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Comment by sysadm1n | Hacker News Reader

It's actually tricky enough to setup an anonymous account on Facebook or Twitter. They essentially extort and harass you asking for a phone number, and if you don't provide it: no account for you. And for those crying 'Burner phone!'. Where I live you have to register your legal name and have it attached to the SIM card. And then there's the cellphone masts that record your phone's interactions and proximity, so it's a hard problem. Anonymity is hard.

As for encryption, does this mean we can't do online banking if it's outlawed?

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Encryption used to be outlawed (banned for export and controlled by government). Then it got ridiculous and they finally realised they couldn't control maths.

It still is controlled by the US government. I've spent the last 2 months integrating with a system that performs export checks on software to confirm we're allowed to send certain software from one country to another and we're not allowed to export to Iran, North Korea, etc.

> Where I live you have to register your legal name and have it attached to the SIM card.

This isn’t true everywhere, and phone numbers work internationally. I’ve got a Weibo account with a +1 US phone number and it works (surprisingly). The problem with the phone number system is that quite honestly, it’s only not anonymous in cities/states/countries that make it closely linked to identity.

And even then there are levels of gray - I registered on Facebook in 2007 with my real phone number. I changed providers soon after, and no longer have that number. But it's still the number Facebook have for me. I now (and many of my friends) have a pay-as-you-go SIM for anything (including parcel delivery) that want a number.

There are specialized sites where you can buy those codes sent to temporary phone numbers. Telegram is the hardest to get anonymously now because they require app installation on a smartphone. I suppose it could be hacked with an android emulator + normal sms code, but it's much harder in practice.

Facebook and Twitter aren't the whole internet, though. There's Reddit, say. Or HN. (For HN, you need an email account. OK, can you get an anonymous email account? Sure. Easy.)

> if it's outlawed?

It will be licensed. Banks will have a license. Companies will be able to apply for VPN to carry on (and required to monitor employees traffic)

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