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Submission + - FCC Wants to Kill Burner Phones By Forcing Telecoms to Get All Customers' IDs (404media.co)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wants to make it effectively impossible for people to buy what many call burner phones — a phone not explicitly linked to your identity at the point of purchase — which would impact privacy-conscious people, to domestic abuse survivors, to journalists, and many more. The FCC plans to do this by legally forcing the country’s telecoms to store a wealth of personal information about essentially all phone customers, including a government issued identification number and their physical address, alarming privacy advocates and civil rights activists who compare the measures to those from authoritarian countries where it can be difficult to buy a mobile phone plan without giving up your identity.

The proposed change would drastically shake up how people obtain phone plans in the U.S., and have all sorts of privacy and cybersecurity knock-on effects. The FCC is proposing the data collection partly as a way to combat scammers, with telecoms being required to collect other information on business and foreign customers like the intended use case of their bulk phone plan purchase and their IP address. But the changes would mean telecoms collect data on all new and renewing customers, and the FCC provides a long list of other things that the collected data could help authorities with.

In a synopsis of the proposed changes, the FCC writes, “Specifically, we seek comment on requiring originating providers to, at a minimum, obtain and retain the name, physical address, government issued identification number, and an alternate telephone number of any new and renewing customer before granting access to its services.” The goal of collecting this data, the FCC writes, is to deter some scammers from getting onto a telecom network in the first place, and so “enforcers will be better able to identify the scammers when they do.” The FCC compares the changes to the sort of data collected by banks to prevent money laundering.

One section stresses that the newly collected data would help “law enforcement to more easily identify callers that use the network to perpetuate crimes by ensuring that voice providers have accurate and complete customer information.” It goes on to ask if the data would help identify people buying and selling illicit goods; the investigation of “fraud, espionage, or influence operations that undermine national security”, and “address abuse in text messaging networks.” “Criminals continue to leverage the anonymity provided by phone calls and texts to defraud Americans and exploit communications networks to further other crimes,” one section reads.

Submission + - Billions in Drug Discounts. Where Did the Money Go? (substack.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Hospitals get billions in federally discounted drugs, and aren't required to pass a penny to patients.

The Trump Administration is trying to fix with a rebate model that creates a paper trail proving the savings actually reach the poor.

The hospital lobby sued to stop it. Transparency shouldn't stop reform it should drive it.

Comment Re: Global projections (Score 1) 70

Why not open a book of tide data and do the math if it interest you? You won't find any pictures that show a side by side in a way that can't be questioned. Because one can always argue that two photos decades apart aren't showing the same thing. Different time of year, wrong tide cycle, erosion, etc. I think chasing a denier around with a flimsy visualization is not really worth anyone's time.

Comment Republicants (Score 1) 101

gigawatts is typically pronounced with a voiced velar plosive, but also famous for an alternate pronunciation starting with the voiced postalveolar affricate. But with no difference in meaning. The alternative spelling (jigawatt) is rare and discouraged by most style guides, if not explicitly forbidden.

Comment Re:A human Algorithm? (Score 2) 188

Why when apps and social media are nearly as addictive and can be manufactured much more cheaply? I'm thinking smartphones for fetuses is the next big thing. Maybe have an LLM telling infants bedtime stories, perhaps continuously in one ear 24 hours a day. Capturing customers before they exit the womb is the kind of marketing research the industry craves.

Comment Re: Why AI ? (Score 2) 188

Blind obedience not been the US military's doctrine for a very long time (if ever). While following orders is important, the emphasis has been on comprehending the objectives and following lawful orders. Why? One reason is that a FRAGPLAN is concise and would require enough context to correctly execute according to the intent, especially if it was split from a larger operations order. To do this, you need a military with people who can think, and have absorbed the military culture, and not mindless idiots.

That said, Kegsbreath is working hard to undo our professional military and turn them into an obedient invasion force to strike fear into our opponents. Compliance, honor, and reputation are completely unimportant to the current administration.

(Note: I'm not in the armed forced. I'm a civilian that has an interest in the structures that my tax dollars pay for. I'm not pretending to have ever served.)

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