FCC Wants to Kill Burner Phones By Forcing Telecoms to Get All Customers' IDs

[SpankMe]

18. Yours is not a burner phone

This is because you have an account with Tracfone and you buy time as you go.

Burner phones are stand-alone phones that require no account. They are completely untethered to an individual. You buy it, activate it it without going online or creating an account. Then you call your uncle Larry's liquor store and ask if they have Prince Albert in a can.

Their official rationle is to combat evil because drug dealers, kidnappers and terrorists use burner phones to commit crime and escape detection.

Unofficially (and in reality) they're adding to the capabilities of a surveillance state. Republicans are going on the assumption that they'll never be out of power again and are throwing every lever available to create and maintain their conservative utopian hell in America.

Something this extreme should require legislation and not simply be a regulatory choice of a federal department. I can't see how this rule fits in to the regulatory mission of FCC.

This is exactly the kind of thing Republicans rail against when Dems are in charge. Every little regulation is framed as 'unelected bureaucrats overstepping their authority to oppress America'.