China has wealth of data on what individuals are doing at a micro level

Re:China has wealth of data on what individuals are doing at... by mschuster91 on Thursday January 12, 2017 @02:21AM (#13380433)

> 1. The DB wants to see id (that they can verify) for Eurorail passes. The DB or the Belgian rail people require seeing the purchasing CC.

Who except students uses Eurorail passes anyway, these days?

2. Buying a sim in europe requires a passport.

No; in Austria and Germany you can (at least at the moment) still buy SIM cards without providing an ID. Germany requires online activation but no one verifies if the address or the name is real.

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Re:China has wealth of data on what individuals are doing at... by rconti on Thursday January 12, 2017 @02:45AM (#13380538)

I did not have to go online to activate my O2 SIM but I did provide a hotel address at purchase time. Of course it did not match any identity documents I had on me.

Some activation step happened when I inserted the SIM but it didn't involve using a computer.

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