
Proposed H.R.4886 would require ID to buy prepaid phones and SIMs - jevinskie
https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/4886
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robryk
Similar laws exist in many European countries and Poland is very likely to
pass one soon.

I guess that the ostensible reason for introducing this is to help against
terrorism (it is in Poland). I fail to see how this should help in any way: in
places with large population density (where terrorism is more likely) mobile
phones with foreign SIMs are reasonably common (am I wrong here?), so a good
workaround is to buy burner SIMs abroad.

~~~
dogma1138
I was asked for an ID buying a pre-paid SIM card in Germany 3 years ago or so.

Seems that the regulations are even more strict now and you need to register
it to an address.

[https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowTopic-g187275-i116-k914854...](https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowTopic-g187275-i116-k9148540-German_SIM_card_without_German_ID-
Germany.html)

~~~
endemic
Can't you just provide false info? Forged drivers license, etc.

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banku_brougham
I don't see how this helps, unless the government is also listening/logging
all communications on all phones. All of the proposed protections from
terrorism that I read amount to total information awareness by the state --
essentially an unrecognizable civic regime.

And even then, how can it guarantee safety against a suicide pact? Total waste
of time in my opinion.

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deepnet
The rush to attribute blame to something technical and pass a quick fix law is
obviously a tactic to draw attention from the real question:

Why did the authorities so utterly fail to protect us ?

The facts remain: 'Europol' knew ~400 radicalised EU citizens were at it.
Turkish Intelligence gave the bombers name to the Belgians - seemingly
ignored.

The Belgians, before the Belgian bombs, interrogated the French bomber for
only an hour, seemingly fruitlessly.

This echoes previous tragic incidents where the vital intel was known and
passed on but seemingly ignored or lost in the noise.

For instance the Boston bomb where the older brother was known to have been
radicalised at training camps by his ethnic government but the intel was not
properly utilised by the American authorities who had him on their books but
ignored the intel and seemingly considered him an 'asset' working for them.

Or the Paris cartoonist deaths, again a radicalised native, known to the
authorities to have been radicalised in jail when as a young drug dealer he
was incarcerated with Al Quaeda's no.1 european recruiter.

Where are the calls for a public investigation into the near total failure by
the intelligence services to stop any plots they haven't trumped up ?

They have near total electronic surveillance at great chilling effect to
freedom and great inconvenience to the economy yet still fare worse against
unsophisticated plots than we should expect.

"Perhaps the real secret the spies don't want anyone to know is they are not
very good at their jobs."*

<sarcasm> Yet of course our protectors were flummoxed by 'burner phones', that
no-one could have suspected (despite this been the MO of previous Euro
Islamist Bombers - and a entire season of the Wire). If only we made something
else illegal we would have got them... </sarcasm>

Perhaps mindlessly handing more power and budgets over to these morons without
any public oversight is the problem.

We need real police, real detectives, acting on intelligence not more of the
same.

[*]
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9-...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9-3149-963f-47bea720b460)

~~~
dogma1138
That's by far not the worst thing, the 7/7 bombings had more intelligence, as
US, French and Israeli sources gave many details including names and sigint
intercepts one of the "suspects" was arrested and then released 24 hours
before the attack happened he later slipped the police surveillance (which
according to some reports was not even plain cloths but literally a police van
trailing him) and rejoined his friends (who's names and details were also
known) and went on with the bombings.

Many European countries already have regulations around pre-paid sims and
burner phones it just doesn't matter (especially when the terrorists are
European nationals).

The biggest problem is that overall in Europe security forces do not have the
budget nor manpower to deal with neither foreign nor homegrown terrorist
threats and in the current political climate the fear the media more than the
actual terrorists.

~~~
deepnet
Is the problem a lack of budget or how those resources are spent ?

Giving more money to a failing organisation without oversight will not get
better results.

The failures need a spotlight, questions must be asked and answered.

Secrecy has failed us; Public oversight is needed.

Could this have been carried out without phones ?

The terrorists planned this in close physical contact, they excecuted it in
close contact - not having phones would have made little difference -
synchronising watches, etc.

Our 'homeland' security apparatus was created by Neoconservatives, has it been
reformed since ?

The phones issue is a red-herring to distract from the real and continued
failures of our security services - this endangers us all.

~~~
dogma1138
The Belgian state security service which is responsible for both internal and
external security (MI5+MI6, FBI+CIA, Mossad+ShinBet etc.) has 150 employees
and has seen budget cuts last year despite the Paris attacks.

Belgium (and many other European countries) has ghettos which are filled with
"immigrants" many of them of 2nd and 3rd generation predominately Muslim.

Those ghettos aren't policed as the police in many cases is afraid of going in
to do their day to day policing and even simple warrants require the use of
SWAT if not the army.

The population in those ghettos ranges from being supportive, to sympathetic
to plain refusing to cooperate with the authorities for what ever reason which
means that there is almost no penetration as far as traditional HUMINT sources
goes.

It took Belgium months to find one guy that was hiding in within only a few
blocks because the local population is not cooperative and some parts of it
conspired to assist him.

But any time that this issue has been brought up it pretty much ended as a
political fiasco and often a political suicide.

When some one suggested that the security services need to build an outreach
program that would specifically target the Muslim population to both build
trust between law enforcement and the migrant communities as well as a network
of informants, they are quite often being labeled as racist, islamophobic and
could kiss their career goodbye.

------
xkcd-sucks
If this passes, somebody's gonna make a buttload of cash selling grey-market
anonymous prepaid phones bought before the ban

------
sathackr
next up:

ID required to use one of the few remaining public pay phones.

good thing VoIP service and public wifi hotspots aren't widespread, otherwise
the proposed legislation would be pointless. Oh, wait...

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oxplot
Hmm, here in Australia we've had this law for a long time.

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nodesocket
I guess I don't see the problem with this. Prepaid phones (burners) are
notoriously used by criminals.

~~~
Nrsolis
Terrible idea.

They are also used by investigative journalists trying to uncover government
wrongdoing along with people trying to escape abusive ex-lovers.

The desire for anonymity is not synonymous with criminal intent.

~~~
nodesocket
Let's be realistic, investigative journalists can get phones from their
employer. People on HN always seem to bring up the fringe case... The small
percentage. Ignoring the vast majority of actual use.

~~~
sathackr
Oh,

I might add, the vast majority of prepaid cell phone use is _not_ criminal use
[citation needed]

I'd be willing to wager the vast majority of the use of most things currently
being argued (encryption is the hottest one right now) is not criminal.

So you want to force the _majority_ use to give up their privacy and trust
every retailer of prepaid phones with their personal information, because of
the _fringe_ cases of criminal use?

~~~
Nrsolis
My point exactly.

The fact of the matter is that prepaid phone use (much like encryption) is
used by people for pretty banal purposes: they want to make sure that their
private life stays private.

Maybe they are carrying on an illicit affair. Maybe they are running a side
business their employer wouldn't approve of. Whatever the reason, people have
a certain right to privacy.

The burden isn't on _US_ to demonstrate why we need privacy. The burden is on
the _GOVERNMENT_ to demonstrate why they need to pull back the curtain on
someone else's privacy to further a legitimate government interest. That's the
crux of every argument opposing the government keeping records (or forcing the
record-keeping by business) on everything a person does in the course of their
life.

The VAST majority of prepaid phone use is legitimate and non-controversial.
Why burden all of those uses with a specious need to identify themselves when
conducting perfectly legal business?

You don't need an ID to buy a hammer or a knife. Why should you need one to
buy a phone?

