Two entries in the recent No2ID newsletter caught my eye:
*+ Govt ponders proof-of-ID law for future phone purchases – The
Register 20/10/08 +*
The bother of choosing between an 18-month contract or a high up-front
price may soon be the least of your worries when buying a new mobile
phone, because you may soon be required to prove your identity before
you’re allowed a new handset.
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/10/20/passport_phone/
*+ Passports will be needed to buy mobile phones – The Sunday Times
19/10/08 +*
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.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article4969312.ece
The recent proposals from Jacqui “Big Sister” Smith to monitor every email, website visit, Facebook post, or indeed anything that anyone does online got lots of media attention, and rightly so (as did her unintentionally humorous rider that if the State couldn’t monitor all online activity it would have “no alternative” but to “massively increase surveillance” – who needs satirists with lines like that?). These measures, though, seemed to have mostly slipped under the media radar. At the moment, you can buy pay-as-you-go phones and SIM cards with cash over the counter, though the shops try to twist your arm into registering your name and address, and that gives you a small measure of privacy, pretty much needed seeing as the State routinely monitors mobile traffic and requires operators to keep logs for its perusal. Naturally, this is just too much of a liberty loophole for the State to allow, so soon you’ll have to ID yourself just to get a phone account. The rationale is the usual, terrorism and crime, but it’s obvious that even the doziest terr or crim will be capable of getting hold of an untraceable phone, so plainly this is another social control measure to keep tabs on Joe and Jane Public.
So, if you want a private mobile phone account, best get your skates on.
Nice to see, BTW, that Geoff “Warmonger” Hoon is back to his contentious and provocative worst. Defending the proposed Communications Data Bill on BBC’s Question Time, he said:
If they are going to use the internet to communicate with each other and we don’t have the power to deal with that, then you are giving a licence to terrorists to kill people.
(“Hoon defends giant database plans“, BBC News online, 17/10/08)
So if you’re opposed to the Bill you must necessarily be in favour of terrorists killing people. And this guy’s supposed to be an intelligent lawyer? Even White Van Man down the local would be ashamed to use such a stupid ‘argument’. Well, Geoff baby, some of us haven’t forgotten your cheerleading for the Iraq war, when your bland but sinister mug was popping up all over the TV warning us that Saddam was going to blow smithereens out of us if he wasn’t deposed, and labelling all opponents of the war as Saddam sympathisers. You’ve gone pretty quiet on that lately, but memories are long, and with luck you’ll be held to public account for your warmongering. In the meantime, your Manichean ‘either with us or against us’ line might appeal to your mates in the NuLabor regime and win you Brownie (geddit?) points, but even the most idiotic in the Great British Public [TM], and there are plenty enough of them, aren’t going to fall for that old cobblers again. Back to Chambers, matey. Even better, it would be lovely to see you standing outside Sainsbury’s on a wet Saturday afternoon selling the Big Issue…
