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

https://www.404media.co/fcc-wants-to-kill-burner-phones-by-forcing-telecoms-to-get-all-customers-ids/

by berlianta • 1 month ago

587 385 1 month ago

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.

mc32• 1 month ago

Don’t eSIMs solve this problem for tourists?

nickphx• 1 month ago

Only if you do not require voice service.

naturalmovement5• 1 month ago

Apple — and now Google — have "solved" this problem for the government by removing physical SIM slots in US iPhones.

vfclists2• 1 month ago

Doesn't an eSIM link the SIM to the phone's IMEI which is usually logged somewhere?

ezfe4• 1 month ago

eSIM doesn't change local laws around cell phones - it's not magic.

izacus• 1 month ago

In what way? Activating it still needs KYC.

NoMoreNicksLeft2• 1 month ago

What problem were they hoping to solve with that legislation?

logicchains• 1 month ago

The problem of citizens having anonymous internet connectivity.

stackskipton• 1 month ago

Most of time it's billed as law enforcement fighting tool. If people can't have anonymous cell phones, once you capture one criminal phone number, you can quickly look at who they call and since they can't be burners, you figure out the criminal network.

Also, if you have restrictions of speech in the country, it's great way to de anonymize any speech government says is illegal.

Gigachad3• 1 month ago

Any situation you can imagine wanting a burner phone for, that's what the government wants to crack down on.

naturalmovement5• 1 month ago

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.

joxdosba5• 1 month ago

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.

ivanmontillam• 1 month ago

Argentina doesn't also, you can just buy a SIM card off the newsstand.

dgellow6• 1 month ago

I mean. It’s the same, you just have to show your passport and fill a form. It takes 1minute to get it done, you can do it on your way to the taxi if you want. Though e-sim are more practical now

mothballed6• 1 month ago

I wonder what exactly are they hoping to achieve then? Anything that can be filled out in 1 minute in a taxi can be spoofed with an extra 30 seconds on the dark net buying dark IDs. So this does less than zero for crime, actually encourages more of it, while doing what exactly? It's madness.

LawnGnome2• 1 month ago

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.

ibejoeb2• 1 month ago

It has been like that for at least 8 years, and probably longer. There are still stalls at airports, but you must provide ID.

byhemechi• 1 month ago

You can buy the SIM but can’t activate it without going through ID checks.

timando• 1 month ago

It used to be that you did the ID check when you bought the SIM, but now you have to do the ID check when you activate it.

tarinedier• 1 month ago

It's been like this since at least the late 90s, I remember having to fill out the paperwork manually when working at Target

flashman• 1 month ago

The current ID verification requirements for phones were introduced to Australia in 1997

MarkusWandel• 1 month ago

Somewhat recently, tried to activate a SIM for a guest here in Canada, and while you could fill in anything you want for personal info, the only way to hook up (prepaid) billing was with a Canadian credit card number. Whoops. This was only for a month, so I put in mine and he reimbursed me in cash. Other carriers may still let you buy one-time payment cards for cash at retail; this one didn't.

willhslade• 1 month ago

I think this is where Airalo shines. I've used it while travelling and I think eSIMs, as annoying as they are, are the way.

hinata082• 1 month ago

Having a friend who lends you their credit card so that you pay it off at the end of your trip is such a premium !

Canada isn't the only country in which foreign cards don't work everywhere, and it seems like it's rarely tested

thaumasiotes3• 1 month ago

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?

garyfirestorm• 1 month ago

Isn’t this already a requirement? Can you really buy a burner phone/sim without providing identifying information?

hstaab• 1 month ago

T-Mobile prepaid accounts for example

olyjohn• 1 month ago

You can just walk in there with cash and walk out with a fully activated SIM without them asking for ID?

tracedddd• 1 month ago

not at all, it’s easy to buy cash only tracphone, mint, boost, etc. and there are plenty of explicit anonymous providers such as phreeli.

That said, I don’t think its a problem whatsoever and we shouldn’t have laws restricting it.

downrightmike3• 1 month ago

the only solution is to upgrade the phone system to require ID, but that would cost billions to AT&T, so that ain't gonna happen

dgellow6• 1 month ago

In the US you can buy a SIM card and activate without providing any information at the airport. At least in NYC. I was really surprised the first time

kgwxd4• 1 month ago

Why were you surprised?

kotaKat• 1 month ago

Back in the late 2000s-early 2010s you could grab some Verizon bubble pack flip phones and just dial an activation string on the handset itself and it'd set up a new phone number for you and you'd just have to go add airtime with a prepaid card or credit card without having to provide anything.

Some of the LTE tablets even powered up and put you into a walled garden with data (heh, DNS tunneling worked out of it) to let you sign up for a mobile plan out of the box.

When I did some activations with PagePlus with an actual dealer-level account, it cost me nothing to activate a 'customer' handset and the only info I had to provide on the activation screens was the phone's serial number and the requested ZIP/area code for activation.

And fine, okay, the FCC will force American telecoms to require IDs, but nothing's stoping Redtea Mobile's foreign eSIMs from roaming into the US for data connections. You're just one eSIM global roaming provider away from bypassing all of it!

hnav5• 1 month ago

They'll just add regulation that requires KYC for roaming agreements.

Zigurd• 1 month ago

I used to buy test phones for software testing at a bodega where they had a laundry basket full of phones, and they would sell prepaid SIMs no questions asked.

autoexec4• 1 month ago

I had reason to pick up a couple cheap pre-paid phones at a gas station once. I wasn't asked to give an ID to anyone to buy them, but once I had them I needed to call a company to activate the phone and they were very particular about what phone number it would work from. It had to be a landline. Payphone wouldn't work. My work phone didn't work. It was difficult to track down a phone line they'd accept and even then one of the phones refused to register.

It seemed to me like they wanted to make sure they could tie the phones to an individual through activation.

josefritzishere• 1 month ago

Seems like classic regulatory overreach.

aaomidi• 1 month ago

This is the pathway Iran is using to provide tiered internet btw.

Just putting it out there on how quickly this tech turned against the population.

standardUser• 1 month ago

The Trump administration has been working overtime trying to build databases of people in this country. Leaving no stone unturned, legal or otherwise. I vaguely remember a time when American conservatives were against precisely this, often as a first principle. Maybe that's just an idealized memory on my part.

kgwxd4• 1 month ago

Spoiler: They were never against it, just biding their time.

bl4kers• 1 month ago

Yep, just in different flavors based on ideology. For example, forced labor requires logging & tracking of pregnancies. Anti-trans folks want gender identity on the books to gatekeep who can teach in schools or enter bathrooms. Same for preventing same-sex marriage. Folks railing against voting rights want more and more checks to prove who you are and where you live

ethagnawl• 1 month ago

The American conservatives who can afford to be are effectively exempted. When they're not flying around on private jets, the ownership and metadata created by their cars, phones, etc. are obfuscated by layers of shell corporations.

The other ones are simple and/or deluded and think these sorts of policies won't ever come for _them_. (To their credit, under the current regime they're actually correct about that to a certain extent.)

rirze2• 1 month ago

Fundamentally un-American.

That being said, many countries across the world already do this to eliminate burner phones. And many messaging apps require a phone number anyways so this basically locks down anonymous messaging through a phone.

rockskon• 1 month ago

Well - it's not exactly a surprise that all these non-American countries engage in un-American practices.

It's much more concerning when said practices are undertaken by the U.S.

Just because other countries do something isn't a justification to bring the practice into the U.S. despite that being a justification used with increasing prevalence these days.

cwillu• 1 month ago

American exceptionalism was always a lie; name an “un-American” practice, and I'll show you a piece of American foreign policy.

cucumber37328426• 1 month ago

Just because other countries do something isn't a justification to bring the practice into the U.S.

I need to know whether these other countries are rich western europe before I know whether to agree with you or to cook up some snide rebuttal.

Joking, obviously. And by "joking" I mean mocking a specific type of person and set of beliefs that is who is a) bad b) too common around here.

kgwxd4• 1 month ago

many messaging apps require a phone number

But not all, so what's the actual point?

rirze2• 1 month ago

If a messaging app ever gets the attention of government regulators, it must succumb to this verification.

I don't know any way to avoid this.

axus• 1 month ago

Free, anonymous political speech is the bedrock of American freedom. Also, guns

IAmBroom2• 1 month ago

America, where the Amendments to the Constitution start counting at "2".

Also, apparently ends there, too.

em-bee• 1 month ago

there still are a bunch of viable messaging apps/services that work without a phone number:

matrix, wire, deltachat, threema, maybe jabber/xmpp (depends on their support of encryption). any others?

throwaway27448• 1 month ago

We're already forced into the credit bureaus. Into traffic cameras. Into using credit cards and banks. The idea the state would let us actually say things online anonymously (or to each other) is completely unrealistic: we must be tagged and tracked through our lifecycle.

rusk5• 1 month ago

They’ll get around to guns eventually …

greenavocado2• 1 month ago

They're already trying to regulate the shape of guns to effectively outlaw everything but the bullet.

rusk5• 1 month ago

Hopefully they tax th bejeesus out of bullets too. Who was the comedian “imma gona pop a cap in yo ass, but first imma set up a layaway”

bsimpson2• 1 month ago

Here's the link to submit a comment to the FCC:

https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filings/express

Ran a quick search and found a whole bunch of news articles, but nobody includes info that makes it easy to route your comment. Feels like the beginning of Hitchhiker's Guide:

It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard.

user3939382• 1 month ago

Open to the possibility that I’m just cynical but my faith is very low that these comment processes are anything more than a regulatory requirement for the illusion of due diligence which legitimizes the actual corporate lobbying and security state actually making the policy.

mothballed6• 1 month ago

I'm nearly certain commenting, at least from my monitoring of commenting on ATF rulemaking, achieves the opposite of what the commenters hope.

While there is ~zero chance that commenting can help you, it absolutely is used against you as their lawyers sharpen their claws by crowdsourcing possible sources of challenge and use your comments to predict them and determine how to undermine such positions.

pickleglitch• 1 month ago

They require your name and address, so they will have a nice database of anyone who dares voice an objection.

JumpCrisscross8• 1 month ago

You’re wrong. Even if the regulator ignores them, they allow third parties to bring a suit under the APA.

Scaled2• 1 month ago

It lets politicians see how unpopular something is and how many votes they will lose.

firefax• 1 month ago

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 come back here ever again, I'll see to it if you're lucky you only lose your seat, not face a mob outside your window, and when that happens lose my fucking number because I'll be sitting by the TV with popcorn.

Exactly that happened, a few years later.

Whether you're a public interest lobbyist or just another activist, we need to be more willing to TELL congress things. Not ask. Not lobby. TELL THEM.

We need to remind them that the Soviets raced to Berlin to seize brains like ours, that we will flourish whatever regime is in power, and that you can ignore us at your but we, the hackers, will no longer grovel before narcistic neurotypicals to stop misunderstanding on purpose.

Politics is like poker -- soft play is unethical.

Play to win.

Because the pushback works, for a spell.

autoexec4• 1 month ago

Exactly. Often they're not even real https://www.kcra.com/article/more-sacramento-victims-discove...

The companies paid to flood the FCC with fake comments get to do it as long as they're willing to give the government a cut of the action (https://www.engadget.com/new-york-ag-fines-companies-that-sp...)

It'll only stop when the people hiring those companies to spam the FCC end up behind bars.

mcmcmc3• 1 month ago

This is the specific proposed rule to reference: https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-seeks-comment-enhanced-know...

Ajedi324• 1 month ago

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.

troyvit• 1 month ago

Use the docket-id from that link.

kogasa240p• 1 month ago

Thank you

Scaled2• 1 month ago

You can also file a comment at the Federal Register for the next 16 days -- It looks like the proposal is 2026-10407

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/05/26/2026-10...

Hnrobert423• 1 month ago

I think the filing number is 17-59.

giantg22• 1 month ago

Maybe a way around this is for intermediary companies to own the phone that happens to have service and then lease the phone.

voakbasda3• 1 month ago

And with that suggestion, a clause is being added to close that loophole….

giantg22• 1 month ago

So it would be illegal to lend a phone to anyone, even just for one call?

zmgsabst• 1 month ago

My work can’t provide a cellphone now?

iammrpayments• 1 month ago

Had to buy one of these SMS activation services from a guy in Nigeria using a memecoin because claude decided to ban my account because they didn’t like my credit card brand and Claude requires sms activation for new accounts.

Guess these guys are going to make more money in the near future.

trumpdong12• 1 month ago

An SMS activation price is about $0.13 btw, there are several sites that do this commercially with hundreds of thousands of numbers. Not going to name any since that'd be advertising for them.

OsrsNeedsf2P2• 1 month ago

I thought I was the only one!

Not because Claude banned my account (but they did that too), but because OpenAI one day decided I needed a phone number to login, and then proceeded to reject my real one.

deltoidmaximus2• 1 month ago

Walmart.com recently deleted my phone number from my decade+ old account and refused to let me purchase anything until I coughed one up. When I put my actual number in it told it was no good. Possibly this is because my wife has an account using the same number, which was never a problem until sudden phone numbers only belong to one person I guess? I'm trying to give these guys money.

I gave them a google voice number and apparently that satisfied them. Then lost access to the google voice number because I never used it for anything else.

giancarlostoro• 1 month ago

I wish they would kill spam calling and texting instead.

dawnerd• 1 month ago

Been getting two a day, clearly some ai voice robo call. We have all this technology yet these spam calls still persist.

mrsssnake• 1 month ago

Regardless of this, I see phone network as a legacy thing that in perfect world should already be replaced with lightweight upgradeable calling protocol over IPv6.

fc417fc802• 1 month ago

This would apply equally to said IP calling network since you'd need a SIM card to access the tower interesting strewn across the country either way.

dredmorbius4• 1 month ago

WiFi / pure-VOIP based calling should be able to disambiguate between the network and the messaging layers. This means that a given cellular modem wouldn't be traceable to a specific contact, or call history. The modems could be swapped amongst individuals readily.

This is similar to the situation that already exists for PSTN voice comms currently: Whatsapp, Signal, Jitsi, or similar voice- or video-messaging systems. They'll run over an arbitrary network, through VPNs, etc.

Mind, the major comms-apps/social networks might have their own ID requirements forced on them, but there's far less a capability to keep people from defecting from these.

I continue to think that global PSTN networks are pretty close to general collapse, given spam, robocalls, harassment, tracking, and similar forms of abuse. Millennials & GenZ are already notorious for their reluctance to make or take phone calls.

<https://theconversation.com/young-people-hate-making-phone-c...>

danhon• 1 month ago

This is essentially requiring ID for IP connectivity.

StepBroBD• 1 month ago

US of A’s Chinafication letsgooooooo

2OEH8eoCRo0• 1 month ago

Good. Telecoms should have a duty to know who uses their networks.

tclancy• 1 month ago

Let’s have your name and address then, citizen. Posters have a right to know who is commenting.

nancyminusone• 1 month ago

The person using the network is the one who put a quarter in the payphone.

dredmorbius4• 1 month ago

Payphones are rather seldom seen these days, friend.

Not to disagree with the principle, but it's somewhat opaque as to what your point is.

I've hazy memories as well of reports that payphones were being more surveilled (a camera placed nearby, for example), or tapped / monitored more than other phones, particularly if in areas with other known issues. Nothing that's turning up in DDG searches though...

9cb14c1ec02• 1 month ago

I expect the FCC to adopt this rule, and I also expect it to be challenged in court, on the basis that there are many other approaches to fighting spam calls that the FCC has not tried, but are much less intrusive.

ryanisnan• 1 month ago

I hope you're right. I am not informed - is this typically how these decisions get challenged?

9cb14c1ec02• 1 month ago

There are two ways to challenge FCC decisions. There is the upfront approach where a business whose operations are harmed by an FCC decision sues to block the decision. Then there is the approach where said business announces their non-compliance and dares the FCC to sue them. The FCC does not have criminal charging authority, so it has to rely on courts to enforce compliance. See the Federal Communications Commission v. AT&T case that just wrapped up at the Supreme Court.

reaperducer• 1 month ago

Good luck with this.

You can't make the desk clerk in a ghetto cell phone store care.

I say this speaking as someone who has a T-Mobile account under the name George Washington with a Valley Forge, Pennsylvania address.

hnav5• 1 month ago

They'll just push it to activation time and require you to upload ID.

trumpdong12• 1 month ago

Don't those clerks go to jail?

vfclists2• 1 month ago

It was only a matter of time.

The real issue is whether government's should have the right to metadata or the content of remote communications.

Government's don't claim the right to monitor face to face communications so why should they have the right to do so for remote communications.

downrightmike3• 1 month ago

They don't have that right, that's why Ben Franklin set up the USPS

brushfoot• 1 month ago

No more anonymous driving, thanks to Flock. Soon, no more anonymous calls, thanks to the FCC.

Your bank already knows everything about you; why not your operating system, too?

Soon your ISP will only let you online if your OS sends them the "right" information: your government ID.

We should also abolish cash while we're at it. The government needs to know every purchase you've ever made, no exceptions.

Of course, then we should tear down used bookstores. They're the biggest risk of all. Anyone can walk in and pick up pieces of paper that teach them dangerous ideas. Other religions. Philosophies. Poetry. How to make things.

What we really need is a nation of drones walking to and fro in the image of our rulers, thinking their thoughts, practicing their religions, and parroting their words. It's the only way to be truly safe.

grim_io2• 1 month ago

Worse, we are becoming a burden.

The Thiels of the world are already past wanting an obedient consumer.

They don't need us for the utopia they imagine for themselves.

mystraline• 1 month ago

It was a terrible scattered movie, but they want Elysium.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_(film)

EasyMark3• 1 month ago

They want us replaced by machines that are 100% compliant slaves, they're hoping for AI with human capabilities (or better) and no will to pushback at their tyrannical natures.

Nasrudith2• 1 month ago

You're projecting harder than IMAX here with your conspiracy theory tropes. Remember it was the Bolsheviks who actually liquidated entire classes of people as 'useless parasites'.

clint• 1 month ago

We should also abolish cash while we're at it.

Why do you think all the rich people (and by extension the oligarchy running this country) are pushing Crypto?

roysting2• 1 month ago

I don’t think pointing that out will get very far. People didn’t notice when “democracy” was pushed by the same people, in direct contradiction to the Constitution. “Democracy” was the lynchpin to neutralize the Constitution and usher in oligarchic control again, just like digital/programmable currency will complete the pivot of slavery into a total and global system. Why only enslave a few people when you can enslave all people with smoke and mirrors that will make them cheer on their own deception with amusement.

Cider9986• 1 month ago

Monero is the best alternative to cash. And any crypto acceptance helps you pay with Monero because crypto-->crypto is 10x easier than crypto-->fiat.

markstos• 1 month ago

Flock is being rejected in a number of cities, thanks to citizens.

roysting2• 1 month ago

I am quite confident that there will eventually in any of those cities be some kind of major mass casualty type event that will be attributed to that rejection. I don’t hope for it and am sorry for all of humanity for what we are allowing to seemingly inevitably come about, but here we are; like cattle being herded to the feed lot. “But they’re saying they’ll feed you”, you will hear, “they don’t mean you ill. You should stop being a conspiracy theorists. This food is good.”

burner000333• 1 month ago

How data-driven policing is sold, spoke to someone who set it up once, good odds FLock is doing it, or in the spirit of the below, Flock doesn't have to do it:

- There are networked webcams everywhere: DoT cameras, 18 wheeler fleet cameras, traffic cams, etc.

- Local PD doesn't want to make a deal with Flock

- For average jane and joe citizenry: great, no Flock in town!

- For ongoing negotiations with Flock and the PD: ok, sure, kick us out of town. But we'll just pull the 18wheeler feeds with the vendor we have an agreement with, as they roll through town. Or the DoT feeds via the State contract we have or the...

- As such, negotiations could land as does local PD at least want the control of the feeds already going through their town with each Sysco big rig delivery?

Very, very tricky terrain to solve.

nosioptar• 1 month ago

Can even go to the bodega on foot anonymously, too many of my neighbors have ring cameras pointed at the street.

cucumber37328426• 1 month ago

Every step of the way enabled by useful idiots who think that because each incremental step applies more/cheaper government violence to some class of petty deviants they don't like that it is worth doing even if the overall trajectory created by the sum total of the steps is bad. Selfish jerks.

Keyb0ardWarri0r• 1 month ago

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...

tim333• 1 month ago

If you want anonymous eSIM, Silent Link is pretty good. Pay with crypto, works nearly all countries/networks, quite reasonably priced.

chii• 1 month ago

I'm always surprised how bad ideas spread faster than good ideas among our rulers.

it's not a bad idea from the POV of said "rulers" - more surveillance and control on the population is desirable (to them).

toast0• 1 month ago

Great. As if telecoms can be trusted with customers' id. AT&T left my name, address, social security etc in an improperly secured database for others to have, and they tried to open accounts with it; they had retained the information after I closed my account, and they denied the information was coming from them for years before they finally admitted it and gave us all a quarter to call someone who cares and a year of credit monitoring.

downrightmike3• 1 month ago

And your pin is 1234

garciasn• 1 month ago

Same as their, Samsonite I was way off, luggage.

ToucanLoucan• 1 month ago

I have heard very little about AT&T's actual telecom services, but my god have I heard about their billing department. I daresay the only departments in more of a shambles than their billing one is... well. A lot of Microsoft lately.

flerchin• 1 month ago

Telecom billing is seemingly designed to stochastically fail in favor of the telecom. This is not a shambles, but excellent system performance, from their perspective.

SilverElfin• 1 month ago

T-Mobile also has had numerous breaches. And Verizon sells your location data as I recall.

classified• 1 month ago

The incentives to become a career criminal get bigger every day.

functionmouse• 1 month ago

does nothing to fight spam; only polices lawful users

they call that "anarcho-tyranny"

XYen0n• 1 month ago

After the implementation of SIM card real-name registration in China, scam calls can accurately state your personal information.

bigbuppo• 1 month ago

This sounds like a great thing for people that beat their domestic partners. Make it harder for their victims to escape.

p0w3n3d• 1 month ago

But this is for the sake of the children safety... And terrorism... Whatever you want to have it wrapped in

a34729t• 1 month ago

We should allow privateers to go after spammers, and get the seized assets. And spammer is then tortured appropriately. Satan could run a successful single issue campaign on this in the most religious state in the US.

t1234s• 1 month ago

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.

matheusmoreira2• 1 month ago

Yeah. Looks like the future they want is complete marginalization of free computers, of free people. The machines will have to be corporation and government owned in order to network and participate in society. If we own the machine, we're excluded. Ostracized. Even the language they use is disgusting. They say we're "tampering" with the system, as though it wasn't ours to begin with. It makes me really sad that this is what we're heading towards.

skinfaxi3• 1 month ago

The thing about networks is that we can create our own.

sathackr• 1 month ago

The Mark of the Beast

deadbabe• 1 month ago

More than that, a ban on all general purpose computing.

You can only use specific applications downloaded from walled gardens. You cannot write and execute arbitrary code.

If you are an engineer, all code must be generated via LLM and it passes through some verification through a centralized security and compliance authority on the way to you. You must be fully licensed.

This will be, the end of malware.

hnav5• 1 month ago

There are zero days in every piece of software, but malware is already mostly a state-actor-only thing.

Tangurena25• 1 month ago

As kooky as I thought he was, Stallman seems to be more prophetic each year. His essay The Right to Read seems to be a vision of how knowledge gets locked down. Every American college/university student has been trapped into renting textbooks. Elsevier and Pearson seem to have used that essay as a roadmap.

https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/classes/188/materials/st...

I think he's wrong that DRM violates the 4th Amendment, I contend that it is - first and foremost - a violation of the 3rd Amendment.

EasyMark3• 1 month ago

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.

x-complexity• 1 month ago

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.

nisegami• 1 month ago

This is standard in my country. Seemingly as a consequence, eSIMs require physically going to a store to be activated (on the telco side), which has always seemed insane to me.

throwaway858252• 1 month ago

Wants to kill burner phones but somehow foreign phone scams are still rampant.

rtkwe6• 1 month ago

Disjoint issues really. Phone scams mostly rely on the shoddy/lack of verification of caller id info as calls transit the network where it's not verified so they are unblockable (because they just use a different fake number every time). They're actually calling from one or a pool of numbers but you can't block and report them on the receiving end because the number your phone thinks it's blocking isn't theirs. This will do nothing to fix spam/scam without patching the issues with caller id.

throwaway858252• 1 month ago

Hardly disjoint. Most of the scams come from foreign networks.

catigula2• 1 month ago

I get over 10 scam calls a day. I'm forced to pay a company to block them because the free methods don't work. There's no way to work around it because they refuse to enforce the law on these companies cycling through burner numbers.

iamnothere2• 1 month ago

They are not using cell phones, they are using VOIP.

catigula2• 1 month ago

I'm aware; I'm referring to their priorities.

OptionOfT3• 1 month ago

This was the case in Belgium a couple of years ago.

Everybody had to go to a store and have their ID read by the system, and if they didn't, the phone number would be shut down.

Unsure how that worked for MVNOs though.

Now I live in the USA and am well-familiar with the spam calls. I wonder if this new rule will reduce/prevent them. I think in general the ability to spoof numbers should be banned / controlled. Someone from India should not be allowed to call me with a caller ID from Mayo Clinic.

iamnothere2• 1 month ago

Spam calls are a different issue (spam is usually VOIP). Spammers also often use spoofed numbers since STIR/SHAKEN is somehow still not properly implemented.

singpolyma3• 1 month ago

All carrier interconnects use VoIP protocols since forever anyway. So this is pretty much a distinction without a difference. STIR/SHAKEN affects both

BuildTheRobots• 1 month ago

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. Lots of engineering and backwards compatibility technical problems, but also political, logistical and commercial issues are abound. You've also got some turtle issues too; it's attestation all the way down.

tgrowazay2• 1 month ago

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.

jldugger2• 1 month ago

Wish I could recall the podcast I listened to a few years ago that was telling the history of robo-dialers and caller ID spoofing. The general gist was that AT&T was making money off it from 1-900 operators so they weren't eager to self-regulate. So even though ending spam calling is a bipartisan issue, feet were dragged on the implementation.

If anyone's eager to do podcast archaeology, IIRC one of the angles was investigating dead government agency phone numbers, and some lady entrepreneur in the 80s. Might have been Reply All, but the market regulation angle makes me think Planet Money.

of course, politicians exempt themselves from the spam call category. Political speech is the most important speech!

OptionOfT3• 1 month ago

https://archive.org/details/3f25eeb8affc11e6892a43edc8087050

~~I _think_ this is the one.~~

God I miss this podcast.

Edit: this IS the one.

rtkwe6• 1 month ago

Probably not the issue isn't knowing who owns a number it's that the actual number for the call is just a data field that's not validated or required to be correct. Spam calls would be a lot less annoying if they had to come from real numbers that could be blocked instead of being able to spoof as many numbers as they want.

codedokode4• 1 month ago

This is unrelated to spam calls. Business will register thousands of phone numbers for "surveys" and will continue spamming with AI calls.

colinsane• 1 month ago

good for bitcoin

greenavocado2• 1 month ago

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 primarily prevent the poor, the elderly, and people of color from voting. They way they’ve disenfranchised people of color is part of a very long history of voter suppression and is a classic example of structural racism.

moate• 1 month ago

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.

trumpdong12• 1 month ago

Isn't this the exact same thing? If you don't have a valid ID to vote, now you don't have a valid ID to use a cellphone either. And if you wanted to go and get one, too bad because you probably need a cellphone to do that.

lbcadden3• 1 month ago

I’m surprised it’s taken this long to go after this.

In the name of “national security” and “protecting the children” and all.

dec0dedab0de• 1 month ago

How about we start by forcing telecoms to not allow any fake caller ID from their network?

simulator5g4• 1 month ago

How about we not form our society into a jail?

grishka3• 1 month ago

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 passport in 30 days.

riffraff• 1 month ago

yeah I think in Italy this was introduced in the security push after 9/11, and in other EU countries I also had to provide an id to get a sim card, tho I'm not sure it's all of them.

cge• 1 month ago

Different EU countries seem to heavily vary on this point. I’ve seen everything from requirements for id scans and addresses to esims that accept cryptocurrency as payment.

rconti• 1 month ago

It seems to depend a lot. It's kind of hard in Germany - they wanted my permanent address. I didn't find France as difficult. Iceland didn't care. Italy wanted my passport. Chile, you virtually needed to be a citizen, as I recall.

grishka3• 1 month ago

Chile, you virtually needed to be a citizen, as I recall.

I heard something similar about Russia after recent changes actually, it could as well be impossible for non-residents so tourists just stick with international roaming and public wifi. IIRC there's a catch-22 situation where you need a Gosuslugi (online government services portal) account to buy a sim, but you need a Russian phone number to sign up for one. As a citizen, you just need your ID (internal passport).

throw-the-towel4• 1 month ago

FWIW I bought my Chilean SIM without any problems whatsoever.

lokar• 1 month ago

South Korea is also hard

kalleboo• 1 month ago

In Japan you need to ID as a resident to get a phone number that can make calls, but anyone can get an anonymous data-only SIM

sva_• 1 month ago

Btw you can still buy an anonymous SIM card with cash in the Netherlands in pretty much any supermarket/kiosk/whatever. And if you just need Internet, I haven't had any eSIM provider try to verify my ID so far. Although those can't easily be paid in cash.

iamtheworstdev• 1 month ago

In the US it gets fought hard because Wall St uses it to dodge state income taxes. Everyone thinks it's drug dealer related for us, but it's actually Finance bros driving into NYC from out of state (NJ or CT) but trying to hide it.

darepublic• 1 month ago

if you've ever watched the wire (season 1 2002) you will know that burner phones were very much a thing.

mrtksn• 1 month ago

In Bulgaria the ID requirement was introduced in recent years as it has been abused to run scam networks. It was big problem in Turkey, as Bulgarian scam networks were pulling the bride scam to such an extent that the scammers started scamming classes for wannabe scammers.

everdrive6• 1 month ago

And people will keep carrying their phones with them. And keep using them. And keep installing apps. Yes, ideally we'd have laws against government infringement, but the capability to not use your phone is in your hands.

Ritewut2• 1 month ago

This comment is so divorced from reality. It is very difficult to live life in the modern world without a phone unless you want to go Amish.

khat• 1 month ago

Not really. Rural America you don't need a mobile phone. I can go days without ever touching my phone. And if it wasn't for my bank, I wouldn't need it at all. Even then I could just go to the bank but I'm too lazy to do that.

autoexec4• 1 month ago

I'm not Amish, but if I walk into a restaurant where they won't show me a menu without scanning a QR code, I walk right out.

Gigachad3• 1 month ago

I've been thinking about it as an experiment lately. Not fully throwing my smartphone in the bin, but considering leaving it at home for a day.

If I had my physical credit card with me I think it would largely be viable, the main issue would be if I had to meet up with friends it would be incredibly difficult without being able to contact them. Public wifi these days has almost vanished so it's difficult to connect to the internet without cellular access now.

tumult2• 1 month ago

More and more things require having a smartphone. Scan this QR code to install the app to cross the border. Install the app to use the street parking in this city. Install the app to board the bus. Install the app to get your filing status with department xyz. I admire your spirit of rebellion, but avoiding using a smartphone in daily life in most places will result in a lifestyle contorted specifically to avoid using a smartphone, and will cut you off from activities that were previously doable without smartphones 20 years ago.

everdrive6• 1 month ago

This is not meant as an argument or a counterpoint, I'm just not familiar with some of your examples. Would you be able to elaborate?

Scan this QR code to install the app to cross the border.

Would this be a national border? I haven't traveled internationally for a while, but this would be quite troubling.

Install the app to board the bus.

Is there no option to pay without an app?

Install the app to get your filing status with department xyz.

Surely the government also allows you to just call and get an update?

shevy-java• 1 month ago

They want perpetual monitoring of everyone. Same with age sniffing.

Anyone still has any doubts? Or is it to ... protect the children?

bondolo• 1 month ago

And yet, for some reason, it is impossible to stop spam calls and texts.

dredmorbius4• 1 month ago

Having looked into the history of call tracking / blocking, it's pretty evident that major US telcos have very little interest in making marketing calls difficult. However tenuous the association between "marketing" and the actual practice of the scammers, harassers, abusers, and worse generating literally billions of such calls monthly (see: <https://pirg.org/edfund/resources/ringing-in-our-fears-2025-...>, "The monthly average of scam and telemarketing calls increased from 2.14 billion a month in 2024 to 2.56 billion a month through September, according to YouMail").

AT&T's efforts to thwart effective government regulation and mitigation stand out especially. The industry oranisation ATIS (<https://atis.org/>) has been central to blocking any effective action. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_for_Telecommunication...>.

ncrc742• 1 month ago

Can't read the article without an account. Just sayin.

ncrc742• 1 month ago

Can't read the article without an account.

laughing_man3• 1 month ago

Seems pointless to do this without also doing something about phone number spoofing.

trumpdong12• 1 month ago

It's not about controlling them, it's about controlling you and me

tamimio• 1 month ago

I probably said it dozens of times in here, phone numbers are the link between your IRL identity and digital one, that’s why a lot of services still require a phone number to “prevent spam”, yeah right, it’s just to get to you if ever needed.

codedokode4• 1 month ago

In Russia you need an ID to buy a phone number, and almost every site or app requires it to sign up. As a nice bonus, you or any scammer can buy personal data on everyone for cheap in Telegram bots, because everytime there is a PII leak, these bots update their vast databases.

amelius• 1 month ago

This will kill so many movie plots.

neuroelectron• 1 month ago

Anything about the 10 spam phone calls I get a day? no I didn't think so.

Something about no taxes without representation

loloquwowndueo2• 1 month ago

This has been tried in Mexico at least twice - crooks are still finding ways to have burners and smuggle anonymous phones into jails etc.

simulator5g4• 1 month ago

It's not about stopping crime, it's about control.

loloquwowndueo2• 1 month ago

Sure but that’s not how they’re selling it.

c2h5oh• 1 month ago

This is already the case in most (all?) EU countries. Government-issued photo ID is required to activate a SIM card.

If you really need a burner you can still get one - there are people who activate SIM cards in bulk using their ID and resell them without collecting IDs. The practice itself is either gray area legally or straight up illegal depending on the country

hocuspocus• 1 month ago

I was a teenager when Switzerland introduced the mandatory ID check, in 2003 or 2004 iirc.

My carrier added 10 CHF credit to my prepaid plan for the trouble.

It's still fairly easy to buy a Lycamobile SIM/number that was enabled with a fake or stolen ID. Consequently some banks and services ban entire number ranges, which is not only ineffective but also affects people who committed the sin of keeping their first phone number even after moving to a proper postpaid plan...

dredmorbius4• 1 month ago

Regwall / archive: <https://archive.is/ZobUQ>

(NB: the notion of having to register to read content strikes me as equally reprehensible as requiring KYC for access to the telephone network.)

jollymonATX• 1 month ago

We 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.

tw04• 1 month ago

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 reasoned responses that think this administration isn’t actively flaunting our laws. How’s that war powers act coming along?

owenpalmer• 1 month ago

A law that is not enforced is ultimately a suggestion

pizzly• 1 month ago

Having multiple needless laws is another way to control the population. Everyone will be violating at least one law. The government will then just enforce the laws on the people they don't like.

themafia• 1 month ago

The government will then just enforce the laws on the people they don't like.

Which is explicitly against the 14th amendment.

Tangurena25• 1 month ago

There is a book titled Three Felonies A Day that explains this. US Federal laws/regulations are so obtuse, over-reaching, arcane and complicated that the average innocent person violates 3 felonies per day. And your point about enforce the laws on the people they don't like is one that the author makes as well.

https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp...

A previous job of mine was software developer for a state motor vehicle agency. I had to read far too many state & federal laws/regulations to make the boat/vehicle registration system compliant.

nerdyadventurer• 1 month ago

These things are signs of surveillance economy which benefit very few.

lII1lIlI11ll2• 1 month ago

They will just run a PR campaign highlighting how anonymous SIMs have been used by pedos and terrorists so that majority of population will actually willingly support such laws, unfortunately.

Beestie• 1 month ago

Well dangit - there go all my favorite crime solving shows.

WatchDog• 1 month ago

Lot's of countries already require this but it's trivially by-passable just by using a roaming capable SIM from a country that does not require it.

tonetegeatinst• 1 month ago

Pretty sure that this would just encourage privacy minded folks to find a loophole.

Or if you get fed up enough you just start blasting FM transmissions without a license..... Keep the burst short enough while your mobile and don't make the transmitter obvious and you could probably get away with it for short SMS comms.

Or just use something like lora or meshtastic/meshcore

trumpdong12• 1 month ago

The loophole is to use a homeless person's ID for $20.

Wait. In the US don't they not even have an ID standard? The homeless person probably doesn't have any valid ID and neither do members of several other disenfranchised groups, right? So now they're not allowed to have cellphone service?

Tangurena25• 1 month ago

Some states allow homeless people to get IDs. Some do not. My state outlawed homelessness in last year's Crime Bill - the charge is now called "unlawful camping" and it outlawed cities from having zones where people are allowed to camp unless they basically create something like a KOA campground (and outlawed using tax money to do so).

atum47• 1 month ago

And phone companies are enabling telecoms by manufacturing devices that don't take physical sim cards anymore. I recently migrate from pixel 8 to 10, it only supports eSim. In order to migrate my sim to an eSim I had to provide voice, image, documents and info of the phone I was installing the eSim on. One of the worse companies in Brazil, Vivo, now have everything about me. I bet they keep it in a big excel file accessible via a secret but public link

trumpdong12• 1 month ago

This is already a thing in most countries btw

OsrsNeedsf2P2• 1 month ago

Which is depressing

trumpdong12• 1 month ago

Fun fact: in India, it is a crime to connect the IP network to the telephone network in any way whatsoever that allows calls originating in IP to terminate at telephones. This is because IP network users don't have to provide ID. (It does not prohibit calling from telephones to IP networks, or IP apps calling other instances of themselves)

zoom6628• 1 month ago

Straight out of China playbook. Every SIM must be registered with government issued/recognised ID. Yes combats fraud. Yes means govt can track you thru IMEI 24x7 anywhere in the world.

phantomathkg• 1 month ago

While Trump can travel to the China with his burn phone, the citizens of the US cannot. Surely everyone is equal.

ZedZark• 1 month ago

A voluntary model would be nice - what X (more or less) does currently. You can elect to be verified by X, and it will show the badge, or you can opt out and not get the badge, but you can still use it.

If phones could reliably tag an incoming call as "ID provided" or not, then people who cared could screen calls appropriately, and people who wanted to protect their identity could still have a phone.

3stacks• 1 month ago

This is essentially already a reality in Australia. I had to email identity documents + a photo of my face holding an ID to two separate companies just to shift eSIMs to my new phone.

They have to have your residential address for "emergency reasons" which is fairly defensible at least

rapidaneurism• 1 month ago

I do not understand the outrage, law abiting users have nothing to fear (TM) and criminally minded users (or undocumented) can always pay a homeless person, a few bucks to register their burner.

sschueller• 1 month ago

This has been the case for a long time in Switzerland. If you want a mobile phone SIM, you need to provide your ID. Of course easy if you have a national ID...

I don't see the issue here and I am surprised that this wasn't the case in the United States.

However since it is now trivial to communicate encrypted with so many other devices, I don't see the point now. This would have been a "good" thing back in the 90'.

KellyCriterion• 1 month ago

True for most EU countries since a while - at the premium Telcos shops.

Not true in most EU countries if you just go into one of those shady shops nearby train station and ask friendly, while the shop is empty, if he could sell you a SIM thats already verified.

zzgo• 1 month ago

“We never thought that would happen here.”

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.

J0nL• 1 month ago

This is one of those rules/laws that is worse than useless, without fixing the protocol shortcomings that make spoofing trivial the only people who will be affected by this rule are regular people.

MyMemoryfails2• 1 month ago

so instead of burnerphones, they will steal phones and keep phone awake until they have accomplished the crime they gonna do.

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.

AtlasBarfed• 1 month ago

It will simply go through a reseller layer

rimworld• 1 month ago

Same thing seems to be happening in every other nation. I assume this is binding to your future digital wallet

tvhamme• 1 month ago

Woow next level

filup• 1 month ago

Communicating anonymously without a phone number is really easy what does this solve

nobody77• 1 month ago

This is a good thing, die scammers die!

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

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