SIM registration for mass surveillance

This post is migrated from the old Wordpress blog. Some things may be broken.

Namibia mandatory SIM card registration “eases & enables” indiscriminate mass surveillance of mobile communications in the country. This isn’t rare, it happens in about 160+ countries, but The Namibian website points out how it represents a a concentration of power and is a fundamentally human rights violating measure.

Before eSIMS became trivial to use in most countries, I had to always mull whether I wanted to get a local mobile SIM when traveling to some countries, and some have a lot of information sweeping that’s involved in buying one that can include scanning your photo ID. This will concretely tie your identity to both your SIM and your device as soon as you’re using it there, and basically make you easily tracked in places where telecommunications providers and governments are pretty closely tied. I haven’t had to think about buying one in years, eSIM services like Holafly kind of solved it for many places if you’re just visiting and only need the data service. But citizens and residents don’t necessarily have that option, and it would be expensive over the long haul.

GSMA has commented on the lack of regulatory frameworks and privacy protections on this, but that’s about it. Privacy International has much more to say on it, but they would. What’s nice to see is locally focused news providers pointing these issues out.