🤖 AI Summary
FCCが burner 電話機の利用を大幅に制限する計画があり、これにより米国の電話サービス取得方法が根本的に変わると予想されています。FCCは電話会社に対して、新規および更新される顧客の名前、住所、政府発行の身分証明番号、そして代替連絡先が必要となるよう法的強制力を行使する計画です。これにより個人情報が大量に収集され、プライバシーやセキュリティ面での影響も懸念されています。
FCCはこの措置を詐欺防止のためとしていますが、また犯罪捜査や物違品取引の追跡にも有効だと主張しています。しかし、プライバシー活動家たちは、このような規則がアメリカでも外出国のような authoritarian 国のように身分登録が必要となることになりかねないという懸念を持っています。
この提案は burner 電話機を使用している人、国内暴力被害者、ジャーナリストなど、プライバシーを重視する人々に深刻な影響を与える可能性があります。Jay Stanley はアメリカ憲法保護基金の Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project の上席政策分析家であり、彼は「この規則制定により、 burner 電話機の利用が制限されることは明白だ」と述べています。「低所得者、国内暴力被害者、プライバシーを重視する人々にとって悪影響があるだろう。」と指摘しています。
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wants to make it effectively impossible for people to buy what many call burner phones -- a phone not explicitly linked to your identity at the point of purchase -- which would impact privacy-conscious people, to domestic abuse survivors, to journalists, and many more. The FCC plans to do this by legally forcing the country's telecoms to store a wealth of personal information about essentially all phone customers, including a government issued identification number and their physical address, alarming privacy advocates and civil rights activists who compare the measures to those from authoritarian countries where it can be difficult to buy a mobile phone plan without giving up your identity.
The proposed change would drastically shake up how people obtain phone plans in the U.S., and have all sorts of privacy and cybersecurity knock-on effects. The FCC is proposing the data collection partly as a way to combat scammers, with telecoms being required to collect other information on business and foreign customers like the intended use case of their bulk phone plan purchase and their IP address. But the changes would mean telecoms collect data on all new and renewing customers, and the FCC provides a long list of other things that the collected data could help authorities with.
In a synopsis of the proposed changes, the FCC writes, "Specifically, we seek comment on requiring originating providers to, at a minimum, obtain and retain the name, physical address, government issued identification number, and an alternate telephone number of any new and renewing customer before granting access to its services." The goal of collecting this data, the FCC writes, is to deter some scammers from getting onto a telecom network in the first place, and so "enforcers will be better able to identify the scammers when they do." The FCC compares the changes to the sort of data collected by banks to prevent money laundering.
One section stresses that the newly collected data would help "law enforcement to more easily identify callers that use the network to perpetuate crimes by ensuring that voice providers have accurate and complete customer information." It goes on to ask if the data would help identify people buying and selling illicit goods; the investigation of "fraud, espionage, or influence operations that undermine national security", and "address abuse in text messaging networks." "Criminals continue to leverage the anonymity provided by phone calls and texts to defraud Americans and exploit communications networks to further other crimes," one section reads. "For decades, civil libertarians have looked overseas at authoritarian countries where the government requires people to register to get a mobile phone to ensure they can be tracked. We never thought that would happen here," Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project told 404 Media in an email. "But make no mistake: with this rulemaking, the government is contemplating taking away people's ability to get a burner phone, which will hurt low-income people, domestic violence victims, and anyone else who cares about their privacy."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.