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FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs

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Re: FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs

#151

Post by mothballed »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #148
IAmBroom wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that is the way federal agencies work. Details of complex systems are decided by (hopefully apolitical, public-good-oriented) specialists in the field of interest. One alternative is that Trump can do it at will. Or, to add a few more steps, Trump can fire the FCC head at will, replace him with a lackey, and then do it at will.

> [Laws] are decided by (hopefully apolitical, public-good-oriented) specialists in the field of interest This doesn't sound to me at all like how a democratic country is supposed to function. It feels like you're describing China rather than the US. > Trump can do it at will. Which is also not how our constitution is supposed to work. The executive branch (which includes both the president and his appointees) is not…

The intellectual-academic class are having an existential crisis that they've lost the reigns of the unelected bureaucratic apparatus and it is now being wielded against them. They are still confused at how to respond to this as they're certain they couldn't have been wrong about deferring (uh, 'delegate regulatory authority') the power vested in congress and elected representation to themselves. Surprise pikachu when it turns out the "apolitical, public goal oriented specialists' were useful idiots in the process of handing power from congress to the executive.

If you thought the political apparatus was willingly going to leave the reigns to "apolitical specialists" rather than ruthlessly consolidating it toward the hands of the most power hungry self-dealing monsters that can command the executive branch then obviously you have not been living in in reality. Of course by the time the blindfold has been removed, the power is already largely consolidated.

Re: FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs

#152

Post by riffraff »

grishka wrote: post #149

As a Russian: huh, you guys could still just buy a sim card without any kind of identification? Impressive. We had that ID requirement introduced way back in the 00s. Even EU countries seem to require an ID now. When I traveled to France and Belgium in 2024, I bought a French tourist sim card, and the carrier kept sending me some rather insistent messages that my line would get disconnected if I don't upload my passp…

yeah I think in Italy this was introduced in the security push after 9/11, and in other EU countries I also had to provide an id to get a sim card, tho I'm not sure it's all of them.

Re: FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs

#153

Post by BuildTheRobots »

OptionOfT wrote: post #133

This was the case in Belgium a couple of years ago. Everybody had to go to a store and have their ID read by the system, and if they didn't, the phone number would be shut down. Unsure how that worked for MVNOs though. Now I live in the USA and am well-familiar with the spam calls. I wonder if this new rule will reduce/prevent them. I think in general the ability to spoof numbers should be banned / controlled. Someon…

> I think in general the ability to spoof numbers should be banned / controlled.

This has absolutely nothing to do with burner phones and the proposed changes won't do anything to change that.

~5 years ago there was a big push (in the USA) to try and solve it with STIR/SHAKEN but I've not been involved or paid attention since then, so don't know if anything came of it. It's a legitimately hard problem to solve though. Lots of engineering and backwards compatibility technical problems, but also political, logistical and commercial issues are abound. You've also got some turtle issues too; it's attestation all the way down.

Re: FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs

#154

Post by cge »

grishka wrote: post #149

As a Russian: huh, you guys could still just buy a sim card without any kind of identification? Impressive. We had that ID requirement introduced way back in the 00s. Even EU countries seem to require an ID now. When I traveled to France and Belgium in 2024, I bought a French tourist sim card, and the carrier kept sending me some rather insistent messages that my line would get disconnected if I don't upload my passp…

Different EU countries seem to heavily vary on this point. I’ve seen everything from requirements for id scans and addresses to esims that accept cryptocurrency as payment.

Re: FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs

#155

Post by iamnothere »

catigula wrote: post #131

I get over 10 scam calls a day. I'm forced to pay a company to block them because the free methods don't work. There's no way to work around it because they refuse to enforce the law on these companies cycling through burner numbers.

They are not using cell phones, they are using VOIP.

Re: FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs

#156

Post by jldugger »

OptionOfT wrote: post #133

This was the case in Belgium a couple of years ago. Everybody had to go to a store and have their ID read by the system, and if they didn't, the phone number would be shut down. Unsure how that worked for MVNOs though. Now I live in the USA and am well-familiar with the spam calls. I wonder if this new rule will reduce/prevent them. I think in general the ability to spoof numbers should be banned / controlled. Someon…

Wish I could recall the podcast I listened to a few years ago that was telling the history of robo-dialers and caller ID spoofing. The general gist was that AT&T was making money off it from 1-900 operators so they weren't eager to self-regulate. So even though ending spam calling is a bipartisan issue, feet were dragged on the implementation.

If anyone's eager to do podcast archaeology, IIRC one of the angles was investigating dead government agency phone numbers, and some lady entrepreneur in the 80s. Might have been Reply All, but the market regulation angle makes me think Planet Money.

of course, politicians exempt themselves from the spam call category. Political speech is the most important speech!

Re: FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs

#157

Post by dgellow »

kgwxd wrote: post #55
dgellow wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US you can buy a SIM card and activate without providing any information at the airport. At least in NYC. I was really surprised the first time

Why were you surprised?

Because I’m from Europe, and we need to provide an ID to get a SIM card

Re: FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs

#158

Post by dgellow »

kayo_20211030 wrote: post #122
ImJamal wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not who you were responding to, but most of the western world requires IDs already. The US is an outlier on this issue.

I don't think that's true. At least not in the European countries I visit.

It’s a EU wide requirement

Re: FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs

#159

Post by bl4kers »

kgwxd wrote: post #58
standardUser wrote: post #14

The Trump administration has been working overtime trying to build databases of people in this country. Leaving no stone unturned, legal or otherwise. I vaguely remember a time when American conservatives were against precisely this, often as a first principle. Maybe that's just an idealized memory on my part.

Spoiler: They were never against it, just biding their time.

Yep, just in different flavors based on ideology. For example, forced labor requires logging & tracking of pregnancies. Anti-trans folks want gender identity on the books to gatekeep who can teach in schools or enter bathrooms. Same for preventing same-sex marriage. Folks railing against voting rights want more and more checks to prove who you are and where you live

Re: FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs

#160

Post by rtkwe »

OptionOfT wrote: post #133

This was the case in Belgium a couple of years ago. Everybody had to go to a store and have their ID read by the system, and if they didn't, the phone number would be shut down. Unsure how that worked for MVNOs though. Now I live in the USA and am well-familiar with the spam calls. I wonder if this new rule will reduce/prevent them. I think in general the ability to spoof numbers should be banned / controlled. Someon…

Probably not the issue isn't knowing who owns a number it's that the actual number for the call is just a data field that's not validated or required to be correct. Spam calls would be a lot less annoying if they had to come from real numbers that could be blocked instead of being able to spoof as many numbers as they want.
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