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Comment by jameshart | Hacker News Reader

Counterpoint: for my part I would like it to be the case that any phone line that can dial or message my phone can be traced back to a known human being who can be held accountable for abuse of that phone line in terms of generating spam, abuse or harassment.

Seems that we can’t both get what we want.

A potential solution is that you get your anonymous phone line but my phone provider simply refuses to let you call me with it.

Of course then we need to extend the same principle to data and to IP traffic originating from your device. If you don’t want to be traceable it seems reasonable that services should have the right to refuse to handle IP traffic you generate.

Would such a half-baked level of network access suit your needs?

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I would like any message that is spam to be able to be traced back to the offending human.

I would like anonymous political posts to be untraceable by the government.

I can't even get all of what I want.

The problem of the government tracking down people for political posts is supposed to be solved by having laws that constrain the government, not by having corporations provide anonymity as a service.

There's no "supposed to" here. Humans, (including governments) are inclined to do bad things; both law and technology are necessary to restrain those tendencies.

One man's anonymous posts are another man's foreign influence operation.

> Seems that we can’t both get what we want.

Why can't you? They don't want to provide info for a credit check, you want human accountability. All that requires is for them to use a debit card for whatever service (prepaid or postpaid). Law enforcement can trace that if needed. No need for credit checks or really any other information directly in the hands of the telco.

Indeed. Given the KYC requirements for getting a credit card, it seems that paying with a credit card should confer traceability for LE.

This is an argument in favor of KYC requirements for telcos, just that it assumes they can outsource it to banks.

This is neither KYC nor would that be relevant even if it were. The whole point is you could get traceability without a credit check just fine.

You're saying telcos should insist on a traceable source of payment, which means a source of funds which has some level of KYC. That is just KYC with extra steps.

It should show up as anonymous. And you should have a setting: allow anonymous calls y/n

.. precisely what I asked for?

> my phone provider simply refuses to let you call me with it.

I don't think it's necessary to go this far. The provider could indicate something like "CANNOT VERIFY NUMBER". I imagine most people would block such calls.

Isn’t that the same thing? I was making the assumption that the way I would block such calls would be by telling my phone provider they don’t need to route them to me in the first place.

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