[marstall]

"force phone providers to collect identity information from ordinary people before they can acquire or renew service with a phone carrier."

don't see the harm in this? isn't this already the case for 99.9% of phoneline havers already?

[dghlsakjg]

You don’t see the harm in requiring telcos - famous for handing over data without warrants or court orders - being forced to have identifying data for every subscriber?

I can think of a half dozen ways that can get abused. Remember that in the states policing is decentralized. There is always some department somewhere willing to abuse their power. Look at how flock has been used to stalk partners, or how geofencing was used to sweep up everyone in the area of a protest, or how stingray is used to listen to all calls in an area. This is opening up avenues of abuse for almost no benefit.

[mindslight]

> famous for handing over data without warrants or court orders

More concretely, famous for supplying bulk data to the surveillance industry for a nominal fee. That is ostensibly the goals behind this development - all of these companies demanding phone numbers for "verification" and snake oil "2FA" want to reliably dox 100% of their users rather than just 80%.

[Telemakhos]

Realistically, it is for 99.9% of people who have phones. The 0.1% have to go out of their way to buy, with cash or crypto, prepaid SIM top-ups on flip phones, and by doing so they stand out like a sore thumb.

Back in the days of rotary phones, not only did the phone providers have your name, they even listed it, your home address, and your phone number in the white pages of the phone book, and everyone in town had a copy of it. Before the rise of microcomputers which enabled data tracking and robocalls, which in turn gave rise to demand for privacy from spam, having that information out in public wasn't a problem except for edge cases like domestic abuse victims or people in a witness protection program. The 99.9%, though, are still getting tracked no matter what, and I sometimes wonder if we've sacrificed the convenience and confidence of the phone-book age for an illusion of privacy that relies on anxiety.

[Hizonner]

I grew up in the phone book age. We had one phone with a really long cable, but it wasn't long enough to take it with me everywhere I went. And, as you point out, nobody had robots to call it, either.

[lazide]

Almost no one has physical phone lines anymore. It also used to be a given because they had to send a physical paper bill to someone, and hence needed an address.

Neither of these are true anymore.

Also, the tone is set from the top.

Do you think the current admin cares about actually tackling fraud and abuse?

[m463]

The big ones already force you to give SSN for service. Then they lose it in a data breach.

[reddalo]

The crazy thing is that a simple 9-digit number (that you must give away for many things) can ruin your life if it gets public.

The US seems so backwards at times.

[0xbadcafebee]

at times? we can't even decide if women are allowed to control their own bodies. we're now open to states stopping people with dark skin from voting, and we have giant internment camps where we keep innocent men, women, children because they have a spanish accent. vaccines are apparently not a worldwide health miracle, education is overrated, we're bringing back jobs in coal and oil, and invading/destabilizing latin american countries is back in vogue. in two years we might be so backwards that women's suffrage becomes questionable (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_backsliding_in_the_...).

[torstenvl]

Please don't spew hyperbolic slop in the service of ideological warfare. Thats not what HN is for.