[Bassey]

Editorial: UK government to insist on passport to buy phone?

I saw this article today on Register Hardware and felt compelled to comment on it. In short, the UK government is shortly to put before the commons legislation that will require anyone who purchases a mobile phone within the UK to provide ID in the form of a passport or National ID Card. This will then be registered on a government held database linking that person's ID to the phone's IMEI number. The government states that this is on order to help its communications monitoring and allow it to link intercepted communications with specific individuals.

This proposed legislation has many, many potential consequences but not one of these involves tightening up security or clamping down on crime - quite the opposite, in fact, in the case of the latter.

Lets start off with, the most obvious problem with this new law. No criminal above the level of 14-year-old happy-slapper is going to be stupid enough to use a mobile phone linked to their ID in order to communicate about their ill-gotten gains or to plan crime (and in the case of the 14-year-old they’ll be posting the vids on You Tube anyway so PC Plod has all the evidence he needs without an IMEI database). This leaves the criminals and potential terrorists with a fairly easy to overcome problem. How to get hold of phones not linked to their ID.

So, the government is about to introduce new legislation that seems to have been purposefully designed to increase the black-market in stolen mobile phones and therefore make it MORE likely that you will have your phone nicked! Which brings us to problem two.

Mr Terrorist now has YOUR mobile phone, linked to YOUR ID via its IMEI number and is using it to plan terrorist activities. Meanwhile, MI5, safe in the knowledge that is “infallible” database has all the details it needs, is waiting outside your front door with a knock-knock at 2am. And why is this? Because you didn’t bother to report it when it was nicked. Which brings us to problem 3.

Everyone in the UK knows the police don’t have time to fight actual street crime like theft and burglary – the stuff that bothers us – because they are too busy filling out paper work and increasing the treasury coffers to pay for their 3-year pay-deals with their speed traps. Because everyone knows this most people don’t bother reporting it when they get home and discover their £20 Nokia 1110 is missing. However, because of this new law, unless you want the aforementioned 2am visitation you are going to HAVE to report every mobile phone theft. And remember, there will be more thefts because there is more incentive for people to steal them. So, the police are now going to be inundated with crime reports they don’t have the resources to record, never mind investigate.

And yet this is supposed to IMPROVE CRIME FIGHTING?

And this is before we consider;

· What online retailers are supposed to do - are they meant to ask you to fax in your ID, in which case we increase the size of the market for stolen passports etc?
· What we do about non-UK phones roaming on UK networks?
· How do you sell-on your mobile phone without selling on your ID?

The whole thing is a complete farce with no criminals actually being impacted but everyone else suffering. Please, please write to you MP and ensure this nonsense gets thrown out when it comes before parliament in the next session.