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Swiss to Name Mobile Phone Users
elmacho writes "In what is surely a knee-jerk reaction, the Swiss parliament has banned anonymous mobile phone usage following the revelations that Al Qaeda members were using the phones in other countries. Wasn't it established the other day that, considering they were caught, the anonymity provided by the phones is limited? What purpose will this serve, assuming that any terrorists who need a mobile phone will simply purchase one in another of the many countries that do provide anonymous mobiles?"
...you would know that feds only knew where to look after someone tipped off the CIA.
Some al-qiada kiddie told a cia agent (got a ton of $$$$ for it too) where that now captured terrorist lived and what his cell phone number was. we all know the result. this concept has been part of espionage since the days of Ceasar.
nsa didnt just scan phone after phone until they found something interesting, they were simply told where to look.
Mobile phone theft, ID spoofing, and black market handset sales in Switzerland skyrocket.
Because of course now that anonymous cell phone usage is illegal, only criminals can protect their IDs on cell phones.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
> What purpose will this serve, assuming that any terrorists who need a mobile phone will simply purchase one in another of the many countries that do provide anonymous mobiles?
What purpose does outlawing child pornography serve? People could just go to a country that doesn't outlaw child pornography.
Point being -- people don't want it happening in their own backyard and they don't want it happening on their watch. I sympathize with this sentiment.
Hey if you arent doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to fear from the government watching your every move right?
Its all in the name of national security so its all ok, right?
Now dont you feel so much safer now that you have given up another bit of personal freedom?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
More then 90% of purveyors of illicit pharmaceuticals use pre pay cell phones, which - when you think about it - makes a lot of sense to them and their customers.
I mean: Use of anonymous Swiss prepayed cards in Pakistan is - to put id mildly - highly unusual. And since a the phone serial #, the network operator and the sim type is very easily identifiable in realtime (regardless if you make calls or not) the spooks would probably be mighty interested in any anonymous sim, which pops up in countries like Pakistan or Afghanistan. Also, what hinders Evil Q Terrorist to pay a junkie 50 francs to buy a prepayed card or use fake identification. I don't think that the kiosk woman is well equiped to identify a fake id card from BoraBora.
Today - in 20Minuten (a free daily crap rag, polluting the streets throughout Europe) I red the most ridiculous reasoning to date:
With introduction of camera GSM phones kiddie pornographers could anonymously upload evil, evil stuff on the web via their phones. I leave it as an excercise to the reader, why a guy arguing this way or writing this probably can't distinguish his ass from a hole in the ground.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Example 1: I don't want a cell phone. I hate - no, I detest - cell phones. But my job requires me to do quite a bit of traveling. That prepaid cellphone I can pick up at Walgreens for 10 bucks and toss into my glove box gives me a little comfort when I'm on the road. If my car breaks down, I can get in touch with AAA, but I don't have to pay for some bogus monthly plan that I'll never use.
Example 2: I work for a large, multinational corporation. I've repeatedly witnessed my boss discriminating against minority coworkers by assigning the good clients to my fellow white coworkers. I want to blow the whistle, and it's going to require a bit of back-and-forth communication between me and several newspaper columnists. Unfortunately, my employer nets billions of dollars per year and could easily afford a little "internal investigation" - I don't want these calls showing up on my cell phone bill.
Example 3: I'm a battered wife who finally decided she's not going to take it anymore. I left my abusive husband and temporarily moved in with a friend he doesn't know, but my husband hired a private investigator to track me down. I'm afraid that if I get a cell phone in my name, the P.I. will be able to find the billing address and come do me harm. I'm also afraid that even if I put the cell phone in my friend's name, the P.I. could get the phone records of my associates and see who's calling them, then backtrack and find me.
Example 4: I'm a volunteer coordinator for the American Cancer Society. We've arranged a 5K walk in my city to raise money for cancer research. We're going to have 20 volunteers assigned to various "stop stations" along the route, passing out water and granola bars to the participants. If anyone runs out of supplies at their station, they need to be able to contact me at the "base camp" so that I can send more. We looked into buying 20 CB or FRS-band radios, but those were pricing at 75 to 100 bucks apiece. It would be much more cost efficient to provide each of them with a disposable cell phone, but we don't believe it's necessary to have to "register" for them.
Example 5: I'm a regular guy, just like you. I'd like a cell phone, but I'd rather not have the cell phone company knowing who I am. I don't want them sending me junk mail, I don't want them calling my home number twice a week trying to get me to upgrade my plan, and I don't want them selling my name and address to their affiliates. I just like my privacy and I'd like to have a little convenience without having to sell my soul to marketdroids in the process.
It took me about 2 minutes to come up with these examples (longer to type them out). Do you need more?Absolutely. <sarcasm>And because payphones are so profitable to the telcos, they're putting more and more of them up all over the place! They love collecting 35 cents a few times a month from people who have to make unexpected calls, instead of charging those people 35 bucks a month for a cell phone they rarely use.</sarcasm> I don't know about Switzerland, but here in the US, payphones are a dying breed. It used to be, every gas station had one outside, and every shopping mall had a bank of them near the restrooms. These days, to be honest I wouldn't know where to find a payphone if I needed one.
If you don't see any need or justification for anonymous cell phones, why do you see a need or justification for (not to mention suggest using) payphones? Tracing a cellphone to a particular location is, at least in terms of technology, just as easy as tracing a payphone to a particular location. And don't payphones provide the "bad guys" with just as much opportunity to make anonymous calls?Why not? For the record, I'm not complaining, nor do I have or want a cell phone. I just can't see why anonymity is a negative thing.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
This reasoning is bogus. Pre payed cell phones don't cease to exist. The only difference is that you have to show identification when purchasing your 10$ phone at Walgreens. It has no impact on your ability to call anybody and it doesn't force you to buy into a plan.
Also no problem there. You can buy an additional pre payed card on the side. On a GSM network you don't even need an additional phone, you just swap cards and the calls will never show up on your "real" bill. Another alternative (and if it's that touchy an issue) is to toss a quarter into a completely anonymous public phone. Bernstein and Woodward didn't need a cell phone contact to deep throat and one can argue that the "company" in question doesn't only have very deep pockets, but also a virtually limitless supply of spooks and technology.
The whole point of prepayed sim cards is that you don't have a billing address. The only difference to todays status quo is that you will need identification to purchase a sim card. A passport does not contain the address and your identity card has likely your husbands one and of very limited use. When you're truely, truely paranoied you can argue, that the pi could track your location data. Technically this is feasible of course, practically there's no way in hell to pull this off. Unless you have a court warrant.
I respect that, if you have objections to the registration process on principle. The scenario outlined however doesn't make it impossible or even majorly inconvenient to move with the scenario described. If registering one sim requires 2 minutes, then registering 100 sims requires also two minutes.
I grant you that one. But not in the case of Switzerland (or any other country in the EU - of which Switzerland is not a member and of which most have even more st
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk