This is part of the same trend which requires ID to use social media, view adult content, or log into their own computer. The goal is to give government control of computers and communications.
China has had the requirement to "bind" online accounts to ID for almost a decade. No one complained because they already verified with Weixin (WeChat) so they just linked their accounts to it.
America, all the crumbling industries and oligarchs of Russia, all the domestic surveillance of China, none of the healthcare of other developed countries, and more guns then any other nation.
Yep. Google an offense contractor for the department of war is now going to require phone attestation to access the internet. This goes right in line with the actual desires here. Technofacism is going to hit fast. Especially seeing as how many people here and in other communities have their head in the sand.
The creeping is advanced by the blue/red team mentality too. MAGA won't care about this because their guy is in charge. If he were not, there would be conspiracy theories about how this is all a plan to get Trump and his supporters. For now team blue complains until their guy is in charge, like how Biden insisted everyone needed to show vaccine papers to participate in society and they were silent. Few can see that the two teams are different sides of the same coin.
I'm not going to roll in the mud here. Rather, it is sufficient to point out that generically showing a vaccine record/card for a limited time is qualitatively different from online tracking of all activity, and that COVID killed a lot of people. The US federal government is tasked with ensuring the general welfare of all people in its nation on line one of the US Constitution. Vaccine mandates are clearly and objectively in line with that, the recent internet hostilities have a much harder time making that case.
Also, I've found Costco aluminum foil is substantially more durable than grocery store aluminum foil. I do not work/shill for Costco.
You just can't see the hypocracy I guess. For example, is it okay to ask "Was he vaccinated?"
Indoor dining: Yes.
Died suddenly: No.
Either you care about privacy all of the time, or you don't really care about it very much after all. And when people care seems to split along red/blue ideology.
spam/phishing/malicious calls do not come from individuals. How about they start with preventing caller ID spoofing/requiring proper caller ID?
the spam calls come from call farms that rotate numbers. they should be required to present a unified and verifiable caller ID
Phone systems can put whatever they want in caller ID, there should be verifiable reverse lookup to a valid registered number along with fines for violators
requiring an individuals ID to get a phone number is going to make the spam/phishing/malicious problem WORSE along with the enormous risks of that database being exposed/abused
I can understand the motivation. I've had the same number since the 90's and never once got a spam call until I was in the hospital last year and since then I've been getting 2-3 a day every day. They've probably left at least a thousand voice mails for a great loan opportunity, all from different numbers and different loan amounts.
Personal anecdata: I get much more spam calls on a number from a country with mandatory ID sim card registration than on a number from a country where anonymous sim cards are allowed. Both numbers are almost 20 years old and I barely use them for anything but calls/sms to friends/relatives and receiving bank 2FA SMSes.
It probably is today. There was a time when hospital admissions/discharges were published in the local paper.
As a population we used to be a lot less concerned with privacy. It was nicer in a way. It was a time when you didn't really worry about your identity getting leaked or stolen. If someone knew you were in the hospital, they might send you flowers or a card.
Get yourself locked up in the slammer for a night while carrying a fresh burner; observe them writing down your IMEI and IMSI; see if that makes you start getting robocalls.
You know the FCC is going to do this and still be completely unable to stop spam calls. You're going to get all of the drawbacks and none of the benefits.
This is the way it works in Australia. I wasn't a huge fan of having to prove who I am and have my identity related to be able to txt and make phone calls or use mobile internet when I moved here.
The difference between say a think tank and an advocacy organization like "reclaimthenet.org" is a think tank hopefully feels obligated to think about, and pitch, a solution to the identified problem (spam calls).
Obviously reclaimthenet.org can post whatever they want on their site.
I'm curious about requiring all phone calls except to emergency services to cost a tenth of a cent. Or some amount that permits desired robocalling (prescription drug reminders for those not on the 'net) and excises spam calls.
Does anyone imagine the government doesn’t already know who owns every phone number?
Also, couldn’t this system be optional, numbers that are ID-verified are somehow flagged so (assuming I choose) when one calls my phone knows to let it through and when an unverified number calls it doesn’t ring?
They know through indirect means. So they buy all the cellphone data specifically the gps location data in the us and funnel it through huge servers. So they can determine patterns, addresses, etc.
This makes that easier and doesn't risk any of the legality if their should be illegal data sources or other likely illegal activities.
Yeah I strongly suspect this will allow them to use it in court considerably more frequently.
But still, I know they know who I am. Anyone with a cell phone in their pocket has no privacy. It’s the best tracking device ever.
Anyone who thinks anything at all can make that problem worse simply doesn’t understand that they have none.
I’d rather have zero privacy and zero spam calls than zero privacy and lots of spam calls. Obviously I’d prefer privacy and I think we need a constitutional amendment to that effect, but as far as showing our ID to eliminate spam in a world where zero privacy exists, sign me up.
Instead of forcing people and businesses to do all the work, how about the government does all the work and manages the data, and lets people opt-in to the system.
every thing happening right now in privacy space including OS level ID verification, then websites requiring ID and now this is strangely alarming
right to privacy and speech will soon be very limited in aspects only relating and possible offline and very soon there will be nothing one can do about that
Back when all phones were land lines were you able to get service connected without showing some identity? I honestly don't remember, and I had land lines at several addresses. I would assume they would want to ID the account owner in case they later had to collect, but they at least had the name you gave them, probably SSN or drivers license number too.
Correct. They knew the address. Someone had to live there to use it. The first time I needed to show id for phone service was for my first cell phone in 1999, and I thought it was odd to need it.
By that time I had had 5 different land line numbers, from moving around.
You didn't have to give them an ID because they knew exactly where the phone was going.
I had my first phone installed back when you had to walk down to the phone company office and sit at a desk and fill out a form. Then a week later, a guy showed up at your home and put the wires in.
When I had my second line installed, it was after the Bell breakup, but again they didn't ask for ID, but I had to give them a $50 deposit to be used against phone rental and per-minute service.
Will this finally get Signal to stop demanding phone numbers to register accounts?
Lots of services you'd rather have an anonymous account with (Google, Meta, Discord) are partially/fully mandating phone numbers as a spam mitigation strategy. Also this paves the way to internet connections/mobile internet requiring ID
Signal's requirement for phone numbers has allowed it to surge in popularity by allowing it to take advantage of people's already established contacts. They do this in a privacy respecting way[1].
Simultaneously, Signal is trying to raise the cost of accounts by requiring phone numbers. Although spammers can get mass amounts of phone numbers, it will at least raise the cost. Email 0 cents, phone # 10 cents–there will be less spammers with phone #s.
I don't think we'd have to worry about the spam if people only used usernames instead of phone numbers, because it would be massively harder for spammers to find your account and message you. But, with usernames, you don't get the contact discovery that allows for growth.
That's all nice but it's also the defacto option for non technical people who need state actor resistant security and if they can just be subpoenaed to get the verified ID of the account holder that defeats the entire use case
>FCC Chairman Brendan Carr framed it around negligent carriers.
Do people remember the "No Call List" ? All that did was provider real phone numbers to telemarketers after they moved their operations to another country to avoid the laws.
How is this going to prevent robocalls ?
All this is really saying to me is: Some politicians got a bribe (or in the US called campaign contributions) to provide a new list of valid phone numbers along with personal information for use for marketing or other purposes.
Privacy has to be one goal among many in a reasonable society.
I am very glad to see this change, because phone-based Fraud is a plague on the Elderly and other vulnerable members of society. And an incredible annoyance even to a security conscious professional.
The guard against intrusive and oppressive government is the Bill of Rights, not some easy ability to get a phone number anonymously.
The Bill of Rights was published over 200 years ago. It can't possibly anticipate the modern privacy landscape. We need to (and do) extrapolate from the intent of the Bill of Rights to cover modern technology. Protecting phone and internet traffic is an example of this, but no longer sufficient. The US is becoming a panopticon. The Fourth Amendment protection against wiretapping is insufficient when the government also collects so much metadata. If we cede every form of privacy not explicitly protected by the Bill of Rights, we will soon find that on their own they provide barely any privacy at all.
Hahaha who am I kidding, that ship has sailed. It's a lost cause.
Kids can get government IDs. In my state, it's free for anyone under the age of 17. It's also free for anyone who can provide adequate proof they can't afford the $15.
Already the case in most EU countries. I don't know if there is a commensurate robocaller problem.
Come to think of it, when I get an EU SIM, it does start getting robocalls... as soon as I give the number to some Big Legitimate Business that is supposed to be observing GDPR and whatnot.
Come to think of it, from what I know about this "mass surveillance" bullshit, robocallers being an inside job makes perfect sense.
My state has laws specifically about this which help DV victims replace stolen wallets, birth certificates, IDs, and so on.
Whether we like it or not, ID is required to function in society these days. The public has, in general, decided they don't like the alternatives, and I would count myself among those who would prefer to have working phone service again without endless junk calls versus the hypothetical ability to go get a phone without ID.
Yeah. This USian has reliable access to the following without presenting ID
* Telephone service
* Internet service
* A rental apartment to live in and relevant utilities
* Food
* Clothing
* Entertainment
* Medical care
* A bank account
It has been so long that I can no longer clearly remember, but I think that I didn't have to present ID to get my job and get paid.
Maybe things are way worse over in Euroland? Or maybe US-based authoritarians have successfully used the threat of imaginary "Stranger Danger" to turn the screws tighter for access to some of those things over the past ten, twenty years? I know it's not medical care, internet access, food, clothing, or entertainment because I've changed providers for those fairly recently.
In most of the EU, IDs are issued for free to everyone above age 14/15 (and in many countries you can get one even for a newborn for a small fee). Since everyone has this ID, all banks (nearly?, I haven't seen one that doesn't) require ID card and/or a passport to open an account. For medical care you have a separate card with your compulsory medical insurance information that you present to the doctor but in the worst case they can just look up the info using your ID/passport.
How did you rent an apartment without ID? Every time I’ve done that they wanted an SSN, a credit check, and the pledge that your first born would be named after whatever dipshit was in the office that day.
You absolutely cannot get a bank account without an ID either: KYC is a thing.
Finally, you must complete an I9 form for any new job, which requires (wait for it) an ID.
> I would count myself among those who would prefer to have working phone service again without endless junk calls
False choice. It's quite possible that this will not substantially reduce much less eliminate the junk calls.
It will substantially reduce my ability to obtain an anonymized number that no one knows about and has any reason to junk call. I don't get any junk calls on my anonymous numbers, if if I did, I'd toss that number and get another and the junk could not follow it unless whomever I was using the number with was the source of the leak and then I'd stop doing business with them in the future.
Past privacy violations are what are driving the scam calls, making their be a mandatory loss of privacy at the moment you get the number will not help.
This is part of the same trend which requires ID to use social media, view adult content, or log into their own computer. The goal is to give government control of computers and communications.
China has had the requirement to "bind" online accounts to ID for almost a decade. No one complained because they already verified with Weixin (WeChat) so they just linked their accounts to it.
And how would you know that no one complained?
Are you sure that no one complained?
Anyone who complained was disappeared so no-one is complaining anymore.
China took over Honk Kong and lots of people complained about that before it happened but afterwards not so much.
America, all the crumbling industries and oligarchs of Russia, all the domestic surveillance of China, none of the healthcare of other developed countries, and more guns then any other nation.
Yep. Google an offense contractor for the department of war is now going to require phone attestation to access the internet. This goes right in line with the actual desires here. Technofacism is going to hit fast. Especially seeing as how many people here and in other communities have their head in the sand.
[dead]
The creeping is advanced by the blue/red team mentality too. MAGA won't care about this because their guy is in charge. If he were not, there would be conspiracy theories about how this is all a plan to get Trump and his supporters. For now team blue complains until their guy is in charge, like how Biden insisted everyone needed to show vaccine papers to participate in society and they were silent. Few can see that the two teams are different sides of the same coin.
I'm not going to roll in the mud here. Rather, it is sufficient to point out that generically showing a vaccine record/card for a limited time is qualitatively different from online tracking of all activity, and that COVID killed a lot of people. The US federal government is tasked with ensuring the general welfare of all people in its nation on line one of the US Constitution. Vaccine mandates are clearly and objectively in line with that, the recent internet hostilities have a much harder time making that case.
Also, I've found Costco aluminum foil is substantially more durable than grocery store aluminum foil. I do not work/shill for Costco.
You just can't see the hypocracy I guess. For example, is it okay to ask "Was he vaccinated?"
Indoor dining: Yes.
Died suddenly: No.
Either you care about privacy all of the time, or you don't really care about it very much after all. And when people care seems to split along red/blue ideology.
[dead]
spam/phishing/malicious calls do not come from individuals. How about they start with preventing caller ID spoofing/requiring proper caller ID?
the spam calls come from call farms that rotate numbers. they should be required to present a unified and verifiable caller ID
Phone systems can put whatever they want in caller ID, there should be verifiable reverse lookup to a valid registered number along with fines for violators
requiring an individuals ID to get a phone number is going to make the spam/phishing/malicious problem WORSE along with the enormous risks of that database being exposed/abused
I can understand the motivation. I've had the same number since the 90's and never once got a spam call until I was in the hospital last year and since then I've been getting 2-3 a day every day. They've probably left at least a thousand voice mails for a great loan opportunity, all from different numbers and different loan amounts.
Then the FCC have hid this well - they don't want this to stop spam they want it to link phone numbers to people.
If they wanted to stop spam they'd fix it so that carriers were required to ensure the numbers aren't spoofed. This would stop spam overnight.
Personal anecdata: I get much more spam calls on a number from a country with mandatory ID sim card registration than on a number from a country where anonymous sim cards are allowed. Both numbers are almost 20 years old and I barely use them for anything but calls/sms to friends/relatives and receiving bank 2FA SMSes.
Probably a coincidence. I didn't get any spam calls either, until I did.
Sometimes they'd screw up their message and call me "patient", and once even called me "file".
>until I was in the hospital last year
So much for HIPAA huh?
HIPPA doesn't do anything to protect your medical privacy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sfIBRTcRpU).
Phone numbers aren't protected health information.
Is the fact that I was in the hospital protected health information? If not, why not?
It probably is today. There was a time when hospital admissions/discharges were published in the local paper.
As a population we used to be a lot less concerned with privacy. It was nicer in a way. It was a time when you didn't really worry about your identity getting leaked or stolen. If someone knew you were in the hospital, they might send you flowers or a card.
I wouldn't blame the hospital.
It was documented years ago that lawyers were buying cell phone location data from the carriers in order to drum up potential clients in hospitals.
Blame the data industry and big tech.
And lawyers.
Science opportunity! >:]
Get yourself locked up in the slammer for a night while carrying a fresh burner; observe them writing down your IMEI and IMSI; see if that makes you start getting robocalls.
You know the FCC is going to do this and still be completely unable to stop spam calls. You're going to get all of the drawbacks and none of the benefits.
This is the way it works in Australia. I wasn't a huge fan of having to prove who I am and have my identity related to be able to txt and make phone calls or use mobile internet when I moved here.
The difference between say a think tank and an advocacy organization like "reclaimthenet.org" is a think tank hopefully feels obligated to think about, and pitch, a solution to the identified problem (spam calls).
Obviously reclaimthenet.org can post whatever they want on their site.
I'm curious about requiring all phone calls except to emergency services to cost a tenth of a cent. Or some amount that permits desired robocalling (prescription drug reminders for those not on the 'net) and excises spam calls.
yeah think tanks are notorious for pitching honest solutions to problems and not just pushing forward their specific agendas
what's your argument here? that what they posted is wrong? that this change isn't harmful?
Does anyone imagine the government doesn’t already know who owns every phone number?
Also, couldn’t this system be optional, numbers that are ID-verified are somehow flagged so (assuming I choose) when one calls my phone knows to let it through and when an unverified number calls it doesn’t ring?
They know through indirect means. So they buy all the cellphone data specifically the gps location data in the us and funnel it through huge servers. So they can determine patterns, addresses, etc.
This makes that easier and doesn't risk any of the legality if their should be illegal data sources or other likely illegal activities.
Tldr: This is a way to defeat vpns.
Yeah I strongly suspect this will allow them to use it in court considerably more frequently.
But still, I know they know who I am. Anyone with a cell phone in their pocket has no privacy. It’s the best tracking device ever.
Anyone who thinks anything at all can make that problem worse simply doesn’t understand that they have none.
I’d rather have zero privacy and zero spam calls than zero privacy and lots of spam calls. Obviously I’d prefer privacy and I think we need a constitutional amendment to that effect, but as far as showing our ID to eliminate spam in a world where zero privacy exists, sign me up.
We have a constitutional amendment–the 4th amendment. They ignore it.
You can have privacy on a phone using GrapheneOS.
Instead of forcing people and businesses to do all the work, how about the government does all the work and manages the data, and lets people opt-in to the system.
you trust the government to manage the data?
Not this administration. That said sam altman, Elon musk, mark Zuckerberg, and Alex karp, etc are this administration. So either way we are boned.
every thing happening right now in privacy space including OS level ID verification, then websites requiring ID and now this is strangely alarming
right to privacy and speech will soon be very limited in aspects only relating and possible offline and very soon there will be nothing one can do about that
Since numbers can be spoofed what problem is this actually solving? None?
Back when all phones were land lines were you able to get service connected without showing some identity? I honestly don't remember, and I had land lines at several addresses. I would assume they would want to ID the account owner in case they later had to collect, but they at least had the name you gave them, probably SSN or drivers license number too.
Correct. They knew the address. Someone had to live there to use it. The first time I needed to show id for phone service was for my first cell phone in 1999, and I thought it was odd to need it.
By that time I had had 5 different land line numbers, from moving around.
You didn't have to give them an ID because they knew exactly where the phone was going.
I had my first phone installed back when you had to walk down to the phone company office and sit at a desk and fill out a form. Then a week later, a guy showed up at your home and put the wires in.
When I had my second line installed, it was after the Bell breakup, but again they didn't ask for ID, but I had to give them a $50 deposit to be used against phone rental and per-minute service.
As always, this will only affect those who either lack the knowledge or the resources to work around it. The innocent people always take the fall.
Will this finally get Signal to stop demanding phone numbers to register accounts?
Lots of services you'd rather have an anonymous account with (Google, Meta, Discord) are partially/fully mandating phone numbers as a spam mitigation strategy. Also this paves the way to internet connections/mobile internet requiring ID
Signal's requirement for phone numbers has allowed it to surge in popularity by allowing it to take advantage of people's already established contacts. They do this in a privacy respecting way[1].
Simultaneously, Signal is trying to raise the cost of accounts by requiring phone numbers. Although spammers can get mass amounts of phone numbers, it will at least raise the cost. Email 0 cents, phone # 10 cents–there will be less spammers with phone #s.
I don't think we'd have to worry about the spam if people only used usernames instead of phone numbers, because it would be massively harder for spammers to find your account and message you. But, with usernames, you don't get the contact discovery that allows for growth.
[1] https://signal.org:8443/blog/private-contact-discovery/
That's all nice but it's also the defacto option for non technical people who need state actor resistant security and if they can just be subpoenaed to get the verified ID of the account holder that defeats the entire use case
>FCC Chairman Brendan Carr framed it around negligent carriers.
Do people remember the "No Call List" ? All that did was provider real phone numbers to telemarketers after they moved their operations to another country to avoid the laws.
How is this going to prevent robocalls ?
All this is really saying to me is: Some politicians got a bribe (or in the US called campaign contributions) to provide a new list of valid phone numbers along with personal information for use for marketing or other purposes.
So, we all go back to land lines for privacy?
Privacy has to be one goal among many in a reasonable society.
I am very glad to see this change, because phone-based Fraud is a plague on the Elderly and other vulnerable members of society. And an incredible annoyance even to a security conscious professional.
The guard against intrusive and oppressive government is the Bill of Rights, not some easy ability to get a phone number anonymously.
The Bill of Rights was published over 200 years ago. It can't possibly anticipate the modern privacy landscape. We need to (and do) extrapolate from the intent of the Bill of Rights to cover modern technology. Protecting phone and internet traffic is an example of this, but no longer sufficient. The US is becoming a panopticon. The Fourth Amendment protection against wiretapping is insufficient when the government also collects so much metadata. If we cede every form of privacy not explicitly protected by the Bill of Rights, we will soon find that on their own they provide barely any privacy at all.
Hahaha who am I kidding, that ship has sailed. It's a lost cause.
I agree that we need better case law - downstream of better politicians and better judges - to apply the intent of the 4th to modern society.
And if you think we need a new ammendment to strengthen it, i'm in for that as well.
These are all real solutions
Making "Privacy" easier is not a real solution. The panopticon will get you whether you use a VPN or a burner or whatever.
The only solutions are political.
> Privacy has to be one goal among many in a reasonable society.
I have to say, coming from "Lonestar1440" that implies quite the rebrand for Texas:
Texas: Just One Star Among Fifty Equals.
Edit: clarifications
It's a reference to Spaceballs, not the state fwiw
Okay, but you're telling me kids that don't have a government ID can't have phones now, right?
Yes, I think that the phones of minors should be traceable back to their parents; who would provide their ID at the sale of the e-SIM.
Kids can get government IDs. In my state, it's free for anyone under the age of 17. It's also free for anyone who can provide adequate proof they can't afford the $15.
And they pay for the time off work, the daycare required, the gas bill...
No fee is not equivalent to free.
You're missing a whole lot of points here.
1) They aren't legal adults.
2) Protecting the Boomers again, who had it better than their parents and their children. Why protect the future when we can coddle the past instead.
3) Absurdly, most of HN will die on the "government ID required to vote" hill, but this is just fine now...
[dead]
Already the case in most EU countries. I don't know if there is a commensurate robocaller problem.
Come to think of it, when I get an EU SIM, it does start getting robocalls... as soon as I give the number to some Big Legitimate Business that is supposed to be observing GDPR and whatnot.
Come to think of it, from what I know about this "mass surveillance" bullshit, robocallers being an inside job makes perfect sense.
Domestic abusers rejoice. Just hide the victim's ID and they won't get a phone.
My state has laws specifically about this which help DV victims replace stolen wallets, birth certificates, IDs, and so on.
Whether we like it or not, ID is required to function in society these days. The public has, in general, decided they don't like the alternatives, and I would count myself among those who would prefer to have working phone service again without endless junk calls versus the hypothetical ability to go get a phone without ID.
> Whether we like it or not, ID is required to function in society these days.
Why?
Yeah. This USian has reliable access to the following without presenting ID
* Telephone service
* Internet service
* A rental apartment to live in and relevant utilities
* Food
* Clothing
* Entertainment
* Medical care
* A bank account
It has been so long that I can no longer clearly remember, but I think that I didn't have to present ID to get my job and get paid.
Maybe things are way worse over in Euroland? Or maybe US-based authoritarians have successfully used the threat of imaginary "Stranger Danger" to turn the screws tighter for access to some of those things over the past ten, twenty years? I know it's not medical care, internet access, food, clothing, or entertainment because I've changed providers for those fairly recently.
In most of the EU, IDs are issued for free to everyone above age 14/15 (and in many countries you can get one even for a newborn for a small fee). Since everyone has this ID, all banks (nearly?, I haven't seen one that doesn't) require ID card and/or a passport to open an account. For medical care you have a separate card with your compulsory medical insurance information that you present to the doctor but in the worst case they can just look up the info using your ID/passport.
How did you rent an apartment without ID? Every time I’ve done that they wanted an SSN, a credit check, and the pledge that your first born would be named after whatever dipshit was in the office that day.
You absolutely cannot get a bank account without an ID either: KYC is a thing.
Finally, you must complete an I9 form for any new job, which requires (wait for it) an ID.
I'm pretty sure I've had to show ID going to the doctor's office as well.
> I would count myself among those who would prefer to have working phone service again without endless junk calls
False choice. It's quite possible that this will not substantially reduce much less eliminate the junk calls.
It will substantially reduce my ability to obtain an anonymized number that no one knows about and has any reason to junk call. I don't get any junk calls on my anonymous numbers, if if I did, I'd toss that number and get another and the junk could not follow it unless whomever I was using the number with was the source of the leak and then I'd stop doing business with them in the future.
Past privacy violations are what are driving the scam calls, making their be a mandatory loss of privacy at the moment you get the number will not help.