> there should be verifiable reverse lookup to a valid registered number

This has existed for a very, very long time; its just a business feature you have to pay a lot of extra money for and that is generally unavailable to consumers.

Business customers get access to DNIS and ANI.

DNIS is the number that was dialed to reach the business. It is used for call routing and marketing analytics.

ANI is the phone number from which the call was made. It’s used again for call routing and analytics, but also billing. It’s how they knew where to send the bill back in the days of 1-900 numbers. Because real money is involved, it’s a pretty good bet it’s usually tied to the real entity.

You, as a mere consumer, are left with caller id, which no business user cares about.

Business PBX folks really like being able to forward calls off to a cell phone while preserving the original caller's caller ID. And making that work requires allowing arbitrary spoofing. There is some work being done to append the stir/shaken signature from the original caller in a different sip header so the call can still be traced, but ultimately caller id is just too limited of a data framework to relay all the info.

Then the FCC have hid this well - they don't want this to stop spam they want it to link phone numbers to people.

If they wanted to stop spam they'd fix it so that carriers were required to ensure the numbers aren't spoofed. This would stop spam overnight.

"phone number?"

"i dont have a phone"

"emergency contact?"

"911, no one else is better suited to respond to an emergency?"

Personal anecdata: I get much more spam calls on a number from a country with mandatory ID sim card registration than on a number from a country where anonymous sim cards are allowed. Both numbers are almost 20 years old and I barely use them for anything but calls/sms to friends/relatives and receiving bank 2FA SMSes.

Probably a coincidence. I didn't get any spam calls either, until I did.

>until I was in the hospital last year

So much for HIPAA huh?

> You're going to get all of the drawbacks and none of the benefits.

In my 50 years of living this has always been the rule, not the exception whenever politics and technology collide.

In theory, it's also how it works in the US, but most store clerks don't pay attention to the regulations and let customers buy pre-paid SIMs with cash. There really isn't any punishment for it, which may explain the rule change.

yeah think tanks are notorious for pitching honest solutions to problems and not just pushing forward their specific agendas

what's your argument here? that what they posted is wrong? that this change isn't harmful?

They know through indirect means. So they buy all the cellphone data specifically the gps location data in the us and funnel it through huge servers. So they can determine patterns, addresses, etc.

This makes that easier and doesn't risk any of the legality if their should be illegal data sources or other likely illegal activities.

Tldr: This is a way to defeat vpns.

you trust the government to manage the data?

Yep. Google an offense contractor for the department of war is now going to require phone attestation to access the internet. This goes right in line with the actual desires here. Technofacism is going to hit fast. Especially seeing as how many people here and in other communities have their head in the sand.

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The creeping is advanced by the blue/red team mentality too. MAGA won't care about this because their guy is in charge. If he were not, there would be conspiracy theories about how this is all a plan to get Trump and his supporters. For now team blue complains until their guy is in charge, like how Biden insisted everyone needed to show vaccine papers to participate in society and they were silent. Few can see that the two teams are different sides of the same coin.

China has had the requirement to "bind" online accounts to ID for almost a decade. No one complained because they already verified with Weixin (WeChat) so they just linked their accounts to it.

It’s not strangely alarming, it is obviously alarming and for good reason.

Take this seriously and get prepared. It’s not a drill, and it’s not something that the next administration is going to roll back, whoever ends up winning. You can’t vote your way out of this.

In the future, privacy and tech sovereignty will be a strictly offline affair.

Correct. They knew the address. Someone had to live there to use it. The first time I needed to show id for phone service was for my first cell phone in 1999, and I thought it was odd to need it.

By that time I had had 5 different land line numbers, from moving around.

You didn't have to give them an ID because they knew exactly where the phone was going.

I had my first phone installed back when you had to walk down to the phone company office and sit at a desk and fill out a form. Then a week later, a guy showed up at your home and put the wires in.

When I had my second line installed, it was after the Bell breakup, but again they didn't ask for ID, but I had to give them a $50 deposit to be used against phone rental and per-minute service.

Signal's requirement for phone numbers has allowed it to surge in popularity by allowing it to take advantage of people's already established contacts. They do this in a privacy respecting way[1].

Simultaneously, Signal is trying to raise the cost of accounts by requiring phone numbers. Although spammers can get mass amounts of phone numbers, it will at least raise the cost. Email 0 cents, phone # 10 cents–there will be less spammers with phone #s.

I don't think we'd have to worry about the spam if people only used usernames instead of phone numbers, because it would be massively harder for spammers to find your account and message you. But, with usernames, you don't get the contact discovery that allows for growth.

[1] https://signal.org:8443/blog/private-contact-discovery/

The Bill of Rights was published over 200 years ago. It can't possibly anticipate the modern privacy landscape. We need to (and do) extrapolate from the intent of the Bill of Rights to cover modern technology. Protecting phone and internet traffic is an example of this, but no longer sufficient. The US is becoming a panopticon. The Fourth Amendment protection against wiretapping is insufficient when the government also collects so much metadata. If we cede every form of privacy not explicitly protected by the Bill of Rights, we will soon find that on their own they provide barely any privacy at all.

Hahaha who am I kidding, that ship has sailed. It's a lost cause.

> Privacy has to be one goal among many in a reasonable society.

I have to say, coming from "Lonestar1440" that implies quite the rebrand for Texas:

Texas: Just One Star Among Fifty Equals.

Edit: clarifications

Okay, but you're telling me kids that don't have a government ID can't have phones now, right?

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My state has laws specifically about this which help DV victims replace stolen wallets, birth certificates, IDs, and so on.

Whether we like it or not, ID is required to function in society these days. The public has, in general, decided they don't like the alternatives, and I would count myself among those who would prefer to have working phone service again without endless junk calls versus the hypothetical ability to go get a phone without ID.