Comment by StanislavPetrov
21 hours ago
You aren't required to identify yourself to get a phone. You can get a prepaid phone with no ID.
You are required to identify yourself for an electricity account because it is essentially extending you credit. You use the electricity first, and then they bill you for it later. They also only identify the person who is receiving the bill. You could have a house with a dozen people in it but the electric company only knows the name of the person responsible for the bill.
You are free to identify yourself on the internet right now. People who are intelligent and/or believe in freedom and free speech are opposed to this authoritarian power grab.
> You aren't required to identify yourself to get a phone. You can get a prepaid phone with no ID.
Requiring ID to buy a prepaid SIM card has become the norm across the developed world. There are still a few holdout countries, but they won’t hold out for long.
You say that as though it's a feature rather than a bug. Being able to have an anonymous SIM card is a useful privacy and security feature, to avoid things like "tell me the ID of everyone in the vicinity of this protest". (And that's one reason governments try to break that.)
People like the guy you replied to surely don't perceive the right to protest as vital.
Neither won't they ever fathom the fact that governments inevitably become full-on fascist to the meek bleating of a critical mass of ther ilk (check the sympaties to the Chinese surveillance below).
My sympathies are increasingly with the Chinese model of development. So, yes, policies that confront the major challenge of our era – ensuring social harmony among the chaos of modern media and communications – are good features.
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> You aren't required to identify yourself to get a phone. You can get a prepaid phone with no ID.
Not in Australia