you’ve got to know that we will change and keep it off the record
people often think i’m some sort of alarmist when it comes to privacy issues in this country.
Everyone who buys a mobile telephone will be forced to register their identity on a national database under government plans to extend massively the powers of state surveillance.
Phone buyers would have to present a passport or other official form of identification at the point of purchase. Privacy campaigners fear it marks the latest government move to create a surveillance society.
A compulsory national register for the owners of all 72m mobile phones in Britain would be part of a much bigger database to combat terrorism and crime. Whitehall officials have raised the idea of a register containing the names and addresses of everyone who buys a phone in recent talks with Vodafone and other telephone companies, insiders say.
another completely useless proposal. this is meant to get at terrorists who use pay-as-you-go mobile phones. what the government fails to understand here is that:
a) we’re only 2 hours away from the rest of europe… where no such registers exist, and current law says you’re allowed to bring in pretty much anything from the eu into the UK as long as it’s not illegal or exceeds “personal use”
b) the rate at which people swap sim cards in and out of phones, or amongst friends, family, etc. makes any such register hopelessly inaccurate from the start
c) there’s this thing called the internet where you can buy all sorts. clearly no one in government has ever shopped for a mobile from hong kong on ebay.
d) the only way in which this register could possibly work would be if they
- first outlawed private sale of mobiles by individuals (new or used)
- second outlawed private sale of sim cards (which is really what they’re after)
- third outlawed swapping of sim cards amongst individuals
- fourth signed on all mobile service providers
- fifth managed to sign the entire eu onto the notion of restricting mobile/sim sales and import/export in the uk
- sixth outlawed the purchase of mobiles from non-approved sources (such as the internet)
- seventh devoted more enforcement resources to monitoring the internet for sales (because they don’t already have enough to do with trying to restrict guns, drugs, child pornography)
- eighth restricted sales of mobiles only to adults (as the idea of having children’s info on a database would be most unpalatable to the public)
- and ninth devoted more resources to monitoring the mail for the illegal transport of sim cards smaller than postage stamps.
in other words, this is another harebrained scheme by government designed to “crack down on terrorism” by infringing on the rights of many millions of innocent citizens, which is easily circumvented well before it is even put into law… much like the i.d. card initiative.
unfortunately, that won’t stop them from trying.
my morning jacket – off the record
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Comment by Thomas Foolery
19.10.2008 @ 22:19 pm
Unfortunately, all of these surveillance measures are aimed at regular people. Any terrorist or criminal worth the label will find ways around this, just as they do with other half-assed ’security’. Regular people just buy their mobiles in shops, and will hand over their info. Controlling and observing regular people is the whole point here (but you ’sell’ it to them by telling them it’s about catching terrorists).