This is the specific proposed rule to reference: https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-seeks-comment-enhanced-know...

Open to the possibility that I’m just cynical but my faith is very low that these comment processes are anything more than a regulatory requirement for the illusion of due diligence which legitimizes the actual corporate lobbying and security state actually making the policy.

Thank you

And your pin is 1234

Has this changed recently? I thought I heard about this several years ago, but the last 2-3 times I've visited (in the last couple of years) I've been able to pick up a prepaid SIM from Colesworth without any ID check.

> like most other places

Much of EU requires ID for some time now. France is a bit strange, requires registration after 23 days or something. Germany, Italy, Spain it's basically impossible.

The US is rather unique in that it does not require registration.

I mean. It’s the same, you just have to show your passport and fill a form. It takes 1minute to get it done, you can do it on your way to the taxi if you want. Though e-sim are more practical now

Don’t eSIMs solve this problem for tourists?

What problem were they hoping to solve with that legislation?

Worse, we are becoming a burden.

The Thiels of the world are already past wanting an obedient consumer.

They don't need us for the utopia they imagine for themselves.

Can even go to the bodega on foot anonymously, too many of my neighbors have ring cameras pointed at the street.

Let's not neglect the connected cameras appearing everywhere, increasingly backed with AI face recognition.

Flock is being rejected in a number of cities, thanks to citizens.

> We should also abolish cash while we're at it.

Why do you think all the rich people (and by extension the oligarchy running this country) are pushing Crypto?

Every step of the way enabled by useful idiots who think that because each incremental step applies more/cheaper government violence to some class of petty deviants they don't like that it is worth doing even if the overall trajectory created by the sum total of the steps is bad. Selfish jerks.

Well - it's not exactly a surprise that all these non-American countries engage in un-American practices.

It's much more concerning when said practices are undertaken by the U.S.

Just because other countries do something isn't a justification to bring the practice into the U.S. despite that being a justification used with increasing prevalence these days.

Free, anonymous political speech is the bedrock of American freedom. Also, guns

there still are a bunch of viable messaging apps/services that work without a phone number:

matrix, wire, deltachat, threema, maybe jabber/xmpp (depends on their support of encryption). any others?

> many messaging apps require a phone number

But not all, so what's the actual point?

I hope you're right. I am not informed - is this typically how these decisions get challenged?

And with that suggestion, a clause is being added to close that loophole….

not at all, it’s easy to buy cash only tracphone, mint, boost, etc. and there are plenty of explicit anonymous providers such as phreeli.

That said, I don’t think its a problem whatsoever and we shouldn’t have laws restricting it.

I used to buy test phones for software testing at a bodega where they had a laundry basket full of phones, and they would sell prepaid SIMs no questions asked.

T-Mobile prepaid accounts for example

In the US you can buy a SIM card and activate without providing any information at the airport. At least in NYC. I was really surprised the first time

Back in the late 2000s-early 2010s you could grab some Verizon bubble pack flip phones and just dial an activation string on the handset itself and it'd set up a new phone number for you and you'd just have to go add airtime with a prepaid card or credit card without having to provide anything.

Some of the LTE tablets even powered up and put you into a walled garden with data (heh, DNS tunneling worked out of it) to let you sign up for a mobile plan out of the box.

When I did some activations with PagePlus with an actual dealer-level account, it cost me nothing to activate a 'customer' handset and the only info I had to provide on the activation screens was the phone's serial number and the requested ZIP/area code for activation.

And fine, okay, the FCC will force American telecoms to require IDs, but nothing's stoping Redtea Mobile's foreign eSIMs from roaming into the US for data connections. You're just one eSIM global roaming provider away from bypassing all of it!

They're already trying to regulate the shape of guns to effectively outlaw everything but the bullet.

They don't have that right, that's why Ben Franklin set up the USPS

This would apply equally to said IP calling network since you'd need a SIM card to access the tower interesting strewn across the country either way.

Spoiler: They were never against it, just biding their time.

The American conservatives who can afford to be are effectively exempted. When they're not flying around on private jets, the ownership and metadata created by their cars, phones, etc. are obfuscated by layers of shell corporations.

The other ones are simple and/or deluded and think these sorts of policies won't ever come for _them_. (To their credit, under the current regime they're actually correct about that to a certain extent.)

Let’s have your name and address then, citizen. Posters have a right to know who is commenting.

The person using the network is the one who put a quarter in the payphone.