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.
Has this changed recently? I thought I heard about this several years ago, but the last 2-3 times I've visited (in the last couple of years) I've been able to pick up a prepaid SIM from Colesworth without any ID check.
FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs
291–300 of 417 posts
Re: FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs
#292Re: FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd like to see someone explain why a .50 BMG bolt action upper receiver (AR-15 type) is a firearm but a .556 bolt action upper receiver (AR-15 type) is not. It's literally the same damn thing but with a different sized cartridge. Nothing in the statute would allow this, yet executive 'delegation' mumbo-jumbo and magically one is basically unregulated and the other is felonies out the ass if you start commercially se…
> I'd like to see someone explain why a .50 BMG bolt action upper receiver (AR-15 type) is a firearm but a .556 bolt action upper receiver (AR-15 type) is not Have you petitioned to have the rule revisited? I’d imagine this is the right political climate in which to do it. We have an overreaching regulatory state. I agree with you on that. But trying to ram everything through the Congress just means we get a Presiden…
I don't see how requiring Congressional ratification for rule changes would grant the president more power than he has now. Currently the primary checks are procedural limitations; but were Trump a better, more well organized leader these procedural checks wouldn't pose much of a hurdle at all.
If you want a more technocratic administrative state, the agencies would require more autonomy from the president than they have now, but things are moving in the opposite direction both as a practical matter and constitutionally.
Re: FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs
#294We at some point will have to stop complying. Not because we are doing anything at all wrong, but because we cannot trust our govt and the corporations they are beholden to.
If there’s one thing this administration has shown, it’s that they believe laws are just suggestions for other people and that ultimately nobody will stop them. They’re essentially daring the public to resort to violence and frankly, it’s getting exhausting. Why follow the law when the president will pardon you and the Supreme Court has said he also won’t be held accountable for basically anything. I welcome the reas…
Re: FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs
#295As 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…
Re: FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://archive.org/details/3f25eeb8affc11e6892a43edc8087050 ~~I _think_ this is the one.~~ God I miss this podcast. Edit: this IS the one.
Are you familiar with the Search Engine podcast?
Re: FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
The real issue is that it's a perpetual problem -- there are NGOs that literally pull out the same one pager, an endless dance of having some 1L repeat the same points over and over and over. (Why is it called a 1 pager you ask? Because your elected officials won't read more than that.) I made a grand total of one hill visit. I told them I'm tired of repeating the same things over and over, and if you make my interns…
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Re: FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs
#298We at some point will have to stop complying. Not because we are doing anything at all wrong, but because we cannot trust our govt and the corporations they are beholden to.
Re: FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'd like to see someone explain why a .50 BMG bolt action upper receiver (AR-15 type) is a firearm but a .556 bolt action upper receiver (AR-15 type) is not Have you petitioned to have the rule revisited? I’d imagine this is the right political climate in which to do it. We have an overreaching regulatory state. I agree with you on that. But trying to ram everything through the Congress just means we get a Presiden…
The president has a large degree of control over the agencies and their output, so in practice agency delegation granted presidents immense power. This power went largely unexercised due to norms. But that has been slowly changing, and under Trump radically changing. And if SCOTUS adopts the Unitary Executive Theory, as they seem poised to do, then we'll have something very close to a king, difficult to distinguish f…
A modern economy has a million small emergencies every day. Given the choice between dysfunction and autocracy, humans routinely choose the latter. So every time an emergency emerges that Congress takes too long to act on, and where the President steps in, the window shifts power to the executive.