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Proposed Law Would Require ID To Buy Prepaid Phones
Hugh Pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) have introduced legislation that would require buyers to present identification when purchasing a prepaid cellphone and require phone companies to keep the information on file, as they do with users of landline phones and subscription-based cellphones. 'This proposal is overdue because for years, terrorists, drug kingpins, and gang members have stayed one step ahead of the law by using prepaid phones that are hard to trace,' says Schumer. Civil liberties advocates have concerns about the proposal, saying there must be a role for anonymous communications in a free society, adding that the space for such anonymous or pseudonymous communications has been narrowed since pay phones, for example, have largely disappeared."
I guess we couldn't use fake IDs to circumvent this, now could we?
It seems to me that requiring the presentation of ID before purchasing something for the purpose of associating it with an identity for future use won't work as there's no way that you can guarantee the identity the person presents is genuine. All this law will do is encourage people to present fake identification when purchasing said goods, especially if they're going to use them for nefarious purposes.
But what will Michael do in his crazy antics in Miami? He usually needs like 3 prepaid phones for every job. It will kill off one my favorite shows!
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
This is already being done in India and South Africa (where prepaid phones are everywhere and contract phones are nearly non-existent) and it's retarded. I am American and I travel into and out of South Africa all the time and no-one wants to sell me a SIM card. You have to be able to prove residence in South Africa to get one and I live in Mozambique (and Botswana beforehand). Theft is RAMPANT in SA and people think having a name on file of who the phone's number is will stop anything? I have to find a South African who will buy me a SIM card any time I need to call from within SA.
India implemented this law before they had their terrorist attacks last year and it sure did a lot to prevent those eh?
Clearly, the only people who would object to such legislation are criminals.
Those of us who aren't doing anything illegal would have absolutely no reason to fear the loss of anonymous communication.
A few years back, you could buy prepaid phones in Norway without any ID, but then they made a law so that all prepaid cards had to be registered with social security number. It is now harder for most mindless criminals to call anonymously, so they use their own names and get caught easily. The more clever ones simply use other peoples social security numbers when they want anonymous (for them) prepaid numbers.
Because of the latter, I am concerned about the consequences. Maybe they should legalize drugs and get rid of the top reason why people would want a anonymous phone in the first place, but I can only dream.
Dvorak on Doomtech
Sorry, freedom and liberties do not come easily. You have to fight to get them, fight to keep them, and live in a dangerous world. If you want to be safe at night then vote for Stalin. Oh wait....
This law was passed in Mexico a few months ago. It's basically a failure because of all the fake IDs out there. There's very little preventing you from registering it to someone else's name too.
To send a message to the president Felipe Calderon, a lot of people registered using his personal data.
A few days ago, one of the phone companies admitted they had at least 12,000 cell phones registered to the president's name...
It will be justified under the 'interstate commerce' clause, the catch all used to justify everything from compelling Americans to buy health insurance to telling them that they can't set dried up bits of cannabis on fire and inhale the resulting smoke into their lungs. Any pretense of a limitation on Federal power died when SCOTUS said that the Federal Government has the power to prevent you from growing food for your own consumption.
I'm rather pessimistic about our chances of reversing this trend, absent a constitutional convention and/or revolution, neither of which will happen because both would require Americans to stop watching TV long enough to realize how many rights they are losing.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Of course it would take a piece of legislation that completely tramples anonymous communication to convince two congressmen from two very different states to put aside partisan politics and play ball together. Why is it that the politicos can only team up on things that screw the citizens, but not the ones that help the citizens? Fucking assholes.
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I see a revolution or civil war happening long before a political solution would ever arise.
Remember to maintain your supply of
What it will do is enable the government (for whatever hair-brained reasons) to track LAW ABIDING citizens. Criminals, those people bent on breaking the law, will simply buy the phones off-market or use falsified documentation.
Yet another brilliantly thought-out law which misses mark entirely. Maybe someday only criminals will have rights and everyone else will be guilty until proven innocent?
Quack, quack.
People made the same arguments against POS background checks for firearms but we still wound up with those....
Never underestimate the amount of liberty that people are willing to sacrifice in exchange for the illusion of security.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Ok. This new "law" would simply create a new black market for thieves. Increasing their profit streams.
Now instead of a walmart tracphone. you buy a "clean" prepaid phone from vito that is registered to a 14 year old cheerleader in the hamptons.
Honestly, are out lawmakers simply a bunch of retarded old idiots? Did they not think of this?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It's not infringing on their liberties that is the problem, it's infringing on my liberties that is. All it takes to infringe on their liberties is a warrant or a court order. In order to infringe on my liberties you better be amending the constitution because anonymous speech is the only way to have truly free speech.
Uh, hello?
You don't trample over the rights of innocent citizens to catch the "bad guys". That is the example of bad law, such as the proposed law. This would neither a:make it easier to track people nor b:confirm the person registering is who they are. There is no way to enforce as such, as others have mentioned. Fake ID's, phones registered via proxies (such as other people), there are a million ways to get around this that take minimal to no effort.
Instead, you go through this thing which already exists, it's called the court/justice system. It's worked for hundreds of years, last I checked. Especially given that it's assuming this is for law enforcement or another legal entity which should be well versed in following the laws which govern them.
You know, you can track people via those warrant things already. It's called warrants for wiretaps or you can do the pen register thing, if I recall loopholes for that still exist. /what a newfangled idea! *facepalm*
Ok. This new "law" would simply create a new black market for thieves. Increasing their profit streams.
Of course. Then the laws can become even MORE encroaching and overreaching in the name of stamping out whatever newly made illicit activity is.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Contrary to what the Senators are saying, this bill has NOTHING to do with catching drug kingpins, and everything to do with advancing the surveillance state.
A gun, on the other hand, can kill people right out of the store.
That's completely irrelevant to the argument that I was making and contributes nothing to this conversation. POS background checks don't catch people that kill, nor will a POS ID check for disposable cell phones catch criminals. Criminals will simply do with cell phones what they currently do with guns -- steal them or bribe others to purchase them on their behalf.
The end result will be the same that it was with firearms -- the law abiding people cede more power to the state while the criminals go about their business as they always have and always will.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I have just finished watching The Wire on DVD(A cop drama set in Baltimore).
Not only do I rate this series as one of my top 5 dramas made globally, I think it is as significant for nerds as Star Trek.
Cell phones play a key aspect of the story line over the 5 series from 2002 to 2008, and includes the formation of the Dept Home Land Security and the impact on the police team and how it helps there investigations(by season 3-4).
The police efforts to track criminals and the criminals attempts to stay one step ahead is well dramatized.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
A gun, on the other hand, can kill people right out of the store.
So can a car, most cleaners that you use in your household, various drugs you buy at the pharmacy (over the counter), a baseball bat, a golf club, a nail gun, a car battery, anti-freeze, a kitchen knife set, and so on and so on and so on. Just because something can be used to kill a person doesn't mean it will be used to kill a person. Just sayin'
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He's saying that the original intent of the interstate commerce clause wasn't to grant Congress the power to control what we could purchase. It was to enable Congress to prevent the individual states from setting up trade barriers with one another, i.e: New York imposes a tariff on goods made in Pennsylvania.
Somehow I doubt that the framers imagined it being used to pass legislation compelling all Americans to purchase something from private enterprise (the health insurance mandate) or telling them that they can't indulge in cannabis consumption in the privacy of their own homes.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Step 1: Pay a teenager double the cost of the phone to buy the phone with his identity.
Step 2: Have teenager report the phone as stolen.
Step 3: Sell to terrorist @ 3x the cost of the phone.
Step 4: PROFIT.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
assuming you overlook the glaring exception of the "Gun Show" loophole in many states.
The "gun show loophole" actually isn't. It's more properly described as a "private party sale loophole". Any business engaged in the routine sale of firearms needs to perform background checks, regardless of where that sale takes place. If you buy a gun from "Gun Store, Inc." at a gun show you'll fill out the same background check paperwork as you would if you were in the store itself.
Party party sales (i.e: I sell you one of my guns) aren't regulated in most states and don't require background checks. That's the loophole that people are referring to, but most of the anti-2A crowd won't call it a "private party loophole" because that doesn't conjure up scary images of unregulated gun shows.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I would think that it's more important to prove you can vote than show an id to buy a tracfone. Obviously, Chuckie doesn't. jerry
"Software is the difference between hardware and reality"
Sorry, I didn't expect you to erase my second line and then write it again in reply.
but this sort of ignorance needs to be corrected.
There is no such thing as a "gun show loophole".
At a gun show (in any relatively free state), private citizens can purchase from other private citizens without a background check. Neither is in the business of selling firearms, so no paperwork is required. (The dealers at the show must continue to follow all the same laws and procedures that they do back at their shop.)
You can do the same thing at a garage/yard sale. I've gotten some of my best buys at such places. Every time I stop to look at the computer or audio equipment people have put out in their driveway, I never fail to ask "You got any guns?"
You can do the same thing on a person-to-person basis. I've seen someone try to sell a gun to a pawnbroker who refused to give them enough money. The person walked out the door. That didn't stop me from following them out and offering to buy the gun.
You can do the same thing via the want ads in the newspaper. I've bought many guns from people in my town via that method.
You can do the same thing via an online meet-up. I've met people in internet forums who had a gun I was interested in. If they live in the same state as me and we can agree on a price, we both get in our cars and meet at some spot roughly halfway between our two houses. The last gun I bought was in the lobby of a Days Inn (I think; it was one of those cut-rate, business-travel hotels).
In free states, any two people who can legally own guns can trade them for money.
Big freakin' deal!
There is absoutely nothing special about gun shows. There is no "gun show loophole".
The politicians and anti-freedom activists who complain about the fictitious "gun show loophole" are people who simply want to outlaw all private, unregistered sales.
Really, don't you people realise the only way to achieve the latter is to have that dreadful power of control what you can purchase?
Bullshit. Congress can prohibit the states from putting up artificial barriers to trade without having the power to tell me that I can't grow my own wheat or cannabis.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
it has always been a struggle, and always it will be.
It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.
John Philpot Curran, 1790
If you must rely on anonimity to have free soeech, then you already don't have much of it.
True. However, anonymity is the last guard against complete loss of free speech, and it is the easiest one to protect via legal means. Someone is either anonymous or isn't - this doesn't depend on local customs of anonymity, or on what is acceptable anonymity or not.
This is why the ability to say things anonymously is so important. Even if assholes run the show and try to use stupid laws to silence you, if they can't find you, they can't silence you.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
You do NOT need to give the phone company an ID for a landline.
How did you not give them your address?
I gave them a fake address. Still waiting for them to show up to install it, though...
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This looks to me like just another case of politicians trying to protect their big contributors. Consider:
The legislation's sponsors are from Texas (Cornyn) and New York (Schumer).
AT&T is based in Texas. AT&T has given more political contributions than any other company. Its current COO, and its former CEO, both donated to Cornyn.
Verizon is based in New York. Verizon is also on OpenSecret's heavy hitters list at the above link. Verizon's CEO unsurprisingly donated to Schumer.
Boost (Sprint) is based in Kansas.
Boost/Sprint has been the most aggressive in moving into prepaid phones, which often have lower costs than contract services. This threatens the incumbents: AT&T and Verizon each have about double Sprint's subscriber base, and thus have the most to lose from a shift towards prepaid.
Increased surveillance rules remove prepaid's privacy benefits. And they impose record-keeping costs on prepaid services like Boost, making them less competitive with AT&T and Verizon's lucrative contract businesses.