I heard a rumour about the need to give passport copy when you buy a prepaid sim number - is it true?
Two questions about it:
1. Do people realize that identity fraud will explode following this, as basically any 2-classes shop owner will have your documents and the posibility of opening paypal accounts on your name and identity, contracts and bank accounts or credits in your name and identity
2. Knives documentedly killed more than 1,000 poles every year. Simcards never killed a single polish person.
It's just a weird rumour I believe. Nobody ever asked me for any documents beside banknotes issued by the National Polish Bank. Go to any kiosk with newspapers and ask for a sim card - you will pay 5PLN plus any top-up. The documents are required when you enter a contract for telecommunications services - but there's no agreement for this, unless you want to register such sim card (which is not necessary).
This is something that is currently going through the Polish Parliament. From January 2017, it is likely that all prepaid phones will have to be registered with the phone service provider - i.e. you will have to tell them your number and give them your ID otherwise the service will be cut off. This is something that you have to watch out for. If you are not registered the phone (even though you have credits on) will be cut off.
I don't like it either. They say it is to prevent acts of terrorism, but in reality I believe that they want to listen to your calls (and know who is making them), so be careful what you say. With a pre-paid they have no idea who the person is, although they can trace the number to a location.
as always the govt has decided to pass a law first and worry about the real world repurcussions later. The idea was that you could do this registration in shops but the big retailers say they have no time to build the required computer system, get the required permits for handling data and don't want their lines at the till to get longer and slower. Meanwhile the small stores and kiosks who PiS claims to champion simply will not be able to afford the scanners and software needed.
That means that the only place to do this will be in the shops owned by the 4 operators - they have about 1000 stores between them - there are 20 million SIM cards to register so that means 20k people per store over a 6 month period, i.e. 200 people per day.
I think the govt will back down from the idea of turning off people's SIMs in February - imagine how many people it would annoy or inconvenience plujs there will be plenty of media friendly stories about people not able to make a call to their dying Grandma becasue her SIM was cut.
It's more likely that the dying Grandma will not be able to call her grandson, because while the grandson is probably oriented in technology and knows that he needs to register his SIM card to be able to continue using it, the grandma, for whom sending SMS is like black magic, will probably not know and not understand that she needs to register her card...
Anyway, it's creepy.
Will it not be possible to register the SIM card on the Internet, like it is possible in Germany?
kpc21 you are spot on... unfortunately exactly the elderly will be most hit by this, a lot of them will not know and will not be able to communicate anymore with their families :(
Everyone has skeletons in their cupboards. Of ALL conversations were listened to, then everyone 'playing away from home' would be shaking in their pants. That's why people will write and speak in 'codes'. 'The weather is nice' - means ...'same time, same place' whereas 'it's raining' means 'I can't get away today'.....
That is the most pathetic and low IQ argument I have ever heard:
"If you do not provide to everyone a copy after all your private details and private information, so they can steal freely your identity, then you.... "have something to hide"
uh oh fearmongering much?
For instance, did you know that it is a federal crime to be in possession of a lobster under a certain size? It doesn't matter if you bought it at a grocery store, if someone else gave it to you, if it's dead or alive, if you found it after it died of natural causes, or even if you killed it while acting in self defense. You can go to jail because of a lobster.
If the gov has access to every email you've ever written and every phone call you've ever made, it's almost certain that they could find many things which you've done which violates a provision in the 37,000 pages of legal statutes or the over 15,000 administrative regulations.
You all probably do have lots of things to hide, you just don't know it yet.
Well of course it is only for increasing Big brother type of surveillance of the new totalitarian regime in charge of PL.
That's exactly what it is, and since any terrorist would be more discreet and not at all worried by the rule, the only purpose is to snoop on citizens.
Have just read the article. From today anyone buying a SIM card has to provide ID, and the card has to be registered within 3 weeks of purchase. For the others, they have till 1st February 2017 to register their card. Otherwise the card will be cut off.
@Kasia 295 You are absolutely right and that is why from today my conversations will be very limited (i.e. emergencies only) and all texts will be in code.
So, without much talk, total control over population, what everyone talks, and exactly with whom, has been imposed.
Like in the communist times, or even worse - because in those times spying was much more difficult than with today's technology. In the past they had to find a suspect person first, now computers analyze everything.
