happen.
    - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
      Sure it did, and it's a shame to the US that it happened. But the US did also prop up democratic regimes. Now, in contrast, China and Russia... did they ever help democracy, anywhere?

givinguflac 7y ago

When I was younger I wanted to visit China. Currently I have no plans to ever do so, China is a scary country.

EliRivers 7y ago
You're not the first person recently to express such. Have you considered "the other China"; Taiwan? It has much of what you might have hoped to find in PRC (depending on what you were hoping to find there), and perhaps lacks some of what you might not like.
dang 7y ago
Ok, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN, and definitely not nationalistic flamebait. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- serf 7y ago
  I think 'nationalistic flamebait' should be better defined; as time goes on it feels as if any negative comment about any world power is being pigeon-holed into that category, and I think that's incorrect. It's important to talk about the worlds' woes. Shining light onto issues is how they're resolved. This thread's topic is about yet another step to reduce anonymity in China. This trend of full-disclosure with regards to any kind of society move ( getting a cell phone, paying a bill, boarding a bus, etc ) IS scary, regardless of the country that employs it. Lots of countries, not excluding China, have terrible human rights violations that need to be talked about. These kind of issues do make the place a scary proposition to visit for foreigners and tourists -- and furthermore I share the commenters opinion; as a younger person I wanted to travel around China, as an older person who has witnessed recent events, I no longer want to. It's not flamebait, and it's relevant to the thread; these kind of societal decisions sway tourists like myself away from your coutry, regardless of which country it may be. Can't we reserve 'nationalistic flamebait' for the really ludicrous and racist comments that float around the nation-based threads, rather than the useless anecdotes?
  - 7y ago

tanilama 7y ago

Does this affect foreigners? If I have a AT&T plan, it should work out-of-box in China via roaming? Hope that is the case...

seanmcdirmid 7y ago
Phone plans from outside don’t roam easily in China, and its super cheap to just by a local China mobile SIM, so most people don’t bother. Well, now it might be a bit more difficult, but typically foreigners just need their passports to get one.
ComputerGuru 7y ago
Verizon TravelPass covers China for $10/day
z2 7y ago
Always roam when in China for short trips. The way cellular networks work is that roaming plans tend to route back home, so that your access is unfiltered. The plan could affect foreigners but it was hard for years already, in that most cellular stores require a Chinese ID to register monthly service (not all take passports). I used to get the salesperson or security guard to lend their ID in my stead, and this is exactly what this policy seems designed to prevent. Hotels and train stations have operated under facial authentication for a couple of years too for Chinese nationals. This seems to be along the same vein, to ensure the person is who the ID says they are. In other words, it's handing over the ID-checking from a person to an awkward police-sanctioned box.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  The China Mobile stands in the airport that sell SIMs take passports...you’ll find them in international baggage claim, and also in the terminal. I’ve only successfully roamed with T-mobile on WiFi. Maybe its better now?
  - CharlesColeman 7y ago
    > I’ve only successfully roamed with T-mobile on WiFi. Maybe its better now? I roamed on T-Mobile pretty successfully using a cell connection last year, but I had to buy a $20 1G data pass and some other passes for it to work. It was worth it for the reliable unfiltered internet access. My current T-Mobile One plan was worse for this than my old grandfathered (Select Choice?) plan, which could limp along at 2G speeds out of the box and only needed the data pass for usable speed.

MrBuddyCasino 7y ago

They are already monitoring the chat apps. If you say unseemly things, expect this: https://twitter.com/intypython/status/1200466904734785536?s=21 https://twitter.com/intypython/status/1200466904734785536?s=... Edit: changed link to original source

aldoushuxley001 7y ago
Your video is what I expected it to be, but I didn’t think it was going to be that bad. This is the cultural revolution all over again
analyst74 7y ago
This looks horrible, is it confirmed to be true? Why would HK police release video like that, I imagine they would like to keep the interrogations and tortures under the radar?
- CharlesColeman 7y ago
  > Why would HK police release video like that I get the impression that the video is from the mainland, not Hong Kong. The device he's strapped in looks like a "tiger chair": https://www.news.com.au/world/asia/tiger-chair-sick-torture-tactics-in-chinese-prisons/news-story/c6681dd9adc7a45ac7681d18d5af5816 https://www.news.com.au/world/asia/tiger-chair-sick-torture-... Edit: I was looking for a better version of this video on youtube. I couldn't find one, but I did find this English Agence France-Presse story that answers the question of why they'd release a video like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8PgCUap1Vg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8PgCUap1Vg
- bryanrasmussen 7y ago
  The problem with releasing a video is the outrage it provokes. The benefit of releasing a video is the fear it provokes. Not saying this is the case here, but obviously if you calculate outrage cannot grow substantially greater than it already is, might as well try provoking some fear. Of course it might very well be false, this is just my idea as to why someone might release it if real.
7y ago

elliotlee 7y ago

I searched for the law. They need a photo id for a new phone number to reduce phone scams. I think it is good.

stri8ed 7y ago
Spammers don't use cell phones to make their calls. Most often they just spoof calls using random peoples phone numbers. This would have no effect on spam calls. (I assume you mean phone-spam when you say phone scam?) Not to be paranoid, but you really created a HN account just to add this comment?
- throw476543 7y ago
  I’m not the person you asked, but I create throwaway accounts when commenting on sensitive topics so I don’t get harassed irl and since you can’t delete accounts on HN.
EpicEng 7y ago
Oh, look; a brand spanking new HN account backing China on this one! Yes, why would it be bad news for an authoritarian government to strengthen its hold on its people. Those spam calls are so annoying! BTW, those spammers aren't sitting there on cell phones making calls.
- dang 7y ago
  You can't attack a new user like that, regardless of how strongly you disagree with them. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here. The damage of punishing someone innocent is orders of magnitude greater than the benefit (or pleasure) of scourging villains, so please err on the side of being a welcoming community member. The last thing HN needs is to stew in its own juices with "Keep Out" signs nailed to the clubhouse everywhere.
  - EpicEng 7y ago

CalChris 7y ago

Are we any different? I want to think so but drivers licenses and passports are scanned photos. The California DMV even sells this information.

jariel 7y ago
Yes, 'we' are very objectively very different. The motivations, objectives and operational realities of DL's and Passports are all fundamentally different. Even the DMV's sale of data, however unseemly, is in a different category of 'questionable'. The most interesting artefact here is not the difference between the systems, but popular notions of moral equivalence among intelligent people.
proc0 7y ago
Just look up videos on youtube of westerners who live in China so that you can easily understand the giant chasm of difference between the cultures and system. Even if CA does something similar, there are ways to keep your privacy protected, especially if you're willing to go out of your way and get a lawyer. In China you're basically owned by the government and good luck trying to find workarounds without feeling like you're a wanted criminal.
- thereare5lights 7y ago
  > especially if you're willing to go out of your way and get a lawyer. That is out of reach for the vast majority of Americans

oh_sigh 7y ago

This doesn't seem much different from Spain, where I need to scan my passport to buy a SIM, and they already have my face on record?

classichasclass 7y ago

Not that there's any moral equivalence, but when I'm in Australia visiting in-laws, I have to provide my passport or similar ID to get my PAYG SIM activated. I just have them swipe it at the airport and my SIM is on in 10 minutes. My wife admits it's a lot easier in the States to get a PAYG SIM; AT&T doesn't care who she is as long as there's money in the account. I'm not sure why Australia does that, but it's really annoying.

aplummer 7y ago
It's to track crimes associated with burner sims. * Not trying to justify it either direction.
- vbezhenar 7y ago
  I wonder does it help? I'm sure that it's easy to find some homeless person, who don't know you and register SIM for his ID.
  - nl 7y ago
    It helps a lot. It isn't for tracking homeless people. It's for building network graphs of calls from burner phones to organised crime people. Most of the time the burners are useless, but once you have a cluster of them you can automatically do data matching on them all, and sometimes (often!) they got lazy on a couple and used the same identities to buy them. Once you have a few using the same identity then you track that identity down. The friction in forcing identification means that lazy criminals at the bottom of the structure at some point forget to do it.
deogeo 7y ago
There absolutely is moral equivalence - they're trying to cut off all means of anonymous communication. It's difficult to get a SIM without providing ID in the EU as well, and you have to provide ID when renting a room. I wish the media were always sensitive to privacy erosion, not just when China does it. I guess using Chinese surveillance tech is a roundabout way of getting them to pay attention, as happened with the Hikvision cameras.

namewasmypw 7y ago

Please don't link to tweets by fascists. The information is valuable so you can link to the original source instead of the tweetspam that gives this shithead exposure.

nerdponx 7y ago
Do you have a link to the original?
dang 7y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21685294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21685294 and marked it off-topic.

gregimba 7y ago

Traveling to Germany I had to provide my passport to get a SIM card. When I was going through customs stateside I had a photo taken with my passport. Not sure if this is the new standard but other countries are implementing the same laws/procedures and while I disagree with china we shouldn't hold them to a different standard than other nations.

Vesuvium 7y ago
There are countries where getting a SIM card always required an ID or passport.
jariel 7y ago
"we shouldn't hold them to a different standard than other nations." We are not. Border security is a legit issue, it's why we have passports in the first place. They are an international standard, almost nobody objects to. A nation has a reasonable right to require ID in order to purchase a SIM, particularly from foreigners. The issue with China is that the 'photo' in question will be used to to train the AI such that they can identify every citizen, at any time, in any situation and control everything about them and their lives at any given moment. The 'double standard', if anything, is the fact that so many things the US decides to do is held up to extreme scrutiny and consternation by anyone, even when there are reasonable grounds, whereas it seems there are so many people interested in applying an ambiguous moral duplicity with China. Particularly among those interested in developing deeper business interests in China ...

walrus01 7y ago

Canadian here: Ezra Levant is far, far right. He was part of the now defunct Sun news Network. This may be a case of a broken clock being right twice a day. He's basically the Canadian version of Breitbart.

MrBuddyCasino 7y ago
Ah too bad. As a European I have never heard of him, and the original source wasn’t linked. Thanks for the heads up. Update: changed link
dang 7y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21685294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21685294 and marked it off-topic.
- MrBuddyCasino 7y ago
  thanks!

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

usaar333 7y ago

I'm confused about the enforcement here. I just bought a temporary sim from https://www.3gsolutions.com.cn https://www.3gsolutions.com.cn (which I've used multiple times before when visiting) and didn't provide any id.

seanmcdirmid 7y ago
That isn’t really unusual for china. Often times, they just introduce a law without any plan on enforcement, and everyone just ignores it until they can’t anymore. It really isn’t a problem as China isn’t a rule of law country, everyone is used to this.
yorwba 7y ago
The SIM you bought was almost certainly registered by an employee of the company. Unless you do something that makes the authorities want to find the person behind your phone number, it's unlikely they'll get in trouble.
- bowmessage 7y ago
  Wow, that’s brazen. Explains how I was able to top up my WeChat wallet through PayPal once before a visit, though.

rpmcmurdo 7y ago

The irony is that the people complaining about this are the same ones who are gleefully sharing their personal details and narrative on social media, and Facebook in particular. The only difference between mass surveillance in the US and China is that 99% of the US population happily opts in or doesn't care.

JPKab 7y ago
I don't disagree with you, but government compulsion makes this a different animal entirely. The bigger context is that in the US, there is SUPPOSED to be a system in which companies can successfully resist government demands (remember that Apple did this to the FBI when they wanted to crack a criminal's phone passcode), whereas in China, that cannot happen. So yes, people give away their data for stupid conveniences, but Facebook/Google etc aren't supposed to share the data with the government. They have done so, as Snowden revealed, so this is by no means a perfect system. What really upsets me about China's system is the bigger system of social credit this ties into. You can't get on flights want your score gets too low. The guy exposing fake martial arts masters isn't allowed to leave the country.
- gruez 7y ago
  > So yes, people give away their data for stupid conveniences, but Facebook/Google etc aren't supposed to share the data with the government. They have done so, as Snowden revealed, so this is by no means a perfect system. Can you elaborate on what you mean by "aren't supposed to"? The phrase sounds like there's a law prohibiting them from giving data to the government. But AFAIK the third party doctrine says you have no expectation of privacy for data that you hand over to third parties, so they're free to hand over data to the government. The only reason they don't is because of possible blowback from customers.
- mindslight 7y ago
  There is much less "government compulsion" in the US, but in its place is still de facto compulsion. In general, comparisons with the US are difficult because in the US large corporations are given the power of defining much of societal policy. Saying that "Facebook/Google etc aren't supposed to share the data with the government" only makes sense in some abstract sense of it wasn't supposed to be like this. But power tends to coalesce - the only "supposed to" is in some abstract moral stewardship sense, a responsibility that has been long forgotten by the business community, if it ever existed in the first place. Facebook/Google want to agglomerate data from the financial surveillance bureaus, and the (nominal) government buys the proceeds from both of them in a "free market" transaction. And then on the output/control side, companies use these surveillance databases to weed out "undesirable" customers, with their competitors following in lock step lest they end up with even more undesirables.

ParanoidShroom 7y ago

Registering a sim card in Vietnam also requires your photo to be taken. Is this an Asia thing ?

dogma1138 7y ago
When I bought a prepaid SIM card in Germany a few years ago they took a photocopy if my passport is not quite.
em500 7y ago
It's not an Asia thing: https://prepaid-data-sim-card.fandom.com/wiki/Registration_Policies_Per_Country https://prepaid-data-sim-card.fandom.com/wiki/Registration_P...
vbezhenar 7y ago
Kazakhstan implemented identification for SIM cards few years ago, just ID, no photo. Also recently it implemented identification for IMEI numbers as well. I'm not sure why, apparently they want to fight phone stealing, but I'm not very convinced.

proc0 7y ago

I feel there are rising tensions in China between their pseudo-free market and their apparent attempts at controlling and micro-managing the lives of their people. It would seem the rise of their consumer economy would also give rise to a demand for more freedom on a day to day basis to allow for innovation. It's interesting to see China going simultaneously in both contradicting directions.

asdff 7y ago
I can't imagine the cognitive dissonance required to go to university in the U.S. for 4 years then return to China after being exposed to uncensored media.

crazygringo 7y ago

The title sounds intentionally provocative -- "face scanned" appears to be just "have their photo taken". I can't find a single source that suggests anything more than that. Which isn't much different from having your photo taken for your driver's license, passport, or at the border, all of which the US does. Burner phones are mostly associated with criminal activity, so tying phones to identities feels like a legitimate function -- which many countries do. And if criminals are trying to register phones through identity theft, this seems like it would be an additional protection. If you're concerned with privacy, that's what encrypted communications are for, and if you don't want to be tracked by radio, then don't take any phone with you.

anigbrowl 7y ago
It would be valuable for technologists to be mindful of the difference between explanation and exhortation, lest they be seen as shifting the moral/legal burden for the operation of a social system entirely onto the shoulders of the individual users who have the least control over it.
dang 7y ago
Ok, we've put "photo taken" in the title above. Thanks.
- kevcampb 7y ago
  It's not "photo taken" https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/12/02/china-tightens-cyberspace-controls-introducing-mandatory-face-scans-phone-users https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/12/02/china-tightens-cybersp... A China Unicom customer service representative told AFP that the December 1 “portrait matching” requirement means customers registering for a new phone number may have to record themselves turning their head and blinking.
  - dang 7y ago
    Thanks—that's a better article. I've switched to the AFP version of it. (Submitted URL was https://www.technologyreview.com/f/614781/all-new-cellphone-users-in-china-must-now-have-their-face-scanned/. https://www.technologyreview.com/f/614781/all-new-cellphone-...) Reading it closely, though, the evidence on the face-scanning point seems weak. The source is a customer service representative who said may. That's two weak points: a customer service representative is not who you'd normally ask about policy, and "may" also means "may not". Also, that's the only thing that particular source is quoted about. I'm not sure what to do, because there doesn't seem to be anything unambiguous in the English-language press. All the articles I've looked are reporting on the same directive that was issued in Sept and took effect Dec 1. So I guess we'll quote the directive in the title above. If anyone can suggest a more accurate title we can change it again.

epx 7y ago

In Brazil, was taken a face picture when lost a phone and had to get a new SIM card, no change in number or contract.

stelonix 7y ago

Thank you! The amount of anti-China jingoist sentiment these past months has been unbearable for anyone who does not share a bipolar world view. EDIT: "bipolar" as in "us vs them"

deleted 7y ago
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dang 7y ago
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21685327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21685327 and marked it off-topic.

Erwin 7y ago

SIM cards bought in Italy have long required showing photo ID in person and also some kind of SSN like number used for various financial transactions. I needed to acquire that fiscal SSN when buying wine from an Italian web shop but weirdly it's a computed value, not a unique ID you get from some organization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_fiscal_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_fiscal_code

ryannevius 7y ago
Aside: While there are services that will generate a Codice fiscale that fits the format of what the government will issue, the legal path requires visiting the Agenzia Delle Entrate.
frollo 7y ago
The Codice Fiscale is supposed to be a unique value you get from the State (via the Agenzia delle Entrate), but the whole system is so outdated and badly designed that most websites just check that the inserted code corresponds to the data you inserted.
qxnqd 7y ago
SIM cards bought in Spain require you to show your ID card, which means the authorities can link such SIM to your name, your face, and your fingerprints.
- int_19h 7y ago
  It's very common around the world in general. That doesn't make it right, of course - it just means that the surveillance state is more widespread than commonly assumed.

azifali 7y ago

All cellphone users in India also have their biometrics (Aadhar) linked to their phone numbers.. This has been a requirement for a while now..

throw476543 7y ago

At first I got the impression a photo was required when buying a new cellphone, but this appears to be just for new numbers. China already requires an ID to get a number, so I don’t see how requiring a photo will help them track people even more? Maybe it gives them an updated photo? However, if you don’t get a new number every few years, then it’s useless. My own country requires a photo ID to get a number and I’ve been to several other countries that do as well. I guess I’m just used to it now. Similar to how we put our photos on resumes, but my American friends were shocked by that.

officeplant 7y ago
Photo's on a resume is still a pretty strange request in America because it factors into possible discrimination. However identification is required in the US only when starting a contract phone servie (for Credit inquiries). If you don't want your name attached to the phone number it has to be prepaid. Which always made me chuckle considering the two most common people to give us obviously fake names for prepaid phones were drug dealers and police. I've had days working in phone retail where someone came in and started a prepaid line under "John Doe" and paid for it out of a roll of 100's in their sock. Then an hour later I've got an officer in uniform handing me a name and address he needs put on a cheap burner prepaid phone.
yorwba 7y ago
> China already requires an ID to get a number, so I don’t see how requiring a photo will help them track people even more? If the photo taken to get the number doesn't match the photo on file for the ID, they can now blame the seller. That creates an incentive for the seller to actually check the ID.

mytailorisrich 7y ago

China has been requiring IDs to buy SIM card for at least 20 years. Chinese also already have ID cards, 'hukou' (a sort of domestic passport), etc. so I would imagine that the government already has everyone's face on record. Thus, this seems about enforcing the requirement to provide ID when buying a SIM, because enforcement of rules can be problematic in China. Which reminds me... They are (obviously?) having problems collecting sales tax. So at one point they are issuing formal receipts as vouchers that eg. restaurants had to buy form the tax office. A sort of advance payment. When a customer asked for a receipt the restaurant gave them a number of these vouchers. The smart idea is that they had turned these vouchers into scratch cards to encourage people to request a receipt...

brndnmg 7y ago

In South Africa we have had to abide by FICA act for many years already, months of bank statements, identity document, proof of address etc., there has already been abuses of this information to identify corruption leaks to reporters...

dfcagency 7y ago

I had to provide a passport to purchase a throwaway T-Mobile data SIM in Germany. Seems normal to me.

s9w 7y ago

In Germany you can't have a SIM card without registration (address, ID and everything).

NedIsakoff 7y ago

I live in China for over 10 years and I don't see the purpose of this. Remember that this doesn't apply to roaming users or people buying Travel SIM for China, but those people are not a big worry. To get a SIM card right now in China you need to have valid identification. The only ones that are acceptable are: 1) China Resident Identity Card; or 2) non-Chinese passport. Both of these already have photos.

deleted 7y ago

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devy 7y ago

Just offering another perspective than most others had done here: I grew up in China and have been in China a few times in the past 10 years - the amount of Robocalls and phone scams was overwhelming (in fact, it was so bad that dual SIM mobile phones became popular because you can have a disposable SIM card for non-essential website registrations and one for family members that you keep private use). I had my identity stolen after somehow I went into China Mobile pop-up service storefront in PEK airport to get a local SIM card. People on the line on my back was so close to the counter and peeking application forms with all sorts of private data, which made me very uncomfortable. There are also organized gangs that are operating in selling people's private identity data like mobile phone numbers. Later it made sense how my identify was stolen in retrospect. Also, mobile phone number is essentially Chinese citizen's digital identity in a way in that 99% of the website/online services use mobile phone number instead of emails for authentications and 2FA. It's nearly impossible to sign up for any Chinese website without giving your mobile phone number to complete the sign up. Given China's mobile-centric Internet boom, the amount of phone scams and frauds and identity thefts going on and all businesses (including financial institutions) are relying heavily on, it's a reasonably measure to counter fraud with real identity tying in with mobile phone number issuance. So no I don't think it's a political motivated move, even though the side effect is making the abuse much more convenient.

Enginerrrd 7y ago
>It's nearly impossible to sign up for any Chinese website without giving your mobile phone number to complete the sign up. No wonder the robocalls and phone scams are overwhelming.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  It's essentially the equivalent to western use of e-mail addresses, and e-mail spam was solved by a combination of technical hurdles, deep message inspection, bayesian statistics and penalization of anonymity.
  - Enginerrrd 7y ago

gruez 7y ago

for point of comparison: map of European countries that require ID to buy prepaid sim cards[1], worldwide list[2] [1] https://i.imgur.com/cCFX1wC.jpg https://i.imgur.com/cCFX1wC.jpg [2] https://prepaid-data-sim-card.fandom.com/wiki/Registration_Policies_Per_Country https://prepaid-data-sim-card.fandom.com/wiki/Registration_P...

x__x 7y ago
It's been 10+ years since I signed up for a cell phone. What is required today when you get a new account at the major carriers today in the US?
- dylz 7y ago
  SSN and hard pull at all postpaid carriers, even if you bring your own phone. Most major[0] stores I've seen check ID at checkout time before activating a prepaid SIM. [0] Go to any immigrant-dense area, look for a corner store, and you can probably just top up in cash and ignore this.

bllguo 7y ago

China's decisions are easy to understand if you grok the underlying motives. HN should know better than most how things become more difficult at scale. Governance at China's scale is a different beast. Clearly the way the CCP is tackling it is by prioritizing efficiency and the good of the whole, over individuals and personal liberties. If you want to effect change then think about how you might make a case against that philosophy. The west certainly isn't doing a good job right now. Not sure if democracy has ever looked worse than it does today.

wait_a_minute 7y ago
Tiananmen Square 1989, comrade
kerakaali 7y ago
I feel it's important to make reference to primary material [0] to bring more attention to CCP goals. It certainly helped me in becoming aware of their actions as another major state actor. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_Number_Nine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_Number_Nine

devy 7y ago

Interestingly, there is another post about a tangential topic about privacy and data collection. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21684708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21684708

EGreg 7y ago

I already wrote about this in the past and assumed it was the case in the USA. Hard to get a burner phone in person these days. As long as our infrastructure is run by centralized or federated organizations, this is what will be the case. I suggested sending in homeless people to get the phone if it’s a prepaid one. But more to the point, if you want anonymity in such a regime, you have to commandeer other people’s accounts and hope they don’t get in trouble. This is what botnets do, etc. But you may be able to use payphones or libraries or hotel phones etc. as long as you cover your face, fake your gait etc. and even that may not be enough when we are talking about heartbeat signatures, infrared signatures and so on. Timing attacks, style of writing analysis etc. can also be used to easily out someone these days. Anonymity is quite fragile. Read more about the mechanics here... it goes back to the Digital Imprimatur of 2003 which started it all for me http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=114 http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=114

Shivetya 7y ago

I am not going to defend it nor denounce it. Having reread Oath of Fealty recently I am really of the belief it won't be long before we end up with heavily monitored enclaves simply out of a desire of many to not put one thought into their own safety and security if surrounded by like minded individuals who all give up privacy in order to guarantee the safety and security of the group. All the photo apps today that are associated with youth involve many many pictures of themselves they tag with identifiable information so it is not a big leap to think that this level of privacy is not something they consider a big deal. To them their image is their identity and they want to be recognized. Privacy would only mean protecting what they chose not to make public. There certainly is this odd occurrence where we have many denouncing loss of privacy who at the same time ask the government to do more for them which requires giving up more information to more groups. It really comes down to, which items of your identity are public and private. your image certainly is public and why would you in any sane society be afraid of that association?

aaron695 7y ago

Interesting, slightly credible claim they got caught jaywalking through facial recognition and had their account automatically deducted with a fine. They are unsure how - https://youtu.be/taZJblMAuko?t=1535 https://youtu.be/taZJblMAuko?t=1535

2OEH8eoCRo0 7y ago

I've had past accounts shadow banned for what I assume is posting in threads like this.

dang 7y ago
If you want to mention specific links we can take a look at what happened there. Without links, though, a comment like this doesn't add much information. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21685327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21685327.
PavlovsCat 7y ago
I read so many [dead] comments, now it's time to give back and write some \^_\^

zeroes 7y ago

Getting a SIM card in Taiwan also requires a photo taken at the computer (for foreigners) in addition to passport. In HK, you can buy sim for roaming use in mainland and Taiwan without any form of registration.

dangCanGetRaped 7y ago

Open war will be the only way to resolve this. It doesn't look like anything less will clamp down on invasive technologies. People will start killing themselves and each other to escape the designs of such bitter hell.