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Mexican Government To Document Cell Phone Use
Alyssey writes "The Mexican government wants to have a database to track every cellphone number in the country (in Spanish, Google translation) and whom it belongs to. They want to tie in the CURP (Unique Registration Population Code in Spanish, like the Social Security Number in the US) with cellphone numbers. If Mexicans don't send in their number and CURP via SMS before April 10, 2010, their cellphone number will be blocked. The new law was published back in February and is going into effect now."
here where I live. I just pay them a hundred pesos to buy a chip for me. He'll be leaving town in a few months, and I got my phone. Repeat as needed. With a legitimate name and my phone is stolen, lots of luck defending yourself against false accusations here. Luckily the old system of "justice" is still in place. Una mordidita para las polis y ya.
Todos mis movimientos están friamente calculados
When I bought a prepaid sim card in Switzerland last year, they wouldn't give it to me unless they got my passport information etc.
In Australia, you need to call to activate your prepaid sim card. When you do, they ask for your name and address under the pretext that they need it for emergency services.
I can't be bothered making up any in Soviet Russia jokes, but I'm sure someone else will :)
I live in Mexico and I can tell you that one of the intentions of the law is to reduce the crimes that use cellphones to coordinate and execute (like kidnappings and drug deals).
The problem with this is the implementation, the law clearly specifies that your cellphone provider must take an ID and your fingerprint, but the most popular provider Telcel lets you register sending a SMS with your name and birth date. Essentially rendering the registration useless.
It's because of the kidnapping crisis. Cell phones are used to negotiate ransoms. This will just likely push criminals to move to VOIP out on stolen wifi connections.
Actually, they'll be fingerprinting people.
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In my experience, there's several people who due to poverty or lack of concern are not registered with the relatively new CURP system. Thus I wonder, how will it affect those people? Will they shell out 20 pesos to pay some kid with internet access to get it for them, or will they stop using cell phones?
I believe (and hope) this law will fail in epic proportions. Mainly due to Telcel, pretty much the only cellphone provider, losing too many costumers over it. Also, there seems to be much opposition: there are very few comments supporting the law on the article linked.
Mexico does need a way to get rid of our infamy before the eyes of the world, a police state will only make us even worse. We don't need this kind of stupidity coming from our government, however corrupt it may be.
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The problem is extorsion.
This is a growing problem in Mexico.
You get either a
1. SMS that says that you won a prize. Most of the time you need to send another sms to another cell number where they tell you that you need to pay a deposit to get your prize. Or,
2.- A call in which a person tells you that have kidnapped a relative of yours. They don't demand a lot of money. They just want to get some money because 99% of the time they haven't kidnapped anybody. They rely on getting you scared enough so you deposit some money before you can check if it was true.
Most people know it's a scam, but still a lot of people fall for it.
The thing is, most of the scammers come from inside prisons so this is an attempt to make it more difficult to get a stolen cellphone which is what the criminals usually use.
- A mexican that has gotten those calls.
If I recall correctly you do not need any type of identification to get a prepaid telephone in Mexico. It is just a matter of going to your Telcel shop at the corner of the street (there are more of those than there are cantinas) and buy a chip with "100 pesos tiempo aire".
Funny that they provide a link to the Milenio paper... I believe that "El Universal" ( which has the article here) is better.
Now, for those very paranoid slashdotters, note that one of the reasons they are doing this is because given the lack of such identification records, mobile phones are heavily used in blackmailing.
That happened to my brother once, he was studying in Mexico City and he got a call which went like this:
After the phone rang and he answered a shouting voice said:
"Hey we got your brother, and we will kill him unless you comply with our desires"
After that, a voice in the background of the telephone shouted as if he was the "captured" brother "please please, help me, please don't leave me"
In the "heat" of the moment, my brother shout my name "Pedro, are you ok?" [not my real name of course].
Of course with that information the criminals continued with their tale, telling him that yes they had "Pedro" and they were going to hurt him blah blah...
My brother just hung up the telephone and called my mother (who lives in another state)... Fortunately for us, I have been living *outside* Mexico for the last 5 years... therefore I could not have been trapped in Mexico City...
My brother wrote me an email telling me to ask me to mail back just to be shure I was OK, I called him that afternoon from the UK where I was living then.
There are countless of similar stories with such kind of social engineering. Of course not all the people are as "wise" as us, or they get blackmailed in the middle of some kind of crisis (money, family, etc) where the scenario of a kidnapped relative is very possible.
The issue until now (that the database is started) is that even if you had a caller-id and a number, you could not do anything with it because it would not be registered, or it will be faked. The current registry will require both an valid id (Mexican voting credential which is the national id) and a fingerprint.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Do you think those underground mercenary corps will just disband and they'll all get themselves decent legit jobs?
Nope, but their income will be sharply reduced. It happened to the mafia in the USA when prohibition ended.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."