The burner phone could soon be a thing of the past in the US. The FCC has proposed forcing every telecom to collect and store a "government issued identification number" and physical address from "any new and renewing customer before granting access to its services," 404 Media reports. The stated goal is to fight scammers and robocalls. The effect, critics say, is a national phone registry.
The ACLU's Jay Stanley told 404 Media that civil libertarians spent decades looking at authoritarian countries that require phone registration and "never thought that would happen here." The EFF's Cooper Quintin said scammers "will have no trouble creating fake documentation," while "they want to take away our ability to make an anonymous phone call."
The proposal hits domestic violence survivors, journalists, and low-income people hardest.
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