New Passport-for-Cellphone Scheme in the UK
October 19, 2008 by Rico Mossesgeld
Filed under Cellphones
So the Times Online reports that Passports will be needed to buy mobile phones, or at least other “official form of identification at the point of purchase.” This is scary because the mere act of purchasing a cell phone reveals a lot about the buyer.
This measure seeks to stop the relative anonymity enjoyed by “criminals and terrorists” through their purchases of prepaid phones. And it’s true that most phones bundled with prepaid packages are low-end. What about, as the Times says, those “thousands of law-abiding citizens who wish to communicate in private?”
And what about those who buy high-end phones? Automatically, the government knows that Citizen X has cash to burn. The potential to misuse such potentially detailed financial and personality data—or use that for other state-sponsored programs—is a bit disturbing.
Even worse, the passport-for-mobile-phone scheme is part of a larger program “to create a huge database to monitor and store the internet browsing habits, e-mail and telephone records of everyone in Britain.” Looks like being a gadget geek in the UK increasingly opens you up to government scrutiny.
What do you expect from the country that criminalizes photography, while at the same time watching its citizens 24/7 with CCTV cameras on every street corner?