News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Germany to ban anonymous SIM cards[German]. Parent comment

Re:Germany to ban anonymous SIM cards[German] by throwanem on Thursday April 21, 2016 @12:58PM (#11543600)
Centralization and slack are inversely proportional. If everybody is reliably and unambiguously identified from birth by a single government-issued and -maintained key, and that government turns against its citizens (or is overthrown, compromised, et cetera), you're basically hosed.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Germany to ban anonymous SIM cards[German] by jarman on Thursday April 21, 2016 @02:03PM (#11544118)
That data is already centralized and interlinked. There is no 'slack' (ambiguity and leeway) as far as government is concerned.

I am not arguing for using government-issued IDs for non-government services (as in original post), and consider enforcement of such use a direct attack on citizen freedom, but only for having single ID for use in state-person relations.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Germany to ban anonymous SIM cards[German] by creshal on Thursday April 21, 2016 @03:10PM (#11544599)
> That data is already centralized and interlinked.

Not in all countries. Germany used to have explicit laws against combining state and federal record bases, they were only recently eroded to "fight terrorism".

[ Parent | on HN ]