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Comment by dkdbejwi383 | Hacker News Reader

This is how it works in Australia, which means it's a pain for tourists as you need to provide a passport for ID and get it activated, as opposed to just grabbing one at an airport kiosk and being ready to go on your way to the taxi or train like most other places.

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Somewhat recently, tried to activate a SIM for a guest here in Canada, and while you could fill in anything you want for personal info, the only way to hook up (prepaid) billing was with a Canadian credit card number. Whoops. This was only for a month, so I put in mine and he reimbursed me in cash. Other carriers may still let you buy one-time payment cards for cash at retail; this one didn't.

I think this is where Airalo shines. I've used it while travelling and I think eSIMs, as annoying as they are, are the way.

I just tried a GigSky eSim on my Samsung Galaxy and it was an epic fail of an experience.

these "travel sims" are pricey !

You get better deals with local carriers if you actually use the potential of eSIM, which is to be able to switch ! Every other carrier in most parts of the world now supply eSIMs that you can sometimes activate from home before your trip

Canada has Lucky Mobile, central Europe has A1 mobile, France and Portugal have Lycamobile, Italy has Windtre, UK has no service,...

Getting a SIM is typically the thing on which you can save 20$ just by asking a local person

Having a friend who lends you their credit card so that you pay it off at the end of your trip is such a premium !

Canada isn't the only country in which foreign cards don't work everywhere, and it seems like it's rarely tested

> like most other places

Much of EU requires ID for some time now. France is a bit strange, requires registration after 23 days or something. Germany, Italy, Spain it's basically impossible.

The US is rather unique in that it does not require registration.

Huh? At least in Germany, Spain and France all of the smaller shops fill in fake info without even asking.

EU countries have had these requirements for years and years and never moved to actually enforce them.

I wasn't taking blatant fraud into account. I'm sure that's possible everywhere. I'd bet you can buy cigarettes without the tax stamps in the same shop too.

Last I traveled the shop required a passport or uploading one to get an eSIM ahead of time.

Sure, but if you’re a tourist in e.g. Barcelona trying to get a prepaid SIM, odds are the shopkeeper will not ask you for your ID despite being required to.

> Last I traveled the shop required a passport or uploading one to get an eSIM ahead of time.

Sounds like you went to a carrier boutique and not one of the million independent shops.

Not a good example. In Spain they notoriously demand id/passport and make photo or copy of it, they do it "for the police".

That’s the legal requirement yes, I’ve never seen a shop insist on it. Most of them have autofill scripts for the KYC forms.

Isn't the main topic of discussion here a legal requirement?

If everyone ignores it then what's the fuss about?

I’m just pointing out that in Europe the equivalent legal requirement is widely ignored, the same won’t necessarily repeat in the US, but it might.

I would think most tourists would trust a carrier-branded store over Honest Jochen's Tobacco Emporium where you may or may not get a working SIM after paying cash.

Trust? Sure. They’re still more likely to buy their prepaid SIM from the shop that also sells bongs, they are on every corner after all.

Is it that trivial in Germany? I live in Berlin, and the rumor that I heard years ago is that some kiosks in areas known for drug dealing sell pre-activated SIM cards. I never bothered to check.

Argentina doesn't also, you can just buy a SIM card off the newsstand.

In my experience, you then need to activate it using real data from real people. I lent my data to a colombian colleague a couple of years ago, as he did not have a DNI yet.

> This is how it works in Australia, which means it's a pain for tourists as you need to provide a passport for ID and get it activated, as opposed to just grabbing one at an airport kiosk and being ready to go

I don't see the connection. This is also how it works in China, which means... when you grab a SIM card at an airport kiosk, they take a picture of your passport. You obviously have your passport with you, because you just arrived in China and haven't left the airport yet.

What part of that isn't also true of Australia?

Has this changed recently? I thought I heard about this several years ago, but the last 2-3 times I've visited (in the last couple of years) I've been able to pick up a prepaid SIM from Colesworth without any ID check.

It has been like that for at least 8 years, and probably longer. There are still stalls at airports, but you must provide ID.

Interesting. Seems like this isn't very consistently enforced, then.

You may have bought the sim card but never activated it. It's not the device itself that is restricted, just using it.

You can buy the SIM but can’t activate it without going through ID checks.

It used to be that you did the ID check when you bought the SIM, but now you have to do the ID check when you activate it.

It's been like this since at least the late 90s, I remember having to fill out the paperwork manually when working at Target

The current ID verification requirements for phones were introduced to Australia in 1997

What problem were they hoping to solve with that legislation?

The problem of citizens having anonymous internet connectivity.

The free anonymous internet was only ever a ruse to get people to use it so the CIA could spy on them. DARPA, folks, created a “free as in beer” global surveillance network and we all bought it.

Not that we didn’t get anything in return but the idea that the worlds foremost military industrial complex just gave this to the world because they loved us is laughable.

Huh? DARPA created something to help retain communication and coordination capabilities for our government in event of nuclear attack.

Indeed they did, at great expense and gave it away for free!

That's an illusion. Two days of location data and you can pin down the owner pretty well.

I thought about getting a SIM when Germany was about to introduce ID requirements. I quickly realized this being a moot point.

There a significant difference between "the user can be identified fairly well if you can get access to sensitive stuff" and "the owner is always explicitly recorded in a searchable database".

My burner would only be powered on for the duration of the call and the time to spin up gsm connectivity.

Most of time it's billed as law enforcement fighting tool. If people can't have anonymous cell phones, once you capture one criminal phone number, you can quickly look at who they call and since they can't be burners, you figure out the criminal network.

Also, if you have restrictions of speech in the country, it's great way to de anonymize any speech government says is illegal.

Any situation you can imagine wanting a burner phone for, that's what the government wants to crack down on.

I mean. It’s the same, you just have to show your passport and fill a form. It takes 1minute to get it done, you can do it on your way to the taxi if you want. Though e-sim are more practical now

I wonder what exactly are they hoping to achieve then? Anything that can be filled out in 1 minute in a taxi can be spoofed with an extra 30 seconds on the dark net buying dark IDs. So this does less than zero for crime, actually encourages more of it, while doing what exactly? It's madness.

Who says anything about crime? the goal is just so they can associate phone numbers with id cards in some fashion right?

If they want to know what tourists are posting about their country that's good enough.

Like so many laws, nothing to do with stopping crime, but an obvious push to strip the populace of its rights.

You do not have the right to a phone number without providing ID. If you're an American, those unwritten rights that come from other firm rights written down in laws and constitutions can always be argued, they're always being whittled down.

Rights for everyone are achieved through blood and toil, and if you truly want a right to anonymity and the digital tools necessary to achieve it, you will need blood and toil. Until then, we'll have to squeeze through fast developments that governments have yet to address.

"Law enforcement" and national security is given as the verbatim headline justification when you reference Australia's Communication and Media Authority[] for rules on ID collection.

  Carriers and carriage service providers (CSPs) must help law enforcement and national security agencies.

  ...

  You must verify a customer's identity before you activate a prepaid mobile phone service. You can do this when the customer buys the service or when they try to activate it. The Determination on identity checks for prepaid mobiles lists the ways you can check a customer's identity.

Unfortunately I can't dig up the original debate from 1997 on the Telecommunications Act when the requirement appears to have been introduced. Would be shocked if it did not include similar language from the representatives shilling the requirement, though.

[] https://www.acma.gov.au/support-law-enforcement-and-security...

Can you tell me more about how to order and receive a fake ID on the dark net in less than 30 seconds? It does sound rather implausible.

Don’t eSIMs solve this problem for tourists?

Only if you do not require voice service.

Apple — and now Google — have "solved" this problem for the government by removing physical SIM slots in US iPhones.

Thus eSIM

Doesn't an eSIM link the SIM to the phone's IMEI which is usually logged somewhere?

Yes, eSIM doesn't really change this conversation

eSIM doesn't change local laws around cell phones - it's not magic.

Yep, they'll still prompt for the info.

It can if it's a roaming eSIM. I'm sure all the countries mentioned here e.g. Australia still handles US SIMs roaming there fine even when the US SIM dossn't have ID tied to it.

A roaming eSIM would work the same way as a roaming SIM. Just because it's easier to set up (no need to get a physical SIM) doesn't change the regulations around it.

I suppose this depends on how the law is written, but are roaming users subject to local SIM regulations for network use? I can't imagine asking for ID from tourists using their existing SIMs is going to work.

I believe some travel eSIMs are actually issued from outside the country you're going to.

Typically not. Because they don't have local phone numbers nor IP addresses, so they cannot be used for scams or fake identities domestically. In China, roaming SIMs also bypass all internet filtering, it's basically a built in VPN back to your home telecom.

And as you said, ones marketed as "China travel SIMs" are typically issued from Hong Kong. Interestingly, Hong Kong also has an ID rule (though it allows self upload of ID anyway), but it exempts these roaming-only cards. If you want the card to work in HK, and it is issued from there, you must scan your passport to activate it.

Right, but that distinction is not because it's an eSIM - it's just how it's issued. There's no technical distinction, just a practical ease of issuance.

In what way? Activating it still needs KYC.

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