Spain cuts off 3 million prepaid cards (with €25m credit)
 

I might have mentioned this before on here, but this stupid government directive has finally kicked in yesterday! It's supposedly aimed at trying to cut down on bombs being triggered by unregistered prepaid mobiles. Of course, there is nothing stopping them using an unregistered foreign SIM that is roaming here though!

If members here happen to have a Spanish Prepaid card that has been cut-off, you have 6 months grace in order to register your SIM in your name!

If you can read Spanish there are more details on:
Los clientes de móvil prepago tendrán seis meses más para identificarse · ELPAÍS.com

Also an Article in English at: Spain cuts off 3m pre-pay mobiles ? The Register

The Swiss did this a few years back, after they discovered some SIMs being used by terrorists. Apparently Swisscom cut off about 10% of its prepaid customers when they missed the deadline to register.

Security theatre. Designed to give the impression that Big Brother is busy combatting terrorism and make the natives less restless ;)

You don't need such effort: there could be dealers who register sim cards to shady people using identity cards of common customers...as sometimes happens in Italy, where we have had registered prepaid cars for many years. :nono:

This is one of many examples of "Security Theatre" in Spain, that was implemented after the train bombings! One of my pet peeves are the security checks whilst getting onto long distance trains, though these are such a rushed affair (nothing remotely close to airports), they just couldn't possibly pick up anything! These just needlessly push up the price of rail travel! Besides, the only trains that were bombed here were regional and local trains, that still remain unchecked!

A similar situation exists in the US, where they make you take off your shoes, to check for possible bombs. Meanwhile everywhere else, including Canada, you don't have to do it unless your shoes set off the metal detectors. So any would-be shoe bombers simply has to fly into the US from somewhere else.

That's not entirely correct, at least not in Canada. Passengers on US bound flights can still be required to remove their footwear.

CBC News - Canada - Air travellers can now keep their shoes on

About a year ago, the UK government floated a trial balloon claiming they would be required all sim cards be registered.....it was almost laughed out of existance by people claiming the usual British overkill on the issue of civil liberties......the fact is that until all sim cards are registered because of international roaming and that day is far far off, it's very silly to waste time to do this but then again a lot of things being done in the name of security are silly. Somebody brought up the shoes...at US security points they make you take off your shoes. We still have the restriction on drinks through security. And on all flights to the USA, the airlines are required to do random checks at the game (not trusting the foreign airports)...it always annoys me to get on a US bound flight at Heathrow and go through this idiocy (and yet there are people who will swear up and down they don't mind this, you know better to be safe than sorry).....and let's not go into the fingerprinting and the photographing at the US border.

But at least the US, at least at this writing, does not mandate registration of prepaid sims; at least not to the best of my knowledge. (of course, many US carriers do not use gsm and hence there are no sims).

It's still possible to buy (for example) a 7-11 Speakout (phone + sim), where available, for cash - so not only is the sim not registered, there's no way to track the phone. A recent fraud case in NY alleged the people involved had a desk drawer full of "burners" - untraceable prepaids.

In Mexico the plan is to require registration and fingerprints for all prepaid users by next April. I'm not aware there is any system in place to gather the fingerprints yet.

It's all a fake felling of security.

The metal detectors you have to go through detect metal but not any plastic explosive you might carry in your pocket. 500 gram of plastic explosive can do the job.

But wait people just to be tricked in thinking that they are safe. I always compare this with isreal. The is police of other security on every corner of the street, people are carefull and yes sometimes they catch a suicide bomber before he can explode. That said it they wanted they can have a suicide attack every day with succes. There is no such thing as total secirty and rules like you have to register for a sim just give a false idea of security.

It might just be that the government wants to have control and is just using terrorim as an excuus.