The FCC is proposing the data collection partly as a way to combat scammers, with telecoms being required to collect other information on business and foreign customers like the intended use case of their bulk phone plan purchase and their IP address. But the changes would mean telecoms collect data on all new and renewing customers, and the FCC provides a long list of other things that the collected data could help authorities with.
The rules are open for public comment until June 25, after which the FCC will have roughly a month to reply. The FCC isn’t expected to vote on the proposed rules until several months after that.
At first, “for the kids,” social media lost anonymity and privacy. Then, “to prevent crime,” all kinds of surveillance got rolled out across cities. Now, “to stop fraud and help with investigations,” the internet is getting tied more and more closely to who you are.
I’m surprised no one commented on this. The US is one of the few countries in the world where you can still buy and use a SIM card without having to register your ID. I hope his measure fails.
Something else I fear, is that if if this passes, and Democrats win the next presidency they won’t abolish it. When Obama was first campaigning for president, he criticised the Patriot Act, and many invasive laws that were passed under Bush. However, when he won and assumed the presidency, he gave none of those powers back.
Given the current nanny state that the U.K. has fast become, it won’t be long before the U.K. require ID for that, too. Although, in fairness, I cannot remember the last time I had to use a ‘number’ to call someone.
I didn’t mean to suggest that one party is more pro privacy than the other. I simply meant to point that regardless of what the political issues is, in this case, privacy, it is very common for the opposition party to be openly against what an admnistration is doing, and then when they assume power they don’t abolish it, making them look like hypocrites.