Defenestrating Thoughts from the Bivouac

From the UK Times Online:

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.

OK, so the British gov’t create a databse which tracks which phone belongs to which person. The article continues with,

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.

The pay-as-you-go phones are popular with criminals and terrorists because their anonymity shields their activities from the authorities. But they are also used by thousands of law-abiding citizens who wish to communicate in private.

Here we find out that terrorists use pay-as-you-go phones. But wait, there are 40M of these phones? How many of these people are terrorists? Probably not many. Even if you say that 0.01% of the prepaid owners are terrorists, that’s 4000 people.

If we read carefully, we find that pay-as-you-go phones are actually the norm in England. Of 72M cell phones in the country, 40M are pay-as-you-go (56%) and for companies like Vodaphone 72% of their customers use pay-as-you-go.

So the number crunching shows us that pay-as-you-go is how most people use their phones, it’s not some weird loophole.

Anyway, let’s say we build this database. Anyone see any reasons why it won’t work?

If you said, “terrorists will just steal or clone phones” or “terrorists will buy the phones on the black market without ID”, you’re right!

Even if we ignore the privacy concerns and Orwellian criticisms, the plan doesn’t even accomplish anything!

Yikes.