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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

#171

Post by thaumasiotes »

tgrowazay wrote: post #161
BuildTheRobots wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> This has absolutely nothing to do with burner phones That is not correct. There a phone farms operating purely on burner phones / disposable sims. Even for legit use cases, this path is often way easier/cheaper than go through official channels. Use cases range from carrier-NAT proxies at < $1 per GB to text message spam.

But... what does your comment have to do with burner phones?

A burner phone is a phone number whose owner is not officially registered somewhere as the owner.

A spoofed phone number is a false declaration that you're calling from number XXXXXXXXXX when in fact you're calling from YYYYYYYYYY.

You might notice that there is absolutely no relationship between these two ideas. You can be registered and lie about your phone number. You can be unregistered and not lie about your phone number.

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

#172

Post by [deleted] »

mothballed wrote: post #151
Ajedi32 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [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 whe…

[deleted]

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

#173

Post by moate »

greenavocado wrote: post #140

I've got my popcorn and lawn chair out to watch the "voter id is racist" crowd to take a stand on this issue. Context: Voter ID Laws may seem like a good idea, but they’re actually pretty terrible! On the surface, these laws appear to be a reasonable way to stop people from pretending to be someone else when they vote. But the reality is that this kind of voter fraud almost never happens!!! Instead Voter ID Laws prim…

So by "Voter ID is racist" crowd you more broadly mean "people who understand that requiring identification in order to exist in society is a burden on the citizens with little benefit to them but of great value to authoritarians who wish to use these laws for nefarious means".

Which, often, does not include exclusively people who think "Voter ID is racist" as plenty of unhinged libertarians hate make great points about why you shouldn't want the government to have access to 100% of your daily data points 100% of the time.

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

#174

Post by thaumasiotes »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #2

This is how it works in Australia, which means it's a pain for tourists as you need to provide a passport for ID and get it activated, as opposed to just grabbing one at an airport kiosk and being ready to go on your way to the taxi or train like most other places.

> This is how it works in Australia, which means it's a pain for tourists as you need to provide a passport for ID and get it activated, as opposed to just grabbing one at an airport kiosk and being ready to go

I don't see the connection. This is also how it works in China, which means... when you grab a SIM card at an airport kiosk, they take a picture of your passport. You obviously have your passport with you, because you just arrived in China and haven't left the airport yet.

What part of that isn't also true of Australia?

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

#175

Post by mothballed »

Terr_ wrote: post #164
Ajedi32 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [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…

Hold up: Parent-poster is obviously talking about federal regulations, not federal laws, and there are important differences between them... so why have you altered the quote to say [Laws]? That's false. You've put your own words into their mouth to create a "sounds like China" strawman.

The regulations are [often] binding as law. When they change the regulations they are changing the law, under the fiction they're merely changing the interpretation of the law.

An example that comes to mind is the prosecution of Tate Adamiak. One of his machine gun charges was for having an improperly demilled machine gun parts. The parts were demilled under pre-2001 import standards, and the parts were imported pre-2001, and legally imported and sold through a licensed FFL on gun broker. Magically at some point the rule changed and the letter of law never did, and magically the parts weren't parts but actually a machine gun... this bound as law. I think he'll be released in about 15 years.

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

#176

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #169
Terr_ wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold up: Parent-poster is obviously talking about federal regulations, not federal laws, and there are important differences between them... so why have you altered the quote to say [Laws]? That's false. You've put your own words into their mouth to create a "sounds like China" strawman.

Ah yes I forgot, they're not "laws" just "rules" that the government will come after you if you break. Silly me.

> they're not "laws" just "rules" that the government will come after you if you break

If you break a rule you get fined. If you break a law you can go to jail. (Congress can delegate regulation around crimes to an agency, but the crime generally has to be substantially described by statute.)

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

#177

Post by JumpCrisscross »

IAmBroom wrote: post #139
Ajedi32 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find most concerning is that this isn't a bill or law. Unelected government officials at the FCC can apparently just decide to do this .

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.

> Details of complex systems are decided by (hopefully apolitical, public-good-oriented) specialists in the field of interest

And according to the Administrative Procedures Act, which provides substantial guardrails and checks on agency authority.

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

#178

Post by jerf »

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…

"This doesn't sound to me at all like how a democratic country is supposed to function."

There is a family of interesting theories, or perhaps if you prefer, simply a way of looking at history in which you don't consider the "United States" as a single governance structure that has existed back to 1776, but as a series of related, but distinct entities with distinct "social contracts" (a term laden with some philosophical baggage, here I just use it in a very general sense of what people expect from each other in various roles), and distinct theories of governance. While the later entities wrap themselves in the 1776 flag the current ruling structure is quite different from that era. From this point of view you can even go back and include the Continental Congress as the starting point of the "United States" and gain some insight into the way governance can fail as well.

I mention this because it may help free your mind up to consider how the systems really work today beyond the at-times jingoistic "Democracy!". There's a lot of flexibility in how you approach this because it's all opinion anyhow, but there is a strong case to be made that this is the "technocrat" era, in which the executive branch has been given a lot more power both by design and by the stresses of history to give more power to "experts" to deal with the radical changes the world has undergone. I think I can say something generally politically agreeable by pointing out that Congress doesn't seem to be particularly good at handling the world right now; how much worse off would it be if we still "representatives per person" numbers from 1776 and had a Congress of many thousands?

The de facto rules haven't really matched the de jure of the 1776 governance in a long time.

I am trying to keep this as neutral as possible. I have as many opinions as anyone else, but I'm just bringing up the general idea. I think it's probably good to initially just ponder based on one's own understanding of history and match it against your own ideas before you find other people handing you a theory on a platter. There's time enough for that.

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

#179

Post by JumpCrisscross »

mothballed wrote: post #151
Ajedi32 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [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 whe…

> unelected bureaucratic apparatus

Unelected—often unappointed—bureaucrats have never had more power in the U.S. government than they have today.

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