Comment by crotchfire | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crotchfire | Hacker News Reader

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in Germany at least every phone number is connected with a persons identity. To get a phone number you need to connect it to an identity using a identity card

Personally, I am totally baffled by this.

Due in large part to C3's positive influence, Germany is at the forefront of privacy issues and legislation on so many areas, except for this one, which ends up turning into a massive backdoor in the whole edifice. Okay, we can't ask for a copy of your identification card... we'll just use a telephone number or SIM code or something trivially tied back to your IMSI (like an app store account or IMEI) instead. Because of the absurd 2017 law, these are equivalent to your government ID card.

I really don't understand why Germans put up with this while simultaneously pushing so hard for positive changes in every other aspect of online privacy. Especially when so many other developed Western countries do not tie SIM cards to identities: Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, US, UK, Canada, and many many others.

It's like a giant `sudo gimme-your-identity` backdoor in all the other data collection protections. And nobody seems to care about closing the backdoor.

It wasn't always like this - the requirement to give your ID to get a SIM card, as you noted, was only introduced in 2017 (though it certainly feels way longer ago for me).

Anyways - why does nobody care?

Simple: most don't feel this being an issue.

Some may even say that they "don't have anything to hide" and there goes the erosion of privacy, bit by bit - by the time someone notices "ok, this may become a problem" - it'll be too late :(

Simple: most don't feel this being an issue.

Sure, but what's incredibly weird is that many Germans do feel that almost all other digital privacy matters are an issue. It baffles me that they treat this one particular issue differently for some reason.

I wonder if this is some kind of mass-psychology exploit, like it doesn't occur to your average nontechnical person that the ID requirement makes your Apple app store account, and every app you use it to install, equivalent to your government photo ID.

On the flip side, SMS fraud is almost nonexistent from German mobile numbers, which is why scammers just send from other countries to German mobile phone owners. Mostly from France.

SMS fraud is almost nonexistent from German mobile numbers

Even if this is true, how does that benefit Germans?

Nobody's seriously talking about blocking all SMSes at the national border.

> Due in large part to C3's positive influence, Germany is at the forefront of privacy issues and legislation

That's the entirely wrong cause and effect.

The obvious root cause are a world war and the DDR.

Yes yes, of course; there are root causes and proximal causes. You are correct about the root cause, which is the reason why Germans in general care about these things.

C3 is the catalyst that turned that caring into actual tangible results. Or at least a big part of the catalyst. Their level of political effectiveness is extremely unusual in the hacker world. I'm glad it has been a force for positive change.

That said, it has limits. And I have heard rumblings before about the telecom giants (DT) being an insurmountable political obstacle. So hacker culture has more political influence in Germany than elsewhere, as long as it doesn't upset the telecom giants.

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