Yeah I'm surprised a surveillance country like the UK didn't do this yet. Here in Spain they do.
https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/sim-card-regist...
> The majority of national governments (around 160) require mandatory SIM-card registration, which means you need your real name and personal details to sign up for phone service. And just under 20 of these also require biometrics, e.g. your fingerprints or a facial scan, with eight more countries in the process of implementing such requirements.
The biometrics part is unnerving to be sure, but anonymous SIMs or DIDs are incompatible with fraud and spam fighting efforts. If you terminate bad actors, they’ll just keep spinning up more resources.
My current provider Orange even requires me to re-ID at their shop periodically now :(
I was pickpocketed a few years ago and I searched all the bins in the area and I came up with ID cards, medical cards, bank cards etc of 9 different people that had been robbed that night!
I think the thieves do this because if you point them out to the police they won't have any evidence on their possession. Because if they have someone's ID on them they will have some explaining to do. For some cash not so much, you can't prove it was yours.
Not that the police do anything anyway because the Spanish law lets them go free with a minor fine if they stole less than 400 euro, even if it was the 50th time this month. This is really why pickpocketing is so extremely rampant here, it's risk-free and the gangs are basically professional businesses.