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Chinese telecoms must use "AI and other technical means" to identify phone users

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Re: Chinese telecoms must use "AI and other technical means" to identify phone users

#61

Post by dbspin »

grecy wrote: post #55
classichasclass wrote: post #24

Not that there's any moral equivalence, but when I'm in Australia visiting in-laws, I have to provide my passport or similar ID to get my PAYG SIM activated. I just have them swipe it at the airport and my SIM is on in 10 minutes. My wife admits it's a lot easier in the States to get a PAYG SIM; AT&T doesn't care who she is as long as there's money in the account. I'm not sure why Australia does that, but it's really…

I just drove around Africa, and I bought a pre-paid SIM in about 30 different countries. Every single one of them required a copy of my passport.

Interesting. Absolutely not needed in Ireland.

Re: Chinese telecoms must use "AI and other technical means" to identify phone users

#62

Post by EpicEng »

dang wrote: post #60
EpicEng wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, look; a brand spanking new HN account backing China on this one! Yes, why would it be bad news for an authoritarian government to strengthen its hold on its people. Those spam calls are so annoying! BTW, those spammers aren't sitting there on cell phones making calls.

You can't attack a new user like that, regardless of how strongly you disagree with them. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here. The damage of punishing someone innocent is orders of magnitude greater than the benefit (or pleasure) of scourging villains, so please err on the side of being a welcoming community member. The last thing HN needs is to stew…

Fair enough

Re: Chinese telecoms must use "AI and other technical means" to identify phone users

#64

Post by CharlesColeman »

crazygringo wrote: post #50

The title sounds intentionally provocative -- "face scanned" appears to be just "have their photo taken". I can't find a single source that suggests anything more than that. Which isn't much different from having your photo taken for your driver's license, passport, or at the border, all of which the US does. Burner phones are mostly associated with criminal activity, so tying phones to identities feels like a legiti…

> Burner phones are mostly associated with criminal activity, so tying phones to identities feels like a legitimate function -- which many countries do. And if criminals are trying to register phones through identity theft, this seems like it would be an additional protection.

> If you're concerned with privacy, that's what encrypted communications are for...

That's all true, but the real question is: what exactly is "criminal activity?" That's how a policy can be made to seem legitimate on the surface, but can actually be quite sinister when examined more closely.

Policies like this one cannot be examined in isolation, and must be interpreted in context [1].

> If you're concerned with privacy, that's what encrypted communications are for...

I'm pretty sure that E2E encrypted communication products are de-facto banned in China, at least for private citizens [2].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/magazine/the-lonely-crusa...

[2] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/20...

Re: Chinese telecoms must use "AI and other technical means" to identify phone users

#65

Post by throw476543 »

stri8ed wrote: post #33
elliotlee wrote: post #12

I searched for the law. They need a photo id for a new phone number to reduce phone scams. I think it is good.

Spammers don't use cell phones to make their calls. Most often they just spoof calls using random peoples phone numbers. This would have no effect on spam calls. (I assume you mean phone-spam when you say phone scam?) Not to be paranoid, but you really created a HN account just to add this comment?

I’m not the person you asked, but I create throwaway accounts when commenting on sensitive topics so I don’t get harassed irl and since you can’t delete accounts on HN.

Re: Chinese telecoms must use "AI and other technical means" to identify phone users

#66

Post by dsfyu404ed »

braythwayt wrote: post #16
corporate_shi11 wrote: post #2

When a nation is a superpower, it is able to influence the behavior of weaker states. It will exert its influence for a variety of reasons, but it is inevitable that with power comes the exertion of influence. China will use its power to prop up autocratic regimes across the world and export its technology and methods to make such autocracy possible and sustainable. China represents a threat to global democracy which…

Without agreeing or disagreeing with them, we should accept that people have said exactly the same things about the USA, about the Soviet Union, about Russia, about Britain... And on and on. I am not trying to play “whatabout,” but I do ask: Is there anything different about China’s behaviour as a superpower? Or are we just seeing a shift in which superpowers have world influence? At the moment I write this, the fron…

>Is there anything different about China’s behaviour as a superpower?

Yes! When Britain was colonizing the world it was not nearly universally agreed upon that colonialism was bad. Ditto for the USSR and US. China is trying to export a system of values that pretty much the entire developed world knows (and has plenty of examples to cite, some of them recent and close to home) lead to mass oppression and suffering.

Re: Chinese telecoms must use "AI and other technical means" to identify phone users

#67

Post by [deleted] »

crazygringo wrote: post #50

The title sounds intentionally provocative -- "face scanned" appears to be just "have their photo taken". I can't find a single source that suggests anything more than that. Which isn't much different from having your photo taken for your driver's license, passport, or at the border, all of which the US does. Burner phones are mostly associated with criminal activity, so tying phones to identities feels like a legiti…

[deleted]

Re: Chinese telecoms must use "AI and other technical means" to identify phone users

#68

Post by Erwin »

SIM cards bought in Italy have long required showing photo ID in person and also some kind of SSN like number used for various financial transactions.

I needed to acquire that fiscal SSN when buying wine from an Italian web shop but weirdly it's a computed value, not a unique ID you get from some organization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_fiscal_code

Re: Chinese telecoms must use "AI and other technical means" to identify phone users

#69

Post by mytailorisrich »

deogeo wrote: post #35
classichasclass wrote: post #24

Not that there's any moral equivalence, but when I'm in Australia visiting in-laws, I have to provide my passport or similar ID to get my PAYG SIM activated. I just have them swipe it at the airport and my SIM is on in 10 minutes. My wife admits it's a lot easier in the States to get a PAYG SIM; AT&T doesn't care who she is as long as there's money in the account. I'm not sure why Australia does that, but it's really…

There absolutely is moral equivalence - they're trying to cut off all means of anonymous communication. It's difficult to get a SIM without providing ID in the EU as well, and you have to provide ID when renting a room. I wish the media were always sensitive to privacy erosion, not just when China does it. I guess using Chinese surveillance tech is a roundabout way of getting them to pay attention, as happened with t…

Having a requirement to link a SIM to an individual is not privacy erosion.

It does not mean that usage is monitored, and usage is the important privacy aspect.

Furthermore, this just puts mobile phones on par with landlines. It used to be that having a phone meant having a landline at home, and obviously that meant knowing exactly who a number belonged to.

There needs to be a balance for everything in the real world. And even most Western countries have concluded that requiring IDs for SIM cards is a necessary measure.

Now, for Chinese authorities one issue (without even going into politics) is that China is a very low trust society where it is almost expected that everyone will flaunt the rules at the first opportunity. So I am half guessing that the government sees technological solutions as a way around that.

(As for renting a room, it would be crazy for a landlord not to know who their tenant is just for practical reasons considering land and tenancy laws in most EU countries)

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