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FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs
https://archive.is/ZobUQ https://archive.is/ZobUQ
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- dkdbejwi383 4mo agoThis is how it works in Australia, which means it's a pain for tourists as you need to provide a passport for ID and get it activated, as opposed to just grabbing one at an airport kiosk and being ready to go on your way to the taxi or train like most other places.
- mc32 4mo agoDon’t eSIMs solve this problem for tourists?
- nickphx 4mo agoOnly if you do not require voice service.
- naturalmovement 4mo agoApple — and now Google — have "solved" this problem for the government by removing physical SIM slots in US iPhones.
- TylerE 4mo agoThus eSIM
- vfclists 4mo agoDoesn't an eSIM link the SIM to the phone's IMEI which is usually logged somewhere?
- ezfe 4mo agoYes, eSIM doesn't really change this conversation
- ezfe 4mo agoeSIM doesn't change local laws around cell phones - it's not magic.
- RankingMember 4mo agoYep, they'll still prompt for the info.
- lmz 4mo agoIt can if it's a roaming eSIM. I'm sure all the countries mentioned here e.g. Australia still handles US SIMs roaming there fine even when the US SIM dossn't have ID tied to it.
- ezfe 4mo agoA roaming eSIM would work the same way as a roaming SIM. Just because it's easier to set up (no need to get a physical SIM) doesn't change the regulations around it.
- lmz 4mo agoI suppose this depends on how the law is written, but are roaming users subject to local SIM regulations for network use? I can't imagine asking for ID from tourists using their existing SIMs is going to work. I believe some travel eSIMs are actually issued from outside the country you're going to.
- morpheuskafka 4mo agoTypically not. Because they don't have local phone numbers nor IP addresses, so they cannot be used for scams or fake identities domestically. In China, roaming SIMs also bypass all internet filtering, it's basically a built in VPN back to your home telecom. And as you said, ones marketed as "China travel SIMs" are typically issued from Hong Kong. Interestingly, Hong Kong also has an ID rule (though it allows self upload of ID anyway), but it exempts these roaming-only cards. If you want the card to work in HK, and it is issued from there, you must scan your passport to activate it.
- izacus 4mo agoIn what way? Activating it still needs KYC.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 4mo agoWhat problem were they hoping to solve with that legislation?
- redsocksfan45 4mo ago[dead]
- logicchains 4mo agoThe problem of citizens having anonymous internet connectivity.
- rusk 4mo agoThe free anonymous internet was only ever a ruse to get people to use it so the CIA could spy on them. DARPA, folks, created a “free as in beer” global surveillance network and we all bought it. Not that we didn’t get anything in return but the idea that the worlds foremost military industrial complex just gave this to the world because they loved us is laughable.
- chopin 4mo agoThat's an illusion. Two days of location data and you can pin down the owner pretty well. I thought about getting a SIM when Germany was about to introduce ID requirements. I quickly realized this being a moot point.
- naturalmovement 4mo ago> like most other places Much of EU requires ID for some time now. France is a bit strange, requires registration after 23 days or something. Germany, Italy, Spain it's basically impossible. The US is rather unique in that it does not require registration.
- joxdosba 4mo agoHuh? At least in Germany, Spain and France all of the smaller shops fill in fake info without even asking. EU countries have had these requirements for years and years and never moved to actually enforce them.
- naturalmovement 4mo agoI wasn't taking blatant fraud into account. I'm sure that's possible everywhere. I'd bet you can buy cigarettes without the tax stamps in the same shop too. Last I traveled the shop required a passport or uploading one to get an eSIM ahead of time.
- joxdosba 4mo agoSure, but if you’re a tourist in e.g. Barcelona trying to get a prepaid SIM, odds are the shopkeeper will not ask you for your ID despite being required to. > Last I traveled the shop required a passport or uploading one to get an eSIM ahead of time. Sounds like you went to a carrier boutique and not one of the million independent shops.
- lifestyleguru 4mo agoNot a good example. In Spain they notoriously demand id/passport and make photo or copy of it, they do it "for the police".
- joxdosba 4mo agoThat’s the legal requirement yes, I’ve never seen a shop insist on it. Most of them have autofill scripts for the KYC forms.
- dgellow 4mo agoI mean. It’s the same, you just have to show your passport and fill a form. It takes 1minute to get it done, you can do it on your way to the taxi if you want. Though e-sim are more practical now
- mothballed 4mo agoI wonder what exactly are they hoping to achieve then? Anything that can be filled out in 1 minute in a taxi can be spoofed with an extra 30 seconds on the dark net buying dark IDs. So this does less than zero for crime, actually encourages more of it, while doing what exactly? It's madness.
- nemomarx 4mo agoWho says anything about crime? the goal is just so they can associate phone numbers with id cards in some fashion right? If they want to know what tourists are posting about their country that's good enough.
- voakbasda 4mo agoLike so many laws, nothing to do with stopping crime, but an obvious push to strip the populace of its rights.
- philistine 4mo agoYou do not have the right to a phone number without providing ID. If you're an American, those unwritten rights that come from other firm rights written down in laws and constitutions can always be argued, they're always being whittled down. Rights for everyone are achieved through blood and toil, and if you truly want a right to anonymity and the digital tools necessary to achieve it, you will need blood and toil. Until then, we'll have to squeeze through fast developments that governments have yet to address.
- mothballed 4mo ago"Law enforcement" and national security is given as the verbatim headline justification when you reference Australia's Communication and Media Authority[] for rules on ID collection. Carriers and carriage service providers (CSPs) must help law enforcement and national security agencies. ... You must verify a customer's identity before you activate a prepaid mobile phone service. You can do this when the customer buys the service or when they try to activate it. The Determination on identity checks for prepaid mobiles lists the ways you can check a customer's identity. Unfortunately I can't dig up the original debate from 1997 on the Telecommunications Act when the requirement appears to have been introduced. Would be shocked if it did not include similar language from the representatives shilling the requirement, though. [] https://www.acma.gov.au/support-law-enforcement-and-security-agencies https://www.acma.gov.au/support-law-enforcement-and-security...
- LawnGnome 4mo agoHas this changed recently? I thought I heard about this several years ago, but the last 2-3 times I've visited (in the last couple of years) I've been able to pick up a prepaid SIM from Colesworth without any ID check.
- ibejoeb 4mo agoIt has been like that for at least 8 years, and probably longer. There are still stalls at airports, but you must provide ID.
- byhemechi 4mo agoYou can buy the SIM but can’t activate it without going through ID checks.
- timando 4mo agoIt used to be that you did the ID check when you bought the SIM, but now you have to do the ID check when you activate it.
- tarinedier 4mo agoIt's been like this since at least the late 90s, I remember having to fill out the paperwork manually when working at Target
- flashman 4mo agoThe current ID verification requirements for phones were introduced to Australia in 1997
- MarkusWandel 4mo agoSomewhat recently, tried to activate a SIM for a guest here in Canada, and while you could fill in anything you want for personal info, the only way to hook up (prepaid) billing was with a Canadian credit card number. Whoops. This was only for a month, so I put in mine and he reimbursed me in cash. Other carriers may still let you buy one-time payment cards for cash at retail; this one didn't.
- willhslade 4mo agoI think this is where Airalo shines. I've used it while travelling and I think eSIMs, as annoying as they are, are the way.
- buellerbueller 4mo agoI just tried a GigSky eSim on my Samsung Galaxy and it was an epic fail of an experience.
- hinata08 4mo agothese "travel sims" are pricey ! You get better deals with local carriers if you actually use the potential of eSIM, which is to be able to switch ! Every other carrier in most parts of the world now supply eSIMs that you can sometimes activate from home before your trip Canada has Lucky Mobile, central Europe has A1 mobile, France and Portugal have Lycamobile, Italy has Windtre, UK has no service,... Getting a SIM is typically the thing on which you can save 20$ just by asking a local person
- hinata08 4mo agoHaving a friend who lends you their credit card so that you pay it off at the end of your trip is such a premium ! Canada isn't the only country in which foreign cards don't work everywhere, and it seems like it's rarely tested
- thaumasiotes 4mo ago> This is how it works in Australia, which means it's a pain for tourists as you need to provide a passport for ID and get it activated, as opposed to just grabbing one at an airport kiosk and being ready to go I don't see the connection. This is also how it works in China, which means... when you grab a SIM card at an airport kiosk, they take a picture of your passport. You obviously have your passport with you, because you just arrived in China and haven't left the airport yet. What part of that isn't also true of Australia?
- garyfirestorm 4mo agoIsn’t this already a requirement? Can you really buy a burner phone/sim without providing identifying information?
- dgellow 4mo agoIn the US you can buy a SIM card and activate without providing any information at the airport. At least in NYC. I was really surprised the first time
- kgwxd 4mo agoWhy were you surprised?
- ImJamal 4mo agoNot who you were responding to, but most of the western world requires IDs already. The US is an outlier on this issue.
- kayo_20211030 4mo agoI don't think that's true. At least not in the European countries I visit.
- dgellow 4mo agoIt’s a EU wide requirement
- kayo_20211030 4mo agoI dunno. I can go to Tesco in Ireland and the UK (fine, UK is not EU no more, but still Europe) and get a sim without ID.
- hnav 4mo ago
- josefritzishere 4mo agoSeems like classic regulatory overreach.
- sonorous_sub 4mo ago[flagged]
- Terr_ 4mo agoI want to believe this is just a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference [0]... but I fear that might be too-optimistic. [0] The profession of Telephone Sanitiser on planet Golgafrincham.
- aaomidi 4mo agoThis is the pathway Iran is using to provide tiered internet btw. Just putting it out there on how quickly this tech turned against the population.
- standardUser 4mo agoThe Trump administration has been working overtime trying to build databases of people in this country. Leaving no stone unturned, legal or otherwise. I vaguely remember a time when American conservatives were against precisely this, often as a first principle. Maybe that's just an idealized memory on my part.
- kgwxd 4mo agoSpoiler: They were never against it, just biding their time.
- bl4kers 4mo agoYep, just in different flavors based on ideology. For example, forced labor requires logging & tracking of pregnancies. Anti-trans folks want gender identity on the books to gatekeep who can teach in schools or enter bathrooms. Same for preventing same-sex marriage. Folks railing against voting rights want more and more checks to prove who you are and where you live
- ethagnawl 4mo agoThe American conservatives who can afford to be are effectively exempted. When they're not flying around on private jets, the ownership and metadata created by their cars, phones, etc. are obfuscated by layers of shell corporations. The other ones are simple and/or deluded and think these sorts of policies won't ever come for _them_. (To their credit, under the current regime they're actually correct about that to a certain extent.)
- rirze 4mo agoFundamentally un-American. That being said, many countries across the world already do this to eliminate burner phones. And many messaging apps require a phone number anyways so this basically locks down anonymous messaging through a phone.
- rockskon 4mo agoWell - it's not exactly a surprise that all these non-American countries engage in un-American practices. It's much more concerning when said practices are undertaken by the U.S. Just because other countries do something isn't a justification to bring the practice into the U.S. despite that being a justification used with increasing prevalence these days.
- cwillu 4mo agoAmerican exceptionalism was always a lie; name an “un-American” practice, and I'll show you a piece of American foreign policy.
- brightball 4mo agoViolations of the US Bill of Rights. Yes they occur. Yes the US does it. Every violation of it should have lost in court already but courts have a way of interpreting things based on their beliefs rather than original intent.
- trumpdong 4mo agoIt's hardly un-American if America does it the most, is it?
- mindslight 4mo agoA lie, or an ideal to try and live up to, depending on the context. In the context of discussing liberty-destroying privacy invasions it's an ideal, and we should not be so quick to dismiss it.
- throwaway27448 4mo agoWe're already forced into the credit bureaus. Into traffic cameras. Into using credit cards and banks. The idea the state would let us actually say things online anonymously (or to each other) is completely unrealistic: we must be tagged and tracked through our lifecycle.
- rusk 4mo agoThey’ll get around to guns eventually …
- greenavocado 4mo agoThey're already trying to regulate the shape of guns to effectively outlaw everything but the bullet.
- rusk 4mo agoHopefully they tax th bejeesus out of bullets too. Who was the comedian “imma gona pop a cap in yo ass, but first imma set up a layaway”
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- bsimpson 4mo agoHere's the link to submit a comment to the FCC: https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filings/express https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filings/express Ran a quick search and found a whole bunch of news articles, but nobody includes info that makes it easy to route your comment. Feels like the beginning of Hitchhiker's Guide: > It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard.
- Hnrobert42 4mo agoI think the filing number is 17-59.
- user3939382 4mo agoOpen to the possibility that I’m just cynical but my faith is very low that these comment processes are anything more than a regulatory requirement for the illusion of due diligence which legitimizes the actual corporate lobbying and security state actually making the policy.
- mothballed 4mo agoI'm nearly certain commenting, at least from my monitoring of commenting on ATF rulemaking, achieves the opposite of what the commenters hope. While there is ~zero chance that commenting can help you, it absolutely is used against you as their lawyers sharpen their claws by crowdsourcing possible sources of challenge and use your comments to predict them and determine how to undermine such positions.
- Hnrobert42 4mo agoI'm pretty sure they don't need comments on the federal site for that. They could get the same from reddit or here for that matter.
- pickleglitch 4mo agoThey require your name and address, so they will have a nice database of anyone who dares voice an objection.
- giantg2 4mo agoMaybe a way around this is for intermediary companies to own the phone that happens to have service and then lease the phone.
- voakbasda 4mo agoAnd with that suggestion, a clause is being added to close that loophole….
- iammrpayments 4mo agoHad to buy one of these SMS activation services from a guy in Nigeria using a memecoin because claude decided to ban my account because they didn’t like my credit card brand and Claude requires sms activation for new accounts. Guess these guys are going to make more money in the near future.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- trumpdong 4mo agoAn SMS activation price is about $0.13 btw, there are several sites that do this commercially with hundreds of thousands of numbers. Not going to name any since that'd be advertising for them.
- OsrsNeedsf2P 4mo agoI thought I was the only one! Not because Claude banned my account (but they did that too), but because OpenAI one day decided I needed a phone number to login, and then proceeded to reject my real one.
- deltoidmaximus 4mo agoWalmart.com recently deleted my phone number from my decade+ old account and refused to let me purchase anything until I coughed one up. When I put my actual number in it told it was no good. Possibly this is because my wife has an account using the same number, which was never a problem until sudden phone numbers only belong to one person I guess? I'm trying to give these guys money. I gave them a google voice number and apparently that satisfied them. Then lost access to the google voice number because I never used it for anything else.
- giancarlostoro 4mo agoI wish they would kill spam calling and texting instead.
- dawnerd 4mo agoBeen getting two a day, clearly some ai voice robo call. We have all this technology yet these spam calls still persist.
- giancarlostoro 4mo ago[dead]
- mrsssnake 4mo agoRegardless of this, I see phone network as a legacy thing that in perfect world should already be replaced with lightweight upgradeable calling protocol over IPv6.
- fc417fc802 4mo agoThis would apply equally to said IP calling network since you'd need a SIM card to access the tower interesting strewn across the country either way.
- dredmorbius 4mo agoWiFi / pure-VOIP based calling should be able to disambiguate between the network and the messaging layers. This means that a given cellular modem wouldn't be traceable to a specific contact, or call history. The modems could be swapped amongst individuals readily. This is similar to the situation that already exists for PSTN voice comms currently: Whatsapp, Signal, Jitsi, or similar voice- or video-messaging systems. They'll run over an arbitrary network, through VPNs, etc. Mind, the major comms-apps/social networks might have their own ID requirements forced on them, but there's far less a capability to keep people from defecting from these. I continue to think that global PSTN networks are pretty close to general collapse, given spam, robocalls, harassment, tracking, and similar forms of abuse. Millennials & GenZ are already notorious for their reluctance to make or take phone calls. <https://theconversation.com/young-people-hate-making-phone-calls-could-it-be-hurting-their-careers-232167 https://theconversation.com/young-people-hate-making-phone-c...>
- danhon 4mo agoThis is essentially requiring ID for IP connectivity.
- StepBroBD 4mo agoUS of A’s Chinafication letsgooooooo
- bebeidjdkrjrjr 4mo ago[flagged]
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4mo agoGood. Telecoms should have a duty to know who uses their networks.
- tclancy 4mo agoLet’s have your name and address then, citizen. Posters have a right to know who is commenting.
- nancyminusone 4mo agoThe person using the network is the one who put a quarter in the payphone.
- dredmorbius 4mo agoPayphones are rather seldom seen these days, friend. Not to disagree with the principle, but it's somewhat opaque as to what your point is. I've hazy memories as well of reports that payphones were being more surveilled (a camera placed nearby, for example), or tapped / monitored more than other phones, particularly if in areas with other known issues. Nothing that's turning up in DDG searches though...
- 9cb14c1ec0 4mo agoI expect the FCC to adopt this rule, and I also expect it to be challenged in court, on the basis that there are many other approaches to fighting spam calls that the FCC has not tried, but are much less intrusive.
- ryanisnan 4mo agoI hope you're right. I am not informed - is this typically how these decisions get challenged?
- 9cb14c1ec0 4mo agoThere are two ways to challenge FCC decisions. There is the upfront approach where a business whose operations are harmed by an FCC decision sues to block the decision. Then there is the approach where said business announces their non-compliance and dares the FCC to sue them. The FCC does not have criminal charging authority, so it has to rely on courts to enforce compliance. See the Federal Communications Commission v. AT&T case that just wrapped up at the Supreme Court.
- reaperducer 4mo agoGood luck with this. You can't make the desk clerk in a ghetto cell phone store care. I say this speaking as someone who has a T-Mobile account under the name George Washington with a Valley Forge, Pennsylvania address.
- vfclists 4mo agoIt was only a matter of time. The real issue is whether government's should have the right to metadata or the content of remote communications. Government's don't claim the right to monitor face to face communications so why should they have the right to do so for remote communications.
- downrightmike 4mo agoThey don't have that right, that's why Ben Franklin set up the USPS
- brushfoot 4mo agoNo more anonymous driving, thanks to Flock. Soon, no more anonymous calls, thanks to the FCC. Your bank already knows everything about you; why not your operating system, too? Soon your ISP will only let you online if your OS sends them the "right" information: your government ID. We should also abolish cash while we're at it. The government needs to know every purchase you've ever made, no exceptions. Of course, then we should tear down used bookstores. They're the biggest risk of all. Anyone can walk in and pick up pieces of paper that teach them dangerous ideas. Other religions. Philosophies. Poetry. How to make things. What we really need is a nation of drones walking to and fro in the image of our rulers, thinking their thoughts, practicing their religions, and parroting their words. It's the only way to be truly safe.
- grim_io 4mo agoWorse, we are becoming a burden. The Thiels of the world are already past wanting an obedient consumer. They don't need us for the utopia they imagine for themselves.
- mystraline 4mo agoIt was a terrible scattered movie, but they want Elysium. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_(film)
- ceejayoz 4mo agoNo, Elysium still had all the desperate poor people. That's not the end goal.
- gslepak 4mo agoThey want to scan your soul. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8v5HLLkgo5A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8v5HLLkgo5A
- xerox13ster 4mo agoThey want the future setting of Unanimity in Cloud Atlas. Even that might be too much of an underclass.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- Keyb0ardWarri0r 4mo agoI'm always surprised how bad ideas spread faster than good ideas among our rulers. Here is a map of countries where an ID is required (or not) https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/sim-card-registration-laws/ https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/sim-card-regist...
- tim333 4mo agoIf you want anonymous eSIM, Silent Link is pretty good. Pay with crypto, works nearly all countries/networks, quite reasonably priced.
- chii 4mo ago> I'm always surprised how bad ideas spread faster than good ideas among our rulers. it's not a bad idea from the POV of said "rulers" - more surveillance and control on the population is desirable (to them).
- toast0 4mo agoGreat. As if telecoms can be trusted with customers' id. AT&T left my name, address, social security etc in an improperly secured database for others to have, and they tried to open accounts with it; they had retained the information after I closed my account, and they denied the information was coming from them for years before they finally admitted it and gave us all a quarter to call someone who cares and a year of credit monitoring.
- downrightmike 4mo agoAnd your pin is 1234
- garciasn 4mo agoSame as their, Samsonite I was way off, luggage.
- ToucanLoucan 4mo agoI have heard very little about AT&T's actual telecom services, but my god have I heard about their billing department. I daresay the only departments in more of a shambles than their billing one is... well. A lot of Microsoft lately.
- flerchin 4mo agoTelecom billing is seemingly designed to stochastically fail in favor of the telecom. This is not a shambles, but excellent system performance, from their perspective.
- SilverElfin 4mo agoT-Mobile also has had numerous breaches. And Verizon sells your location data as I recall.
- classified 4mo agoThe incentives to become a career criminal get bigger every day.
- functionmouse 4mo agodoes nothing to fight spam; only polices lawful users they call that "anarcho-tyranny"
- XYen0n 4mo agoAfter the implementation of SIM card real-name registration in China, scam calls can accurately state your personal information.
- bigbuppo 4mo agoThis sounds like a great thing for people that beat their domestic partners. Make it harder for their victims to escape.
- p0w3n3d 4mo agoBut this is for the sake of the children safety... And terrorism... Whatever you want to have it wrapped in
- onetokeoverthe 4mo ago[dead]
- a34729t 4mo agoWe should allow privateers to go after spammers, and get the seized assets. And spammer is then tortured appropriately. Satan could run a successful single issue campaign on this in the most religious state in the US.
- t1234s 4mo agoThis is probably part of the larger scope of the system wanting to require ID to even boot a computer let alone connect to the internet.
- matheusmoreira 4mo agoYeah. Looks like the future they want is complete marginalization of free computers, of free people. The machines will have to be corporation and government owned in order to network and participate in society. If we own the machine, we're excluded. Ostracized. Even the language they use is disgusting. They say we're "tampering" with the system, as though it wasn't ours to begin with. It makes me really sad that this is what we're heading towards.
- skinfaxi 4mo agoThe thing about networks is that we can create our own.
- matheusmoreira 4mo agoThe thing about governments is they are just as tyrannical as the corporations. "Any network we cannot surveil and dominate is banned" is absolutely within the realm of possibility.
- skinfaxi 4mo agoThen the government would be banning the gathering of people. At that point we're pretty fucked.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- TFNA 4mo agoCitizens creating informal horizontal networks between themselves is threatening to social harmony, and as more states around the world learn from the highly successful Chinese model, they are unlikely to permit the Wild West à la the old-school internet you are thinking about.
- nisegami 4mo agoThis is standard in my country. Seemingly as a consequence, eSIMs require physically going to a store to be activated (on the telco side), which has always seemed insane to me.
- throwaway85825 4mo agoWants to kill burner phones but somehow foreign phone scams are still rampant.
- rtkwe 4mo agoDisjoint issues really. Phone scams mostly rely on the shoddy/lack of verification of caller id info as calls transit the network where it's not verified so they are unblockable (because they just use a different fake number every time). They're actually calling from one or a pool of numbers but you can't block and report them on the receiving end because the number your phone thinks it's blocking isn't theirs. This will do nothing to fix spam/scam without patching the issues with caller id.
- throwaway85825 4mo agoHardly disjoint. Most of the scams come from foreign networks.
- rtkwe 4mo agoIt is actually because you can't do anything with the source phone number being tied to an identity if the scammers are freely able to spoof the number that the end networks and users see. Even if every network in the world adopted this it wouldn't matter if caller id isn't fixed so that you can actually see the source number to go ask who it is!
- miohtama 4mo agoYou can. Finland forces operators to stop routing non-verified and spoofed numbers. Spam gone. https://www.tieto.com/en/cases/telecom/global-anti-fraud-model/ https://www.tieto.com/en/cases/telecom/global-anti-fraud-mod...
- MyMemoryfails 4mo agoAs finn. I can verify scam calls are non-existent lately few do occasinally popup, but its like 2000 times better than before. When i learned about this originally, i was shocked like how this is not default?
- catigula 4mo agoI get over 10 scam calls a day. I'm forced to pay a company to block them because the free methods don't work. There's no way to work around it because they refuse to enforce the law on these companies cycling through burner numbers.
- iamnothere 4mo agoThey are not using cell phones, they are using VOIP.
- catigula 4mo agoI'm aware; I'm referring to their priorities.
- OptionOfT 4mo agoThis was the case in Belgium a couple of years ago. Everybody had to go to a store and have their ID read by the system, and if they didn't, the phone number would be shut down. Unsure how that worked for MVNOs though. Now I live in the USA and am well-familiar with the spam calls. I wonder if this new rule will reduce/prevent them. I think in general the ability to spoof numbers should be banned / controlled. Someone from India should not be allowed to call me with a caller ID from Mayo Clinic.
- codedokode 4mo agoThis is unrelated to spam calls. Business will register thousands of phone numbers for "surveys" and will continue spamming with AI calls.
- iamnothere 4mo agoSpam calls are a different issue (spam is usually VOIP). Spammers also often use spoofed numbers since STIR/SHAKEN is somehow still not properly implemented.
- singpolyma3 4mo agoAll carrier interconnects use VoIP protocols since forever anyway. So this is pretty much a distinction without a difference. STIR/SHAKEN affects both
- BuildTheRobots 4mo ago> I think in general the ability to spoof numbers should be banned / controlled. This has absolutely nothing to do with burner phones and the proposed changes won't do anything to change that. ~5 years ago there was a big push (in the USA) to try and solve it with STIR/SHAKEN but I've not been involved or paid attention since then, so don't know if anything came of it. It's a legitimately hard problem to solve though. Lots of engineering and backwards compatibility technical problems, but also political, logistical and commercial issues are abound. You've also got some turtle issues too; it's attestation all the way down.
- colinsane 4mo agogood for bitcoin
- greenavocado 4mo agoI've got my popcorn and lawn chair out to watch the "voter id is racist" crowd to take a stand on this issue. Context: Voter ID Laws may seem like a good idea, but they’re actually pretty terrible! On the surface, these laws appear to be a reasonable way to stop people from pretending to be someone else when they vote. But the reality is that this kind of voter fraud almost never happens!!! Instead Voter ID Laws primarily prevent the poor, the elderly, and people of color from voting. They way they’ve disenfranchised people of color is part of a very long history of voter suppression and is a classic example of structural racism.
- moate 4mo agoSo by "Voter ID is racist" crowd you more broadly mean "people who understand that requiring identification in order to exist in society is a burden on the citizens with little benefit to them but of great value to authoritarians who wish to use these laws for nefarious means". Which, often, does not include exclusively people who think "Voter ID is racist" as plenty of unhinged libertarians hate make great points about why you shouldn't want the government to have access to 100% of your daily data points 100% of the time.
- trumpdong 4mo agoIsn't this the exact same thing? If you don't have a valid ID to vote, now you don't have a valid ID to use a cellphone either. And if you wanted to go and get one, too bad because you probably need a cellphone to do that.
- lbcadden3 4mo agoI’m surprised it’s taken this long to go after this. In the name of “national security” and “protecting the children” and all.
- dec0dedab0de 4mo agoHow about we start by forcing telecoms to not allow any fake caller ID from their network?
- simulator5g 4mo agoHow about we not form our society into a jail?
- grishka 4mo agoAs a Russian: huh, you guys could still just buy a sim card without any kind of identification? Impressive. We had that ID requirement introduced way back in the 00s. Even EU countries seem to require an ID now. When I traveled to France and Belgium in 2024, I bought a French tourist sim card, and the carrier kept sending me some rather insistent messages that my line would get disconnected if I don't upload my passport in 30 days.
- riffraff 4mo agoyeah I think in Italy this was introduced in the security push after 9/11, and in other EU countries I also had to provide an id to get a sim card, tho I'm not sure it's all of them.
- cge 4mo agoDifferent EU countries seem to heavily vary on this point. I’ve seen everything from requirements for id scans and addresses to esims that accept cryptocurrency as payment.
- rconti 4mo agoIt seems to depend a lot. It's kind of hard in Germany - they wanted my permanent address. I didn't find France as difficult. Iceland didn't care. Italy wanted my passport. Chile, you virtually needed to be a citizen, as I recall.
- grishka 4mo ago> Chile, you virtually needed to be a citizen, as I recall. I heard something similar about Russia after recent changes actually, it could as well be impossible for non-residents so tourists just stick with international roaming and public wifi. IIRC there's a catch-22 situation where you need a Gosuslugi (online government services portal) account to buy a sim, but you need a Russian phone number to sign up for one. As a citizen, you just need your ID (internal passport).
- codedokode 4mo ago
- laughing_man 4mo agoSeems pointless to do this without also doing something about phone number spoofing.
- trumpdong 4mo agoIt's not about controlling them, it's about controlling you and me
- jhartikainen 4mo ago[dead]
- everdrive 4mo agoAnd people will keep carrying their phones with them. And keep using them. And keep installing apps. Yes, ideally we'd have laws against government infringement, but the capability to not use your phone is in your hands.
- Ritewut 4mo agoThis comment is so divorced from reality. It is very difficult to live life in the modern world without a phone unless you want to go Amish.
- autoexec 4mo agoI'm not Amish, but if I walk into a restaurant where they won't show me a menu without scanning a QR code, I walk right out.
- doubled112 4mo agoI’m with you there, I probably would too. But when your child is late to school but they won’t allow you in until you scan the QR code and fill in a form? Do you stand and wait hoping to be noticed? Hoping to tailgate somebody with a phone? Just head home? The school also sends general communications only by app.
- autoexec 4mo agoThat should be brought up to the school board and parents should be up in arms about it. I don't see how it's even acceptable to require you to do paperwork every time you kid is late to school. If on the day I couldn't get a human at a school to talk to me and a phone call to the office didn't work either I absolutely would go home. People let others get away with this way too often. Sometimes you can't fight it (good luck fighting parking meters in your city that require an app once contracts are signed and the infrastructure is in place), but often you can demand reasonable accommodation if not a change of policy.
- everdrive 4mo ago
- shevy-java 4mo agoThey want perpetual monitoring of everyone. Same with age sniffing. Anyone still has any doubts? Or is it to ... protect the children?
- jewdus 4mo ago[dead]
- bondolo 4mo agoAnd yet, for some reason, it is impossible to stop spam calls and texts.
- dredmorbius 4mo agoHaving looked into the history of call tracking / blocking, it's pretty evident that major US telcos have very little interest in making marketing calls difficult. However tenuous the association between "marketing" and the actual practice of the scammers, harassers, abusers, and worse generating literally billions of such calls monthly (see: <https://pirg.org/edfund/resources/ringing-in-our-fears-2025-robocalls-hit-6-year-high/ https://pirg.org/edfund/resources/ringing-in-our-fears-2025-...>, "The monthly average of scam and telemarketing calls increased from 2.14 billion a month in 2024 to 2.56 billion a month through September, according to YouMail"). AT&T's efforts to thwart effective government regulation and mitigation stand out especially. The industry oranisation ATIS (<https://atis.org/ https://atis.org/>) has been central to blocking any effective action. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_for_Telecommunications_Industry_Solutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_for_Telecommunication...>.
- ncrc74 4mo agoCan't read the article without an account. Just sayin.
- ncrc74 4mo agoCan't read the article without an account.
- tamimio 4mo agoI probably said it dozens of times in here, phone numbers are the link between your IRL identity and digital one, that’s why a lot of services still require a phone number to “prevent spam”, yeah right, it’s just to get to you if ever needed.
- codedokode 4mo agoIn Russia you need an ID to buy a phone number, and almost every site or app requires it to sign up. As a nice bonus, you or any scammer can buy personal data on everyone for cheap in Telegram bots, because everytime there is a PII leak, these bots update their vast databases.
- amelius 4mo agoThis will kill so many movie plots.
- neuroelectron 4mo agoAnything about the 10 spam phone calls I get a day? no I didn't think so. Something about no taxes without representation
- loloquwowndueo 4mo agoThis has been tried in Mexico at least twice - crooks are still finding ways to have burners and smuggle anonymous phones into jails etc.
- simulator5g 4mo agoIt's not about stopping crime, it's about control.
- loloquwowndueo 4mo agoSure but that’s not how they’re selling it.
- 3vo-ai 4mo ago[flagged]
- c2h5oh 4mo agoThis is already the case in most (all?) EU countries. Government-issued photo ID is required to activate a SIM card. If you really need a burner you can still get one - there are people who activate SIM cards in bulk using their ID and resell them without collecting IDs. The practice itself is either gray area legally or straight up illegal depending on the country
- hocuspocus 4mo agoI was a teenager when Switzerland introduced the mandatory ID check, in 2003 or 2004 iirc. My carrier added 10 CHF credit to my prepaid plan for the trouble. It's still fairly easy to buy a Lycamobile SIM/number that was enabled with a fake or stolen ID. Consequently some banks and services ban entire number ranges, which is not only ineffective but also affects people who committed the sin of keeping their first phone number even after moving to a proper postpaid plan...
- dredmorbius 4mo agoRegwall / archive: <https://archive.is/ZobUQ https://archive.is/ZobUQ> (NB: the notion of having to register to read content strikes me as equally reprehensible as requiring KYC for access to the telephone network.)
- know-how 4mo ago[dead]
- jollymonATX 4mo agoWe at some point will have to stop complying. Not because we are doing anything at all wrong, but because we cannot trust our govt and the corporations they are beholden to.
- tw04 4mo agoIf there’s one thing this administration has shown, it’s that they believe laws are just suggestions for other people and that ultimately nobody will stop them. They’re essentially daring the public to resort to violence and frankly, it’s getting exhausting. Why follow the law when the president will pardon you and the Supreme Court has said he also won’t be held accountable for basically anything. I welcome the reasoned responses that think this administration isn’t actively flaunting our laws. How’s that war powers act coming along?
- owenpalmer 4mo agoA law that is not enforced is ultimately a suggestion
- pizzly 4mo agoHaving multiple needless laws is another way to control the population. Everyone will be violating at least one law. The government will then just enforce the laws on the people they don't like.
- themafia 4mo ago> The government will then just enforce the laws on the people they don't like. Which is explicitly against the 14th amendment.
- Tangurena2 4mo agoThere is a book titled Three Felonies A Day that explains this. US Federal laws/regulations are so obtuse, over-reaching, arcane and complicated that the average innocent person violates 3 felonies per day. And your point about enforce the laws on the people they don't like is one that the author makes as well. https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594035229 https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp... A previous job of mine was software developer for a state motor vehicle agency. I had to read far too many state & federal laws/regulations to make the boat/vehicle registration system compliant.
- Beestie 4mo agoWell dangit - there go all my favorite crime solving shows.
- WatchDog 4mo agoLot's of countries already require this but it's trivially by-passable just by using a roaming capable SIM from a country that does not require it.
- tonetegeatinst 4mo agoPretty sure that this would just encourage privacy minded folks to find a loophole. Or if you get fed up enough you just start blasting FM transmissions without a license..... Keep the burst short enough while your mobile and don't make the transmitter obvious and you could probably get away with it for short SMS comms. Or just use something like lora or meshtastic/meshcore
- trumpdong 4mo agoThe loophole is to use a homeless person's ID for $20. Wait. In the US don't they not even have an ID standard? The homeless person probably doesn't have any valid ID and neither do members of several other disenfranchised groups, right? So now they're not allowed to have cellphone service?
- Tangurena2 4mo agoSome states allow homeless people to get IDs. Some do not. My state outlawed homelessness in last year's Crime Bill - the charge is now called "unlawful camping" and it outlawed cities from having zones where people are allowed to camp unless they basically create something like a KOA campground (and outlawed using tax money to do so).
- atum47 4mo agoAnd phone companies are enabling telecoms by manufacturing devices that don't take physical sim cards anymore. I recently migrate from pixel 8 to 10, it only supports eSim. In order to migrate my sim to an eSim I had to provide voice, image, documents and info of the phone I was installing the eSim on. One of the worse companies in Brazil, Vivo, now have everything about me. I bet they keep it in a big excel file accessible via a secret but public link
- trumpdong 4mo agoThis is already a thing in most countries btw
- OsrsNeedsf2P 4mo agoWhich is depressing
- trumpdong 4mo agoFun fact: in India, it is a crime to connect the IP network to the telephone network in any way whatsoever that allows calls originating in IP to terminate at telephones. This is because IP network users don't have to provide ID. (It does not prohibit calling from telephones to IP networks, or IP apps calling other instances of themselves)
- zoom6628 4mo agoStraight out of China playbook. Every SIM must be registered with government issued/recognised ID. Yes combats fraud. Yes means govt can track you thru IMEI 24x7 anywhere in the world.
- phantomathkg 4mo agoWhile Trump can travel to the China with his burn phone, the citizens of the US cannot. Surely everyone is equal.
- jewdus 4mo ago[dead]
- ZedZark 4mo agoA voluntary model would be nice - what X (more or less) does currently. You can elect to be verified by X, and it will show the badge, or you can opt out and not get the badge, but you can still use it. If phones could reliably tag an incoming call as "ID provided" or not, then people who cared could screen calls appropriately, and people who wanted to protect their identity could still have a phone.
- 3stacks 4mo agoThis is essentially already a reality in Australia. I had to email identity documents + a photo of my face holding an ID to two separate companies just to shift eSIMs to my new phone. They have to have your residential address for "emergency reasons" which is fairly defensible at least
- rapidaneurism 4mo agoI do not understand the outrage, law abiting users have nothing to fear (TM) and criminally minded users (or undocumented) can always pay a homeless person, a few bucks to register their burner.
- sschueller 4mo agoThis has been the case for a long time in Switzerland. If you want a mobile phone SIM, you need to provide your ID. Of course easy if you have a national ID... I don't see the issue here and I am surprised that this wasn't the case in the United States. However since it is now trivial to communicate encrypted with so many other devices, I don't see the point now. This would have been a "good" thing back in the 90'.
- KellyCriterion 4mo agoTrue for most EU countries since a while - at the premium Telcos shops. Not true in most EU countries if you just go into one of those shady shops nearby train station and ask friendly, while the shop is empty, if he could sell you a SIM thats already verified.
- zzgo 4mo ago> “We never thought that would happen here.” I guess a lot of people weren't around to see civil libertarians screaming about the effect of the USA Patriot act in 2001. > Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project Oh, come on, Jay, this should have been on your radar for 25 years.
- J0nL 4mo agoThis is one of those rules/laws that is worse than useless, without fixing the protocol shortcomings that make spoofing trivial the only people who will be affected by this rule are regular people.
- MyMemoryfails 4mo agoso instead of burnerphones, they will steal phones and keep phone awake until they have accomplished the crime they gonna do. This is what always happens when governments enforce laws like this, victims and innoncents always suffer as result. Its happening in finance where criminals groom dumb teengers for laundering money, or eldery's bank accounts they obtain via installing remote software. So lets add 1 more reason for criminals to steal phone. Edit: This is also happening in crypto world where criminals perform fake KYC. I guess with age verifications, this crime will increase in demand multiplefold and the last defense ID will be obsolete after data leaks and the fraud happening around it.
- AtlasBarfed 4mo agoIt will simply go through a reseller layer
- rimworld 4mo agoSame thing seems to be happening in every other nation. I assume this is binding to your future digital wallet
- tvhamme 4mo agoWoow next level
- filup 4mo agoCommunicating anonymously without a phone number is really easy what does this solve
- nobody77 4mo agoThis is a good thing, die scammers die!