Why aren't disposable 'burner' cellphones illegal?

Factual Questions
1

Anyone who’s learned anything about the FCC knows that its ‘prime directive’ if you will, is that wireless transmitters must always identify themselves. If you run a pirate radio station, even if you don’t swear or broadcast racist hate speech, you will still be in serious trouble and face big fines simply by not being licensed and identifiable.

TV and radio stations still to this day ‘pause for station identification…’. Even in the 70s during the heyday of the CB radio you were supposed to send in for a license from the FCC. They didn’t prosecute many for not doing it, but that’s because CB radios were a very short-lived fad and never came close to mainstream use.

How is it then that you can purchase a no-name, no-account, untraceable, cash-only global communication device that both transmits & receives without having to show any credible ID? I realize there’s a huge market for them, but why can’t the FCC issue a blanket regulation making the sale & use of burner phones a serious crime?

2

The phone still identifies itself - it has an IMEI number and whatever other carrier requirements need to be met.

The reason is that it could be difficult for poor people to obtain phones if they have identification or residency requirements, which makes it hard for them to function since cell phones are especially valuable to people who might not have a regular home or a land line.

3

There’s seems to be an underlying assumption in your post that disposable phones are causing a major problem for our society that requires a solution. Presumably they are favored by certain criminals, but what’s the evidence for the nature and scale of the problem?

4

They could…but why should they? Historical precedent for wild ass identification regulations isn’t a reason to continue such practice. Also see Senor Beef’s comments.

5

they are transmitting ID when turned on. It’s only after you dispose of it that it’s not. Try not to leave any fingerprints, photos, or messages on it after you chuck it, because they are traceable back to you.

6

There is some misconception about the nature of the phone.

As noted above, all mobile phones have an IMEI number. Further, the SIM carries a number, as well as being linked to the actual phone number the device can be contacted as. These numbers are needed for the phone to actually work. There is no mechanism for a mobile phone without unique identification to actually operate.

What the complaint is is not a matter for the FCC, or equivalent. (Indeed, even these cheap ‘disposable’ phones will carry appropriate FCC certification.) What is missing is the requirement that the SIM (not the phone) only be purchased with adequate identification to tie the mobile phone number to a person. I don’t know what the legislation is in the US, but here in Oz it has been impossible to buy even a prepaid SIM without a similar level of identification to that required to open a bank account. Before that, it was indeed quite possible to buy a SIM card with a new phone number for cash, and walk out of the store with an anonymous and difficult to trace phone number. Perfect for criminals and making harassing phone calls - in theory. However even then the phone still transmits its IMEI number as part of the cellular protocols, so although the phone number is hard to track, the image of a criminal with a wallet full of SIM cards swapping them in and out of his phone to try to avoid making traceable phone calls was technically flawed.

The problem isn’t the phone. The phone only works with a SIM, and that is what defines the phone number, carrier, and payment. If a carrier will sell you a contract (even if it is only a simple pre-paid SIM, it is still a contract) without any identification, that is where the issue lies. The availability of dirt cheap phones isn’t a problem.

7

Any phone service that is month to month is this way. They don’t have to be cheap phones. After my first phone, which was a contract-type, I vowed, “never again”. I use Page Plus, there are dozens if not hundreds of others. Just buy a phone, or show up with one, pay the $29.00 and you are good for a month. The provider doesn’t know who you are. The guy in the store doesn’t know you. If you don’t pay next month the phone shuts off. Just buy a $29 card and call in the PIN.

Dennis

8

I find this to be an odd GQ question. Could there be a factual answer to this?

I think your concern is that criminals may use burner phones, but it must be the case that the vast, vast majority of people who use them are not criminals. I say this because there are many, many burner phones available in many, many retailers, and there just aren’t that many criminals and terrorists around.

My son broke his phone on the day before he was supposed to go on a bus trip solo. I didn’t really want him to go without a phone, so I bought him a cheap burner phone, $20, including the phone, the charger, and some number of minutes and texts, and sent him on his way.

We had an exchange student here for a couple of weeks whose phone didn’t work in the US (or would have been very expensive), so I added some minutes to the phone I got for my son for her to use in case of emergencies.

If I had little money, these phones would be great – they are very inexpensive, and I could use them when people need to reach me (job interviews, whatever). Then, if it gets lost or stolen, it’s cheap to replace.

So, I guess the GQ answer is that they are very useful, very cheap, and only a small fraction is used by criminals and terrorists.

I would put a similar question back to you: Why is cash still legal? It’s even more anonymous, and is routinely used by otherwise law-abiding people to evade taxes, leaving aside drug and terrorist criminal uses. Why is TOR allowed? Its sole purpose is to provide anonymity.

9

Go back 20-30 years. Payphones were everywhere & all I needed was a few coins to make a completely anonymous phone call. How is a burner phone that much different?

10

Not all phones use SIMs. You can go into almost any Dollar General or WalMart and buy a cheap TracFone and an airtime card with cash. Unless there’s someone in the store that knows you it’s completely anonymous.

11

Sort of. All those phones do have SIMs. However TracFone sell phones where the SIM is permanently embedded in the phone. It may well not exist as a separate module at all and simply be soldered in as a naked chip. The GSM/LTE etc protocols all require SIM functionality. For the purposes of the OP these phones still have IMIE and SIM identification numbers, and these numbers uniquely identify the phone - and tie it back to a phone number. The problem remains as it was - the lack of legislative requirement that the store/carrier not sell you a phone without providing identification. It isn’t a problem with the phone.

Worth noting that a SIM need not be an actual physical device. Apple are making lots of noise about being allowed to implement the SIM functionality in software, and thus allowing phones to trivially manage multiple SIM capability, and remove the need for a SIM slot. However there are good arguments to not go down this road, as the physical SIM is responsible for some of the encryption used, and keeping that hidden inside the SIM is part of the security structure.

12

I wish Apple would stop obsessing about making their phones thinner, then we could have multiple sim slots and better battery life. The iPhone six is already too thin thanks, it would feel more solid and less fragile if it was about 2-3 mm thicker.

But yeah in Australia and every country in asia I’ve been to, ID is required to get a sim card.

13

I believe that here in the US, some cell phone networks are CDMA (Sprint and Verizon), so for a non-data phone (which I got my son), I don’t think it would have a SIM card, permanently installed or not. That doesn’t change your larger point that all phone are, of course, uniquely identifiable, otherwise the phone company wouldn’t know which device to route to or charge minutes to.

No ID necessary to buy a cheap month-to-month phone in the US.

The eye opener for me was how cheap they are. I remember watching spy movies and thinking, man, throwing away all of those cell phones would get expensive. The reality is, US$20 or $30 can get you the phone, charger, and minutes. Crazy!

14

My mum - well into her eighties - broke the screen on her ancient Nokia (one of my old ones - farewell my trusty 3310 - you survived many things but not getting run over by an electric wheelchair) a couple of weeks ago. I got her a new one at the local supermarket. £30 with £10 worth of call and data credit out of the box, and it’s actually a proper smartphone running android. I mean, it’s not great, but £30 for essentially a universal communicator device?

15

In Thailand you must present an ID card or passport to buy or activate a phone SIM. I believe this became the law after phones were used as bomb detonators by Islamic insurgents in the South.

16

The logic of “Some criminals use X to do bad things so we need to ban X.” is fraught with problems. If there are many people who do legitimate things with X, then such bans are infringing with those people’s rights.

Note that the famous Betamax decision of years ago followed the reasoning that since there were legitimate uses of VCRs, then they are legal. That they could be used for infringement in some cases was something the studios had to live with. (The studios in turn made billions selling tapes!)

In more repressive states than the US, people can still get SIMs and such for the purpose of bombs simply by stealing them. It’s not like they need to buy them in bulk. So the effectiveness of such laws for that purpose is virtually nil. Presumably, as we’ve seen often, the laws are passed with “Oh noes, terrorists!” as the cover for other purposes.

17

As pointed out, these are not made to be “burner phones” – they* can be USED *as “burner phones” if you want but what they really are are cheap pay-as-you-go units that are accessible to people who may not be able to get contract service due to bad credit, transient status (which may be entirely legitimate), intermittent income and such.

Plus it’s not just criminals who need to use nontraced phones and deal in cash, sometimes the good guys ALSO want that.

Or if not ban, make enough of a PITA that you have constructively forced people to stop doing/using it. There’s got to be a solidly evidenced justification.

18

The above post is similar to (certainly to me, at least) pointing out that P2P file-sharing is used perfectly legally and efficiently for other-than-“sharing” (stealing) stuff.

19

CDMA phones are just as traceable–they have an “MEID” that is hardware specific to the device (or an ESN on older CDMA phones), this is roughly equivalent to the IMEI found on GSM phones.

A lot of manufacturers also no longer make “CDMA” or “GSM” phones, many of the more popular phones come out of the park with capabilities on both networks. So while a Verizon iPhone 6 probably doesn’t have a sim card seated in it (since it doesn’t need one, since CDMA networks don’t use SIM), if you switched to ATT you could go into an Apple store and they’d put a SIM in your phone and it’d now work on ATT’s GSM network.

20

I’m not implying that most people who use disposable cells are criminals or terrorists. But to use the VCR analogy, the decision that finally decided that home recording constituted fair use went all the way to the Supreme Court. The RIAA was actually successful in getting file sharing sites like Napster shut down. I don’t understand why the FCC seems to have never shown much concern for non-identifiable wireless transmitters in the form of burner cellphones. They certainly take cellphone-jamming equipment very seriously, to the point that even places where they would be obviously useful, schools, prisons etc., are still not allowed to use them.