Many countries (including in the EU) already required ID to use a SIM card: https://forestvpn.com/blog/news/countries-sim-card-registrat...

Funnily enough, when the Philippines did this, it was decried as a violation of human rights [1]. But usually, media are so silent on such things I'd call them complicit. One already cannot so much as rent a hotel room anywhere in the EU without showing government ID.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIM_Registration_Act

I'm in NL and had my wallet fall out of my pocket once at one of the bigger train stations. I realized within ~5 minutes, and basically as soon as I realized got a call from an anonymous number. It was the police, who had found my wallet with my ID in it and were calling me to inform me about it. Luckily I was still at the station and could just meet them and got my wallet back.

I couldn't help but feel extremely creeped out, and my girlfriend still to this day doesn't understand why I felt uneasy about it. "But you got your wallet back!", she says. "Of course the police know your number!". Having 0 privacy has been completely normalized, and I'm afraid we're far too late to do anything about it.

yup, and this gives the ability to look up per-citizen location data.

sidebar: i've been trying to raise awareness about "joint communications and sensing" wherever i can lately; many companies involved in 6G standardization (esp. nokia) want the 6G network to use mmWave radio to create realtime 3d environment mappings, aka a "digital twin" of the physical world, aka a surveillance state's wet dream.

https://www.nokia.com/blog/building-a-network-with-a-sixth-s...

Not only rent, but in Spain there is a central database where your details are sucked in real time when you rent a room or a car, and no oversight how this data is used.

You can buy (and top up) a SIM card without an ID in the EU.