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Passport Required To Buy Mobile Phones In the UK
David Gerard points out a Times Online story that says:
"Everyone [in the UK] who buys a mobile telephone will be forced to register their identity on a national database under government plans to extend massively the powers of state surveillance. Phone buyers would have to present a passport or other official form of identification at the point of purchase. Privacy campaigners fear it marks the latest government move to create a surveillance society. A compulsory national register for the owners of all 72m mobile phones in Britain would be part of a much bigger database to combat terrorism and crime. Whitehall officials have raised the idea of a register containing the names and addresses of everyone who buys a phone in recent talks with Vodafone and other telephone companies, insiders say."
We've recently discussed other methods the UK government is using to keep track of people within its borders, such as ID cards for foreigners and comprehensive email surveillance.
...Cellphone call resgisters YOU!
Oh, it seems in the UK as well...
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
In whose name they doing this? Is it to stop terrorists, or to make us think of the children?
Both!
1. Get a Passport
2. Buy dozens of SIM cards and pre-paid phones
3. Sell them to people wanting anonymous phones
4. Profit!!!
Store Name: 1984phones.uk
The chances of anything coming from Mars is a million to one.
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
New Party Game:
You need n players where the larger the value, the better.
First Beer: Everybody goes out and buys x prepay cards.
Second through y Beer: exchange cards with each other in order to randomize x
Even if you're not profiting, by the time y is > 3 or 4, you will have plausible deniability when it comes time to explain where you got the prepay card from.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
1. Wait in front of mobile-selling location.
2. Spot mobile-buying victim.
3. Follow victim for a while.
4. Club victim on the head, grab bag, run.
You get: one or more mobile phones and cards, one or more forms of ID, money, credit card(s), car and/or house key(s), one or more packet(s) of tissues, one or more packet(s) of gum, various other bonuses.
Or are you perhaps one of those pussy terrorists that is afraid of hitting people on the head and only does suicide bombings?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
This would have prevented Jason Bourne from buying a phone and planting it on Simon Ross to talk to him covertly without the CIA being able to trace the call.
My guess would be the UK government watched the movie and decided this loophole need to be closed.
Another belated movie plot threat response. Specifically, The Bourne Ultimatum, in which Bourne arrives at London's Waterloo station and immediately purchases a pre-paid cellphone to give to his journalist contact. If he had to show a passport to buy that phone... he could have been delayed by a couple of seconds, while he decided which of his fake passports to use. Gee.
(this is not a