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[bob ford <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>]

They always start this stuff in UK, there are also articles , same thing in 
India, saudi Arabia, will be here soon........
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"Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, faces a revolt from her senior officials 
over plans to build a central database holding information on every telephone 
call, e-mail and internet visit made in the UK. "

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article4969361.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797084

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"UK’s Mobile Phone register will require passport to buy PAYG handset
Published by Ewan on Monday 20th October 2008, 12:17 | Related | Filed 


You can’t be too careful.

And, er, since it’s electronic, it’s trackable. So let’s track it!

So goes the thinking behind the latest plans here in the UK to protect the 
nation.

If you buy a mobile phone on contract, your identity is already confirmed.

If you buy a mobile phone on PAYG — Pay As You Go — you don’t need to prove 
your identity.

Ergo huge, huge breeding ground for terrorists. Apparently.

With 72% of Vodafone’s almost 19 million UK customers earmarked as potential 
terrorists , it’s essential that they’re all passported the next time they 
buy a handset, right?

It’s time for rolling of eyes and acceptance with a wry smile.

The Times of London has the details.

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.

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.

The move is targeted at monitoring the owners of Britain’s estimated 40m 
prepaid mobile phones. They can be purchased with cash by customers who do 
not wish to give their names, addresses or credit card details.

I hardly think this is going to be very useful for the tracking of would-be 
terrorists. Tracking guns, drugs and hand grenades might be a little bit more 
effective.

Still.

Everyone needs a mobile phone, right? Even would-be-terrorists. Who will need 
to show their fake ID to buy a handset.

Or who will simply steal registered PAYG handsets to make their calls. Like 
stealing cars.

Or who will buy unlocked handsets from abroad.

Or who will simply use the millions of unregistered PAYG handsets already in 
the country. There’s plenty of them.

I suppose this could potentially be useful. If you think someone’s going to 
attack, say, the Houses of Parliament (goodness knows what the folk at GCHQ 
are thinking of all the keywords in this post already… WARNING WARNING!), and 
you think the baddie is in the vicinity… simply fire up your black boxes and 
list every handset operational within 5 miles of the location.

THEN filter out all the ones that are registered to (apparently) real people. 
With apparent real IDs.

Then you’ll — theoretically — be left with a list of unregistered baddies. 
Some of which will be 62 year old Mavis, the cleaner, who hasn’t changed her 
handset for 14 years… and ideally — at least from the point of the 
anti-terrorist chaps — you should also see some suspicious looking 
possible-nasty folk that want locking up for 42 days.

This kind of privacy-creep is inevitable.

And I suppose, from a commerce viewpoint, if you have to introduce it into 
the industry, now’s the time to do it — when the industry is mature.

Think through the ramifications. Every MVNO is going to have a total arse. 
You’ll no longer be able to walk into huge retailer, Argos, and buy a phone. 
They simply don’t have the infrastructure to check IDs.

Neither does the likes of Tesco or your average petrol (”Gas”) station where 
these things are being flogged as impulse purchases. None of these retailers 
are going to want to faff about with ID recording.

I suppose retailers could insist you purchase with a Switch/Maestro (”Bank 
Card”) or Credit Card — that way all purchases are theoretically trackable.

But I reckon what the intelligence agencies really want is to be able to type 
in a mobile phone number and… woosh… within 2 seconds, have the owner’s 
identity up on screen together with cross-referenced frequently called 
numbers (and their IDs) and so on.

I’d just like to specify that I work in the mobile industry, right? So when 
you’re pulling up 07769 658 104, finding the ID Ewan MacLeod and finding that 
I have an account on *every* network and oodles of handsets, I’d like that 
displayed. Better still, could you cross reference that with a series of 
posts from Mobile Industry Review, proving it?

And that record for the Motorola RAZR back a few years ago? Don’t judge me. 
It was just a phase I was going through…"




http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2008/10/uks_mobile_phone_register_will_require_passport_to_buy_payg_handset.html





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