I greatly oppose the constant erosion of freedoms here in the UK, and this latest proposal by our surveillance obsessed government is another step towards a country where all freedoms are banned.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article4969312.ece The current government seems to want anyone buying a mobile or a SIM card to register their details in a large central database along with their passport information at the point of purchase. No doubt it will cost billions to implement and those people who want to avoid it will buy a SIM card in another country and roam into the UK. Just imagine the hassle to get a few free SIM cards....
I urge anyone who feels these steps are steps too far, to sign a petition against these policies:
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/privacy-matters/Mikael
The recent disclosure of the methods used by the Doctors and their London Night spot Mercedes bombs, would have only added to the justification of this by the dearly elected.
I saw similar rules imposed in Malaysia and Thailand after a spate of motorbike b*mbs triggered by mobile phone in the three southern most Thai provinces. The implementation and acquisition of ID on SIM purchase left a lot to be desired, and I think the push for this was just as commercial as it was about national safety. Still one key difference was that it was only on registration that ID details were necessary, however a SIM could not be used before being registered.
The UK Gov have access to pretty much all general communication and they want to build a system to store all electronic communication over a period of several years. Although I'm not sure if this includes the actual content - that would be massive - I think it is just details of the communication.
To be honest, for a person/group intent on doing harm, using mobile phones at any stage is not a very smart thing to do - for several reasons. In fact most main stream communication mediums are open to tapping. You can use tools to make it very hard for unintended recipients to know what the content of the communication is, but with some determination it is possible to discover where the comms came from, where they went to, the location of each party and so on.
I also think that the mandatory provision of ID for phones and SIMS is a forgone conclusion. It may well further make the resale of phones and sims a very risky business to be in !
But as Mikael suggested non-UK sims could be used. Even a satellite phone could be used (bit expensive though !). There are also so many WiFi access points now, it is feasible to use that. Even bluetooth would work - but you'd need to be a bit close for that ! Or you can buy a pair of walkie talkies for less than £10 and use a custom tone - no risk then of having a mis-dialed number after setting everything up then !
What I am getting at is that provision of ID for phones and SIMs has limited benefit, I don't think it will really help the prevention of terrorism that much - it may cause some people to consider alternate ways of triggering the b*mb It will just be a PITA and another significant intrusion on privacy for the 99.999% who have no intention of doing harm.
What it would give the government is accurate location information for every person with their phone switched on. And an awful lot more too.
I can see a good opportunity in selling non-uk sims that work in the uk or of alternative ID that is acceptable to the phone companies. The requirements cant be that strict - just think of all the tourists coming to the UK who want a local SIM !
