[Lonestar1440]

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.

[fwipsy]

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.

[Lonestar1440]

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.

[jancsika]

> 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

[Lonestar1440]

It's a reference to Spaceballs, not the state fwiw

[panny]

Okay, but you're telling me kids that don't have a government ID can't have phones now, right?

[trollbridge]

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.

[tomrod]

And they pay for the time off work, the daycare required, the gas bill...

No fee is not equivalent to free.

[tzs]

What about people who can't afford the costs to get the documentation required in order to get the ID?

[trollbridge]

A birth certificate is $25. My state has a programme for people who can't afford that to get a grant to pay for that, too.

I used to be quite anti-"comrade, your ID, please", but now that it's required anyway to function, we might as well get some benefits from it. Such as attestation of phone numbers being "this is from a real person who is an ordinary consumer".

[tzs]

Getting a certified copy of a birth certificate requires proof of identity. If you don't have a government issued photo ID states typically require multiple forms of secondary documentation (some of which themselves require photo ID to obtain). The secondary documentation can be expensive to obtain (fees for the documents themselves plus the effort to locate the documents).

The secondary documentation that can be easily and cheaply obtained without a photo ID, such as a copy of a utility bill, can fail because of name match problems--if your birth certificate is for "Bartholomew Jo-Jo Simpson" and your electricity bill is for "Bart Simpson" that might not be accepted.

[panny]

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...

[Lonestar1440]

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.