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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.
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.
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.
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.
Sorry, I didn't expect you to erase my second line and then write it again in reply.
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
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.