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.

Comments

It's always been required...

[wellard1981]

When signing up for a new mobile phone contract, you're pretty much asked for two forms of identifications, such as a driving license, passport, utility bills, etc. so this is nothing new. The new part is the national surveillance database. Thank god I'm moving out of this country.

Re:Cell phones and terrorists

[Peter Greenwood]

>>They used anti-terror laws against Iceland, who are not at all terrorists.

>When? Do you have a cite on this?

It's well known. Google "iceland terror" and - among lots of others - http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=a9R6kEktPff0&refer=europe

The government wound in some "independent" reviewer of anti-terror legislation to claim the bit of the Act they used wasn’t really anti-terror legislation. You can judge how independent he is by the fact that the same man stood up in Parliament a few days later to argue in favour of a (now defeated) proposal to allow the police to lock "terrorist suspects" up for 6 weeks at a stretch.

We used to sneer at all those tinpot Balkan dictatorships where you had to carry identity papers everywhere, the police could lock anyone up on a whim, and the only telephones you could buy were designed to allow Them to monitor you. And they used to make unbelievably weird claims about the evils of foreign governments. Then we went and elected a Labour government ...