I'm not too happy about this eventuality....
NEW YORK (AP) — Alarmed by the use of hard-to-track prepaid cell phones by terror suspects, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer and Texas Sen. John Cornyn have introduced legislation requiring consumers to produce identification before buying such phones.
The bill has been praised by law enforcement and has bipartisan support, even as civil liberties groups have raised privacy concerns and some terror experts say it won't deter bad behavior.
Making people show IDs as a prerequisite for purchasing pre-paid phones will do nothing to stop terrorism, or any other crime for that matter. Unless you link, at the time of purchase, the buyers ID with the phone's unique ID, what good does it do since the phones are essentially untraceable and disposable? All this does is inconvenience regular citizens who can't, or prefer not to, afford expensive cell phone contracts.
My libertarian alarms started ringing when I read this. I think it's just another way for our snoopy government overlords to try keep up with us under the guise of fighting terrorism.
You'd expect this sort of crap from Chuck "the schmuck" Shumer but Cornyn should know better.
No comments:
Post a Comment