I have recently read an opinion by some “journo” in a tabloid on how anonymous SIM cards should be sold no more (i.e., make them available only to those producing ID). I argue that the writing privileges of this person should be suspended.

Most of the time, freedom and liberties are some vague concepts whose full meaning is realized only when they disappear. Try working/living in Turkey or China for a while (regular life, not as a tourist) to get a better idea.

Romania is a rather free country, where freedom happened mostly by accident. Most people do not fully understand, nor do they think they need the many freedoms they got by accession to EU, so they are not going to care much when such freedoms are taken away.

In a recent article in Libertatea (the same tabloid that has been publishing most revelations in CaRimaru / combined by me with Butoi case) and a few new ones from the past (liro-tra16, liro-dra, liro-16min), Adriana Oprea, a self-described “journalist” provides a bunch of irrelevant info, such as the phone numbers that had contacted the victim families, claims that they were all such “anonymous” SIM cards, then claims that had the SIM card been sold with ID (bulletin) only, the police would have identified the perp right away and victim would have been saved.

Prepaid cards should only be sold with the bulletin. The right to life of some children is more important than the fear of some that they might be "listened to"

When I first read this, I thought this is the village idiot allowed to publish in the tabloid b/c she matches the IQ of the average Libertatea reader (not that Adevarul is better). But then I’ve read about this exceedingly dumb idea making it into a project of law by a PSD desperate to wash the bloodstains off their hands and create the illusion of “doing something”.

The fact that Adriana OpreaMintea lists so many phone numbers and details without making a logical connection between the events and her conclusion (i.e., non-sequitur) is frustrating, but even more frustrating is that the average “reader” might be confused by too many details and fail to understand that requiring ID for SIM-card purchases will not achieve the desired goals.

Here’s the top 3 reasons why this is a bad idea.

1. TOR – privacy may be a necessity for many people at some point in their lives. Yes, TOR is occasionally used by pedophiles, pirates, in the drug trade and criminals in general, but the many legal / good uses it has more than compensate for the illegal / bad uses (e.g., circumventing censorship, whistleblowing etc). Same with anonymous/prepaid SIM cards.
2. If you ban one way to access anonymity, it does not mean that criminals will start to identify themselves – they will simply find different ways to pursue their goals, in much the same way banning guns take them out of the hands of law-abiding citizens rather than criminals and does not eliminate crime.
3. Imposing a new layer of bureaucracy and data collection at retail level will only result in either corruption or price increases or both for the vast majority of buyers, i.e., the legit ones.

There are more reasons, but I’ve decided to limit this list to three.

Since the law will likely pass, don’t know which new pathway will criminals find for anonymous phone calls. I can think of a few alternatives.

1. public phone. There aren’t that many left, but there’s enough.
2. strangers. ask them to let you use their phone for a quick call.
3. second-hand market. There are people selling their phones with SIM cards everywhere, and apart from cash, they don’t keep anything else from the buyer.
4. google voice or similar. Free phone calls to North America from Hangouts Dialer, Google Voice or your Gmail account (this may vary as Google adds or subtracts features, but this has been available for many years now; my Google Voice number, +1-404-9BONOBO, is tied to my pseudonymous account – i.e., it doesn’t have my real name associated to it). There are similar free phone services everywhere, including Europe, such as Fongo (in Canada) and/or TextNow, TextFree with pseudonymous email registration; even Facebook Messenger is (or was) supposed to offer this but I never tried
5. a full-service VoIP provider which allows payment by BitCoin or other anonymous methods
6. uncensored jurisdictions. There are many countries in Europe and elsewhere that allow for anonymous SIM cards to be sold. Nothing prevents a criminal from buying several during a trip for use later, siphoning money out of the domestic market.

There’s so much more you can do with SIP VoIP. I’ve been offering this service to some clients for many years now and I can create accounts with fake Caller ID information (both name and number). Typically, the name can be set by the customer through the softphone; the phone number is a typically not set in the client app, but you can create several accounts (FOR FREE) with random Caller ID numbers (or not so random, corresponding to the numbers you have with other providers so that you receive callbacks elsewhere) and use them at will. With 3G, HSPA+ and other “Data” (i.e., mobile Internet) technologies SIP VoIP calls had difficulties, but with LTE, due to the significantly lower latency, the quality gap has been absorbed.

Now, I’m all for free speech and for idiots expressing themselves. But this particular dimwit is calling for a restriction of freedoms which will make something more expensive and more complicated with no discernible positive result. It thus makes perfect sense to save hapless readers from the Calvary of reading this abomination trying to pass herself as “journalist”. Maybe she’s a journalist’s journalist, in the same way Louis or Norm are comic’s comics – i.e., her articles can be fully appreciated by other journalists, in which case she could get a private blog, and inflict her ideas on her friends there.

Save reader’s suffering and prevent Adriana Oprea from causing any more mental anguish by making her articles anathema!

Sources / More info: liro-oprea, liro-tra16, liro-dra, liro-16min