

How Tiny Swiss Cellphone Chips Helped Track Global Terror Web (2004) - Nrsolis
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/04/world/how-tiny-swiss-cellphone-chips-helped-track-global-terror-web.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

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Luc
...(2004).

Did they not have SIMs in the US in 2004? The article takes an awful long time
to identify these 'chips' explicitly as SIM cards, as if the intended audience
wouldn't known about them.

~~~
Nrsolis
Depending on your carrier, SIMs weren't really used unless you were with AT&T
or T-Mobile. The subsidized phone system here made switching out SIMs between
phones kinda pointless so fewer people knew about them.

Now, with LTE, that's changing a bit.

~~~
thedrbrian
Or if you live in Europe.

~~~
Nrsolis
Or didn't and lived in Japan.

------
greenyoda
_" Mr. Mohammed was a victim of his own sloppiness, said a senior European
intelligence official. He was meticulous about changing cellphones, but
apparently he kept using the same SIM card."_

It seems weird that a leader in an organization capable of executing the 9/11
attacks could have lacked such basic understanding of how cellular technology
works. There wasn't a single guy in al Qaeda who knew that a SIM card was a
unique identifier?

