According to the Washington Post yesterday, China now is forcing registration of personal information with the government just to purchase a mobile phone. The concern is that the government will use this new information as a further tool to monitor citizens.
Thankfully we live in a country that values freedom, guarantees liberty, and has political leaders more interested in protecting citizens from government than in fanning fears of security to pass legislation…or do we?
Prepaid mobile service is a valuable option for nearly 58 million American consumers. But because a handful of criminals also use prepaid mobile service, law enforcement is taking the view that prepaid mobile service is something of an accomplice and has decided to restrict us all rather than concentrating on criminals.
Accordingly, new legislation introduced by Senators Schumer and Cornyn would require that anyone purchasing a prepaid mobile phone (which could now only be done through an “authorized merchant”) would have to provide their name, address, date of birth, photo, and various tax documents (i.e. 1099, W-2) to the merchant, who must then transmit that information to a service provider to be retained in a sprawling database for 18 months.
But this measure, while curbing liberty and privacy, will not only fail to meet its supposed intended purpose of curbing criminal behavior, but will also impose costs on the 58 million Americans who choose to use prepaid cell phones.
This is just the latest example of government’s trend to “over criminalize” products and actions—using criminal law to solve every problem and to punish every mistake. But the end result is that often trivial conduct is subject to criminal prosecution, and sometimes leads to imprisonment of even those who acted without criminal intent. Meanwhile, the criminals have moved on to other techniques, leaving the law as a threat and a trap to innocent people.
Read much more in IPI’s new publication "Hanging Up On Liberty: Prepaid Mobile Laws Restrict Freedom, Impose Onerous Regulations and Fail to Stop Criminal Behavior."