You know if the cell companies provided a 8-10 per month plan most of the prepaid usage that is legal would go away.
But they like their fees and taxes that aren't taxes too much to offer such plans.
I think balance is called for.
Yes, we need to be careful about giving up freedoms in the face of threats. But this is a war against a determined enemy, and until we put that enemy down, or eliminate them from our shores, a logical action is to deprive them of their weapons of choice.
That said, there may be other ways of regulating disposable phones. Maybe we encourage reengineering the phones so that they are not as useful to bombmaking. Maybe we network the phone towers so that we can turn disposables off at a moments notice to stop impending attacks.
Well, I hate to break it to you, but they're gonna do what they're gonna do, and the problem isn't cellphones, any more than the problem with "crimes of violence" is the availability of (*gasp*) guns!
Most normal cell phone owners already provide all these particulars and get credit checks b4 they are provided cell phones.
In fact the disposables were a relatively new concept.
We wouldn't be "reducing any freedoms" by doing that, since such "freedoms" don't even exist for most cell phone owners
If they don't have cellphones, they'll use FRS or GMRS or MURS or Ham radios. If they don't have radios, they'll use two dollar wristwatches.
The point about the phones is that the purchases make the perps stick out like sore thumbs. Take away the phones, and then they'll buy other "devices" for use as triggers.
You gonna demand a birth certificate, drivers license, and current passport for someone who wants to buy a $2 wristwatch? You want to track people buying wristwatches? LOL!
Why is it that the first "solution" everyone jumps to is to restrict the availabilty of "things"?
"Things" don't kill people. PEOPLE kill people.
What happens with "most normal cell phone owners" is irrelevant. If someone is going to have to run a check where they didn't previously run a check, then we are reducing freedoms and inconveniencing ourselves. While I have a regular cell phone, the idea of the disposables is nice. In an age where identity theft is a bigger and bigger problem, the idea of having my cell phone set up in a way that doesn't leave a paper trail appeals to me. If I choose to take advantage of that freedom, that freedom should be available to me regardless of what "most" people do.
Nonsense. That's exactly the kind of crap the new York Slimes has been selling by revealing all the secrets about our intelligence services tracking financial records and phone calls of the Al Quaeda vermin to Al Quaeda. We absolutely need to do that.Without those, we'd be having another 9/11 this very week. What's the use of "freedom" when you are blown up on a plane in the mid-Atlantic?
Nonsense yourself. Now you're just twisting my words to justify your own anti-freedom beliefs. I have nothing against tracking the terrorists bank accounts or the phone calls that we know that they've made. If the technicalities of the law allow the government to prosecute the press for revealing what the government is doing, I believe in full prosecution of those in the press who publish secrets.
Let me try to explain my position again, and maybe this time you'll understand it clearly. Have you ever heard of the saying that those who trade freedom for security will have neither? I think Ben Franklin made that statement, but sometimes these sayings are falsely attributed. I believe the exact saying may even say that those who would make that trade deserve neither freedom nor security. That's part of what's happening here. You are arguing that we give up freedom in order to have security. I'm saying that we lose that trade whether we live or die.
You are trying to present a scenario where our options are to lose freedoms or die in a plane crash over the Atlantic Ocean. Your very dismissal of the importance of freedom proves that this is your attitude. My point is that there is another and better path. That path is to kill the terrorists and to kill as many as we have to kill in order to make ourselves safe. That's how our ancestors secured the freedoms that we have today. If we aren't willing to do the same thing, we won't be leaving any freedoms for those who follow.
Bill