Tech & Biz

Passports will be needed to buy mobile phones in UK

by Jordan Yerman | October 19, 2008 at 07:00 am

868 views | 5 Recommendations | 10 comments

Want a new prepaid mobile phone in Britain? Are your papers in order, sir/ma'am? I hope so, because Whitehall plans on requiring passports for folks who want to buy mobile phones.

Despite consistently losing private data, the UK still thinks it can manage yet another massive database. I consider myself an optimist, but... c'mon. The word "butterfingers" comes to mind. Glad I still have my old UK mobile number, which I keep active by sending and receiving text messages once in a while. It's like keeping a tamagotchi.

Phone buyers would have to present a passport or other official form of identification at the point of purchase. Privacy campaigners fear it marks the latest government move to create a surveillance society.

A compulsory national register for the owners of all 72m mobile phones in Britain would be part of a much bigger database to combat terrorism and crime. Whitehall officials have raised the idea of a register containing the names and addresses of everyone who buys a phone in recent talks with Vodafone and other telephone companies, insiders say.

Never mind "Creat[ing] a surveillance society", the UK already is a surveillance society, and this is just one aspect that the government seems to have forgotten about until now. Naturally, this new rule will only impact law-abiding citizens, as illegally obtaining a mobile phone (or just a SIM card) cannot possibly be all that difficult.

However, the following raised my eyebrows much higher:

A compulsory national register for the owners of all 72m mobile phones in Britain would be part of a much bigger database to combat terrorism and crime.

I'd give it less than a year before someone screwed up and that database was out in the wild.

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jessica.lam

at 08:21 on October 19th, 2008

shady deals all easily done with a switch of a sim card....

Jordan Yerman

at 08:42 on October 19th, 2008

Meanwhile, there are a gajillion people who, when travelling, would rather just swap out SIM cards than pay their service provider's roaming fees. A few days in NYC with minimal phone usage added C$200 to my phone bill... never again!

(If your phone is locked to a provider, the unlocking process is fairly straightforward- a quick online search will uncover the codes and instructions)

Rachel Nixon

at 09:50 on October 19th, 2008

This is crazy. If a phone company doesn't require your name and address when you buy a pre-paid phone, why should the government. I'm all for preventing crime and terrorism but how about getting the existing systems working first rather than creating yet another one?

MaC moo

at 10:52 on October 19th, 2008

this is zain sim... check out zain.com
this sim id offering 1 month customer will pay next month zain sim will pay same amount of money spend previous month. i got this sim without using any id...

MaC moo has contributed a photo to this story.

Beaulieu

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 11:26 on October 19th, 2008

jordan, I like this story. It's good stuff.Could we trust our info with dodgy mobile phone companies, where employees are not vetted properly?

Beaulieu

at 11:27 on October 19th, 2008

Don't they tap us anyway if we put dodgy words in anyway?

Jordan Yerman

at 12:59 on October 19th, 2008

Just don't say "Blackbriar" when you're on the phone.

Sanjay Jha

at 01:50 on October 20th, 2008

Hey, Thanks for your post. In India, you can't get a phone connection without a residence proof. Many people have to give their passport copy to obtain a phone connection.

Tracytu (not verified)

at 22:07 on June 5th, 2009

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