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Comment by NoMoreNicksLeft | Hacker News Reader

What problem were they hoping to solve with that legislation?

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.

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.

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

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