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China Demands Real Names From Mobile Phone Users
itwbennett writes "Starting this month, mobile carriers in China are requiring people who set up new mobile phone accounts to register with their real names as part of a new government measure to reduce anonymity among the country's 800 million mobile users. And within 3 years, the carriers must also register the real identities of all existing users, said China Telecom spokesman Xu Fei. The new policy comes as China has been pushing users to register with their real names online. In August, online gamers had to begin real-name registration under regulations that are meant to protect minors from Internet addiction and 'unhealthy' content."
I seem to recall AT&T demanding my social security number when I signed up.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
We have had to show photo id for as long as I can remember in Austraila when getting a new phone or sim card.
There really isn't that much seperating "us" and the "bad" guys these days except we are "us".
Or, they know better than to object publicly. Or the news agency made sure to print only comments favorable to the policy -- a practice not, alas, restricted to China.
In reality they probably don't even exist. Why go out on the street to get comments on something, especially if you know everyone is too scared to give you anything but the party line anyways?
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
What you are proposing would be breaking the law. Like any law, people will follow it if they think they may be punished for breaking it. It would be up to China to enforce this if they think it is important.
In the case of India, when someone registers a SIM card he can expect a government official to visit his home and verify his identity shortly after the purchase (India is super paranoid after the Mumbai terrorists used cell phones to coordinate their attacks). I believe officials can visit your registered address anytime after that to make sure you haven't sold the card. If India can enforce a law like this, I'm sure China can.
India has been doing this for years. It's not possible to get a sim card without a valid 'proof' of your identity. It's another matter that if the terrorists really want to get a sim card, this requirement wont stop them - as it's very easy to get forged documents.
If all terrorism disappeared tomorrow never to reappear in any form whatsoever, governments everywhere would mourn its passing.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I like how people always feel like they have to cite that India is the world's largest democracy, as if that amounts to a hill of beans. Does doing terribly stupid, ineffective, and seemingly oppressive things magically become OK just because some plurality of the people managed to strategically vote their party into a leading position? I think not. At least the Communist Party in China doesn't have to go through the indignity of lying about their intentions and motivations.
You have a government issued ID with a government-issued ID number. Phone companies are required to collect this information and verify it with the government. They also generally require banking information for billing purposes, and make sure that that's consistent with the registered user of the phone as well. Yes, you can try to privately sell a SIM card registered under your name to someone else and manage to get by with prepaid cards. But that's a risky thing to do, because if the phone is used for some illicit purpose, the police will come to you. Even if you can prove you didn't do the crime, intending to get around registration requirements itself may cause trouble. There are some ways around this (e.g. roaming SIM cards), but most people are fully registered and tracked.
As for the Internet, Internet connections are also registered with the government under your name, and your provider is required to keep a record of all your connections, and it's illegal to set up open access points. Of course, it's easier to communicate clandestinely with Internet protocols, including going through foreign proxies, but if you try, that itself is often detectable and suspicious.
Where Germany wins over a place like Saudi Arabia is that they generally use all this tracking and surveillance only against actual crimes, although it's probably only a matter of time until those protections erode and governments will start using it for political purposes. Some of the people responsible for the laws and technology had plenty of experience from fascist and communist regimes.
Speaking as an expat who has been living in China for almost 5 years, this is being SOLD as a reaction to phone scams. It is a general rule that when you deal with real estate agents, art agents and others, do not give them your phone number or you will be bombarded with spam text messages at least 10-15 times a day. On top of this, there is an almost daily report of some crime ring scamming people for money by sending them text messages, or calling them while impersonating someone/some agency they know and trust.
That's how it is sold to the public, who otherwise would make a stink about this kind of thing. Even in this political environment, you have to suger coat the pills a little.
Now when they try to push the same legislation thru here in the USA all it will take is a quick comparison to COMMUNIST CHINA to get the politicians to vehemently oppose it....
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
Requiring it has been required in Norway for a while.
This is the direct result of people abusing the system by getting pre-paid phones and being cockbags with them. Now you cant get anonymous phones.
Personally I do not have an issue with this. While I love privacy I also think that at some point you need to have a certain amount of accountability. Being called up at 4 in the morning by some assbag pretending to be a customer at work.... not amusing.... not at all....
Then again, almost nobody opt out of the cellular phone registry here, so if I have a phone number or a name I can find the other. Their street address is also in this system.
Anyone can query it at sites like Gulesider.no ("yellowpages").
If you dont want people to know who you are, then dont call them :p
If so, then they learned it from the USA which learned it from Prussia which learned it from India's training for the underclasses of the Hindu caste system. The original founders of the USA system used to be quite open about this soon after the Industrial Revolution. Their biggest fears were that overproduction caused by too many independent American entrepreneurers might make them take heavy losses on their massive investments in industrial equipment and centralized production and that the poor might become dangerously discontent.
The solution they embraced was a system of schooling designed to teach the masses just enough to be useful workers but not so much that they can think critically and understand things like Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis or bread-and-circus. Other nations saw how useful this was for the ruling class (who, by the way, overwhelmingly go to elite private schools where they are taught to be leaders) and adopted similar policies.
The fact that people in Western nations tend to recognize China's use of public schooling for these purposes (because China is teh evil!) but fail to recognize the less-extreme version employed by their own countries (because we are patriotic!) is a masterful triumph of this system.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Under federal law (or more specifically, the law is tacit on the subject that) ANYONE may ask that you provide a social security number - and use it as an identification number for you - except the government. Now, that comes with some caveats. You are not required to give them your SSN, but in that case they are allowed to deny you their services based on your refusal.
Your state laws may have other provisions, but normally the alternative is that you must give them enough personal identification to uniquely identify you and your entire financial history...which is really the only reason not to give out your SSN. With the information they have, just about anyone can get your SSN for $10.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
False, they'll just define something else as terrorism.
A couple of months ago they tried this in Mexico. At first everyone was scared because they said they'd disconnect any line that wasn't registered.
At the end they didn't because too many people didn't register (in the order of millions) and about a month after the deadline the government simply desisted on the whole idea, calling it a "bad idea" and claiming that it was badly implemented.
Too bad the Chinese can't count on that happening, though.
I spent the last month on vacation in Australia. I got a SIM card mailed to me in Italy on June when I registered on the Internet with http://www.vipbackpackers.com/ (they have a discount card for hostels, tours, bus, etc). I gave them my address and credit card. The SIM card worked well.
Mrs Thatcher call Nelson Mandela a terrorist. Given current legal definitions many much admired historical figures could be classified as terrorists.
Nah, terrorists try and fail. Those who succeed become heroes.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
It's too bad all the innocent people have to be punished without a trial for something to prevent crime. That's especially true since it won't prevent crime, and only may make it easier to prosecute criminals after the crime is committed. In fact, it will likely cause more crime, like armed robbery of people with cell phones so the crooks have phones that aren't tracked to them.