361–370 of 417 posts
I guess a lot of people weren't around to see civil libertarians screaming about the effect of the USA Patriot act in 2001.
> Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project
Oh, come on, Jay, this should have been on your radar for 25 years.
I'm always surprised how bad ideas spread faster than good ideas among our rulers. Here is a map of countries where an ID is required (or not) https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/sim-card-regist...
it's not a bad idea from the POV of said "rulers" - more surveillance and control on the population is desirable (to them).
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…
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It is actually because you can't do anything with the source phone number being tied to an identity if the scammers are freely able to spoof the number that the end networks and users see. Even if every network in the world adopted this it wouldn't matter if caller id isn't fixed so that you can actually see the source number to go ask who it is!
You can. Finland forces operators to stop routing non-verified and spoofed numbers. Spam gone. https://www.tieto.com/en/cases/telecom/global-anti-fraud-mod...
This is probably part of the larger scope of the system wanting to require ID to even boot a computer let alone connect to the internet.
It is. They want to monitor every second of our lives and put it through current computer systems and salivating on what they can glean from it in future generations of AI. All the bureaucrats and politicians crave is control over everything. No privacy is valued other than their own, and they will always use "think of the children" as an excuse.
Until they lose an election using "think of the children", they'll always continue to use it. In terms of political weaponry, it's currently unstoppable.
This is what always happens when governments enforce laws like this, victims and innoncents always suffer as result.
Its happening in finance where criminals groom dumb teengers for laundering money, or eldery's bank accounts they obtain via installing remote software.
So lets add 1 more reason for criminals to steal phone.
Edit: This is also happening in crypto world where criminals perform fake KYC. I guess with age verifications, this crime will increase in demand multiplefold and the last defense ID will be obsolete after data leaks and the fraud happening around it.
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FWIW I bought my Chilean SIM without any problems whatsoever.
Situation circa 2019 at least was that foreign tourists in Chile could purchase a SIM card, but it would be automatically disconnected after some amount of time without registering the phone in a way few foreign tourists would do.
I'm sure the cops can get that info, but its mostly to enforce the "only one free register per year". Anyone can buy a phone with cash and use a prepaid sim with zero ID needed.
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A roaming eSIM would work the same way as a roaming SIM. Just because it's easier to set up (no need to get a physical SIM) doesn't change the regulations around it.
I suppose this depends on how the law is written, but are roaming users subject to local SIM regulations for network use? I can't imagine asking for ID from tourists using their existing SIMs is going to work. I believe some travel eSIMs are actually issued from outside the country you're going to.
And as you said, ones marketed as "China travel SIMs" are typically issued from Hong Kong. Interestingly, Hong Kong also has an ID rule (though it allows self upload of ID anyway), but it exempts these roaming-only cards. If you want the card to work in HK, and it is issued from there, you must scan your passport to activate it.
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> like most other places Much of EU requires ID for some time now. France is a bit strange, requires registration after 23 days or something. Germany, Italy, Spain it's basically impossible. The US is rather unique in that it does not require registration.
Huh? At least in Germany, Spain and France all of the smaller shops fill in fake info without even asking. EU countries have had these requirements for years and years and never moved to actually enforce them.