Friday 17 August 2012

STatewatch News Online: ECHR pre-paid mobile phones

STatewatch News Online: ECHR pre-paid mobile phones: "The European Commission criticised anonymity bans in 2011 as follows: "No evidence has been provided as to the effectiveness of those national measures. Potential limitations have been highlighted, for example, in cases of identity theft or where a SIM card is purchased by a third party or a user roams with a card purchased in a third country."[1] The Council of Europe warned that such measures "may not only threaten the privacy of subscribers and users in general, they may also inhibit their freedom of communication since they diminish the degree of anonymity which subscribers and users may wish to avail of when using the telephone by obliging them to reveal their identities".[2]
"Two thirds of all EU Member States prosecute crime successfully without a blanket ban on anonymity", comments complainant Jonas Breyer. "As prepaid cards can be passed on or bought anonymously abroad, criminal investigators generally find identification data to be useless. The Court should scrap those ineffective anonymity bans and re-establish our right to anonymous communications and anonymous speech."" 'via Blog this'