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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

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.
- mytailorisrich 7y ago
  Having a requirement to link a SIM to an individual is not privacy erosion. It does not mean that usage is monitored, and usage is the important privacy aspect. Furthermore, this just puts mobile phones on par with landlines. It used to be that having a phone meant having a landline at home, and obviously that meant knowing exactly who a number belonged to. There needs to be a balance for everything in the real world. And even most Western countries have concluded that requiring IDs for SIM cards is a necessary measure. Now, for Chinese authorities one issue (without even going into politics) is that China is a very low trust society where it is almost expected that everyone will flaunt the rules at the first opportunity. So I am half guessing that the government sees technological solutions as a way around that. (As for renting a room, it would be crazy for a landlord not to know who their tenant is just for practical reasons considering land and tenancy laws in most EU countries)
  - throw476543 7y ago
    I feel anonymity is a part of privacy, and anything that limits anonymity also affects privacy.
  - jen20 7y ago
    > It does not mean that usage is monitored, and usage is the important privacy aspect. I think one would have to be especially naive to believe that an ID requirement is in place without any provision for usage monitoring.
    - mytailorisrich 7y ago
      Do you think someone is monitoring your landline?
      - StanislavPetrov 7y ago
        It is absolutely beyond dispute that all communications are being monitored at all times by a variety of government and non-governmental agencies. Being forced to link your identity to these communications is yet another step down towards absolute tyranny (and we are already near the bottom step).
grecy 7y ago
I just drove around Africa, and I bought a pre-paid SIM in about 30 different countries. Every single one of them required a copy of my passport.
- dbspin 7y ago
  Interesting. Absolutely not needed in Ireland.
- antpls 7y ago
  In Africa, aren't phone often used to make financial transactions ? It would make sense to have a bit more security in that case, maybe
- sudosysgen 7y ago
  In Morocco at least they do ask for your passport if you want free or discounted cell service, but you can always go to a corner store and just get a Sim card from there.
  - grecy 7y ago
    Sure, and it stops working a few days later. I had that happen a few times, then stopped buying SIM cards from random people on the street (or corner stores) and so would go into the actual carrier store (MTN or whatever)
    - sudosysgen 7y ago
      Well, at least in Morocco when I lived there I got my SIM card from the corner store and used it for a good year and a half.
skissane 7y ago
> I'm not sure why Australia does that, but it's really annoying. Suppose you buy a PAYG SIM, and then use it to make death threats or bomb hoax calls. Easy for the police to track you down and arrest you. (Of course, they still could using other means, like geolocation, but that could be a lot more work.) And, of course, it isn't foolproof – one could use a fake ID, one could pay some random poor person to buy it for you using their ID, etc – but, the kind of people who make death threats or bomb hoaxes usually aren't very smart.
eastendguy 7y ago
Showing a password vs getting your face scans taken and stored in a gigantic face recognition library is a gigantic difference. Once the state has your biometrics stored, you can be ID'ed without you noticing, e. g. as you walk around the city.
- owenmarshall 7y ago
  Australia - like many countries - collects fingerprints and photographs from certain groups either when you get your visa or when you enter the country. And I’d be shocked if their entry systems don’t capture 100% of passport photos at the border. I’d be slightly surprised if they don’t additionally correlate passport scans to security photos at the border to further enrich their dataset. Showing your passport is functionally equivalent to getting your picture taken. It ends up as a record in their databases that says John Smith, with these biometrics, purchased a SIM with this number.

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.

mytailorisrich 7y ago
Having a requirement to link a SIM to an individual is not privacy erosion. It does not mean that usage is monitored, and usage is the important privacy aspect. Furthermore, this just puts mobile phones on par with landlines. It used to be that having a phone meant having a landline at home, and obviously that meant knowing exactly who a number belonged to. There needs to be a balance for everything in the real world. And even most Western countries have concluded that requiring IDs for SIM cards is a necessary measure. Now, for Chinese authorities one issue (without even going into politics) is that China is a very low trust society where it is almost expected that everyone will flaunt the rules at the first opportunity. So I am half guessing that the government sees technological solutions as a way around that. (As for renting a room, it would be crazy for a landlord not to know who their tenant is just for practical reasons considering land and tenancy laws in most EU countries)
- throw476543 7y ago
  I feel anonymity is a part of privacy, and anything that limits anonymity also affects privacy.
- jen20 7y ago
  > It does not mean that usage is monitored, and usage is the important privacy aspect. I think one would have to be especially naive to believe that an ID requirement is in place without any provision for usage monitoring.
  - mytailorisrich 7y ago
    Do you think someone is monitoring your landline?
    - StanislavPetrov 7y ago
      It is absolutely beyond dispute that all communications are being monitored at all times by a variety of government and non-governmental agencies. Being forced to link your identity to these communications is yet another step down towards absolute tyranny (and we are already near the bottom step).

grecy 7y ago

I just drove around Africa, and I bought a pre-paid SIM in about 30 different countries. Every single one of them required a copy of my passport.

dbspin 7y ago
Interesting. Absolutely not needed in Ireland.
antpls 7y ago
In Africa, aren't phone often used to make financial transactions ? It would make sense to have a bit more security in that case, maybe
sudosysgen 7y ago
In Morocco at least they do ask for your passport if you want free or discounted cell service, but you can always go to a corner store and just get a Sim card from there.
- grecy 7y ago
  Sure, and it stops working a few days later. I had that happen a few times, then stopped buying SIM cards from random people on the street (or corner stores) and so would go into the actual carrier store (MTN or whatever)
  - sudosysgen 7y ago
    Well, at least in Morocco when I lived there I got my SIM card from the corner store and used it for a good year and a half.

skissane 7y ago

> I'm not sure why Australia does that, but it's really annoying. Suppose you buy a PAYG SIM, and then use it to make death threats or bomb hoax calls. Easy for the police to track you down and arrest you. (Of course, they still could using other means, like geolocation, but that could be a lot more work.) And, of course, it isn't foolproof – one could use a fake ID, one could pay some random poor person to buy it for you using their ID, etc – but, the kind of people who make death threats or bomb hoaxes usually aren't very smart.

eastendguy 7y ago

Showing a password vs getting your face scans taken and stored in a gigantic face recognition library is a gigantic difference. Once the state has your biometrics stored, you can be ID'ed without you noticing, e. g. as you walk around the city.

owenmarshall 7y ago
Australia - like many countries - collects fingerprints and photographs from certain groups either when you get your visa or when you enter the country. And I’d be shocked if their entry systems don’t capture 100% of passport photos at the border. I’d be slightly surprised if they don’t additionally correlate passport scans to security photos at the border to further enrich their dataset. Showing your passport is functionally equivalent to getting your picture taken. It ends up as a record in their databases that says John Smith, with these biometrics, purchased a SIM with this number.