Almost all countries require official authentication to activate a SIM card. This seems to me as a huge privacy problem, if the country can track sim cards across cell towers and connect them to a person. It seems like a dystopian system, that we litterely can not hide from our governments without turning off our smartphones. It seems incredibly unnecessary to me and just sets up the system to be abused.
Or do I understand something wrong?
What can we do against this? There are some sim cards that can be bought second hand, but they will not be a long term solution.
Counter point: I don’t want an untraceable phone used as a detonator. There’s a reason that these things are linked to real-world identities.
With wireless systems like LoRa, you can send totally legally, basically untraceable data across over 50 km.
This is not a real problem.
If compromising the privacy of millions of people is an acceptable alternative to an incredibly infrequent act which can already be perpetrated by other more anonymous means and can be easily mitigated by various socio-economic policies, have at it I guess.
This. It’s about crime. You couldn’t sign up for landline service without providing the same info as any other utility, and it was tied to an address. I’m fine with cell service being traceable, with a warrant or court order (and not a secret rubber-stamp FISA court, a real one).
I don’t have this much trust in the system anymore to be honest. If the data is available, it can be misused or leaked or hacked. Maybe I am paranoid ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Payphones have existed for decades. They would still exist if not for cell phones.