A bipartisan pair of Senate leaders have introduced a first-of-its-kind bill aimed at stopping terrorist suspects such as the would-be Times Square bomber from hiding their identities by using prepaid cellphones to plot their attacks.
The legislation sponsored by Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) would require buyers to present identification when purchasing a prepaid cellphone and require phone companies to keep the information on file, as they do with users of landline phones and subscription-based cellphones. The proposal would require the carriers to retain the data for 18 months after the phone's deactivation.
"This proposal is overdue because for years, terrorists, drug kingpins and gang members have stayed one step ahead of the law by using prepaid phones that are hard to trace," Schumer said.
Faisal Shahzad, the 30-year-old suspect in the Times Square plot, allegedly used a prepaid cellphone to arrange the purchase of a Nissan Pathfinder that he attempted to turn into a car bomb, the senators noted. He also used the phone to make a series of calls to Pakistan before the bomb attempt...
Full Article Washington Post, Ellen Nakashima, May 26, 2010
...and this from Wikipedia
Privacy rights and prepaid mobile phones
A concern of police and security agencies worldwide is that prepaid mobile services allow the user to be anonymous and therefore facilitate criminal or terrorist activities. Prepaid phone users can be anonymous for two reasons:
* the prepaid SIM card can be sold in a shop like any other goods. There is no need to register them at point of sale, unlike postpaid phones who have to credit check the user before allowing them to purchase and enter into a contract.
* Because prepaid services can often be topped up using cash and vouchers, there is no way to trace the payment and hence determine the identity of a prepaid phone user from payment records.
It has been suggested that the solution to this problem is to register the users of prepaid mobile phones. Such legislation faces heavy opposition from providers and consumers of prepaid service, as many consumers who desire privacy for legitimate purposes or simply by personal preference find anonymity to be the primary selling point of prepaid phones. Currently, according to a 2005 study[1] 9 of 24 surveyed OECD countries require prepaid mobile users to register. These countries are Australia, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Norway, Slovak Republic, South Africa and Switzerland.
While there is no doubt that criminals and terrorists use telecommunication services, to date there has been no public study that has clearly examined the link of non-registration of prepaid mobile phones to greater risk of criminal or terrorist activities. However, mandatory registration may be a breach of a prepaid user privacy, and currently the question various jurisdictions have decided on or are examining is whether this privacy breach is an appropriate action versus the threat that anonymous usage of prepaid services pose.
-Full Wiki
of course the real reason the government wants only grid cell phones...
Privacy
Cell phones have numerous privacy issues associated with them, and are regularly used by governments to perform surveillance.
Law enforcement and intelligence services in the UK and the US possess technology to remotely activate the microphones in cell phones in order to listen to conversations that take place nearby the person who holds the phone.
Mobile phones are also commonly used to collect location data. The geographical location of a mobile phone can be determined easily (whether it is being used or not), using a technique known multilateration to calculate the differences in time for a signal to travel from the cell phone to each of several cell towers near the owner of the phone.
-Full Wiki
I can't think of a better way to keep track of oh, say, 234 Million People (76% of 308 Million US POPULATION)- naaa,they wouldn't use it on them, would they?
-Full Story Feb 11, 2010, Jim Harper of Cato Institute
...the Obama administration has argued that Americans enjoy no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in their—or at least their cell phones’—whereabouts. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers say that “a customer’s Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records” that show where a mobile device placed and received calls.
I bet when Christian Republicans are elected they turn off the system for the innocent people, and only track and listen to the terrorists...
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