Not all regulators agree on 'big brother' sim cards

[snoop1130]

Not all regulators agree on 'big brother' sim cards

By Sasiwan Mokkhasen, Staff Reporter

 

Visualization of what those behind plan might have envisioned. Original photo: Survivaladmin / Flickr

 

BANGKOK — Telecoms regulators disagree over a plan to mandate foreigners use SIM cards which can track their location, with one commissioner saying the plan has a long way to go and may end up dropping the tracking function.

 

Challenging assertions made last week about the plan, a member of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission’s board said the plan was unlikely to go forward as envisioned, most likely without the location-tracking of all foreigners promised.

 

Full Story: http://www.khaosodenglish.com/politics/2016/08/17/not-regulators-agree-big-brother-sim-cards/

 

-- Khaosod English 2016-08-17

[jcsmith]

If they implement this I'm going home. From this, to single gateway internet, to the bs draft charter, this country seems to be heading full steam in the wrong direction.

[z42]

If it was actually feasible then the mobile operators themselves would be drooling at the prospect of the (supposedly) 30 million extra customers they'd get each year. The fact not even they are getting behind this thing is that its simply unworkable, wholly unnecessary, and would have serious impacts on the ethical reputations of each of their respective companies.

It aint going to happen, and even if it does it'll get canned really quickly for the above reasons. They'll cut their losses for embarrassment's sake

[KhunBENQ]

Finally some brain.

 

Quote

commissioner Pravit Leestapornwongsa said the board sees flaws in the plan and has raised questions about its feasibility.

 

Quote

“I don’t know what Takorn talked about with the national security department,” Pravit said. “But I don’t think it is technically possible.”

 

It is simply embarrassing that this unfeasible nonsense is identified as such.

Even more embarrassing is that the head of national telecoms regulator came up with it. Reveal incompetence to the max.

 

Edited August 17, 2016 by KhunBENQ

[Brer Fox]

Big Brother military are not good at thinking through their the practicalities of their loopy ideas.

The military are better trained for yelling out "left, right, left,  right; halt."

Complex matters like what day is it can be far beyond their reach.

[petedk]

1 hour ago, jcsmith said:

If they implement this I'm going home. From this, to single gateway internet, to the bs draft charter, this country seems to be heading full steam in the wrong direction.

 

 

Go home to what? CCTV cameras following you everywhere you go?

 

I disagree with this tracking but it will never be implemented. It is far too difficult to administer. Imagine the queues at immigration as sims are handed out to tourists and then registered.

In Thailand over half of the CCTV cameras here don't work.

 

You are better off here as long as you don't do anything wrong.

[digibum]

1 hour ago, petedk said:

 

 

Go home to what? CCTV cameras following you everywhere you go?

 

I disagree with this tracking but it will never be implemented. It is far too difficult to administer. Imagine the queues at immigration as sims are handed out to tourists and then registered.

In Thailand over half of the CCTV cameras here don't work.

 

You are better off here as long as you don't do anything wrong.

 

I would disagree.  At least back home (wherever that may be for some) there is presumably the concept of the rule of law.  

 

Can you imagine what your chances would should the government claim that something you said or did online was damaging to Thailand?  Maybe you checked your phone and someone sent you a banned article or a Thai friend spammed you some anti-government video.  

 

At least with CCTV (which I'm not promoting, just noting the differences) they actually have to catch you committing a crime.  In Thailand, simply sharing an idea or expressing a thought can be construed as a crime.  And having a backdoor into your phone pretty much means that everything you say or do can be monitored.  

 

The danger in this foreigner SIM plan has always been the fact that if they could do what they were claiming it could do, they own your phone.  

 

Fortunately, much of what they wanted to do wasn't even technically feasible.  

[digibum]

2 hours ago, KhunBENQ said:

It is simply embarrassing that this unfeasible nonsense is identified as such.

Even more embarrassing is that the head of national telecoms regulator came up with it. Reveal incompetence to the max.

 

 

The scary part is that the main reason they're not doing it is because it's not feasible.  If it were feasible they would have reconciled the ethical issues they cite with just an order from someone higher up the food chain than them.  

[gk10002000]

It is feasible, the issue is money and profit.  Who will decide what SIM will work where and with what network?  What about billing and connection fees or charges?  I am sure the things would be programmed to chat to the home base now and then with detailed position and time or other things.  They are probably wrestling with how to divide up the pie

[ClutchClark]

6 hours ago, KhunBENQ said:

Finally some brain.

 

 

 

It is simply embarrassing that this unfeasible nonsense is identified as such.

Even more embarrassing is that the head of national telecoms regulator came up with it. Reveal incompetence to the max.

 

 

You deleted the remainder of the quote which described what part of the idea is unfeasable...specifically, the idea that a phone without GPS capability will not be able to provide the Lat/Long position through these SIMs. 

 

Your ommission of that portion of the quote effectively takes the statement out of context.

[PatOngo]

7 hours ago, petedk said:

 

 

Go home to what? CCTV cameras following you everywhere you go?

 

I disagree with this tracking but it will never be implemented. It is far too difficult to administer. Imagine the queues at immigration as sims are handed out to tourists and then registered.

In Thailand over half of the CCTV cameras here don't work.

 

You are better off here as long as you don't do anything wrong.

 

It's starting to feel that being a foreigner here is wrong!

[digibum]

5 hours ago, gk10002000 said:

It is feasible, the issue is money and profit.  Who will decide what SIM will work where and with what network?  What about billing and connection fees or charges?  I am sure the things would be programmed to chat to the home base now and then with detailed position and time or other things.  They are probably wrestling with how to divide up the pie

 

It's not feasible.  A phone without GPS can't send GPS coordinates.  The fact that someone in charge of the communications infrastructure of Thailand couldn't see the problem with that, speaks volumes.  

[gandalf12]

If by any remote chance it is implemented it will be a waste of time. No one is going to visit the country and be constantly tracked. If tourists wanted that they would go to North Korea. From what I remember NK is not high on tourists lists

Edited August 18, 2016 by gandalf12

[Pib]

Turning into a Big Brother is a slippery slope...implement little by little...pretty soon you arrive the See All, Know All.   

 

Hell, if they implemented this I would just go cancel my SIM, have it transferred to my Thai wife's name, and/or just get a new one under the Thai wife's name to avoid Big Brother potentially tracking me like some criminal (which I'm not...nor are 99% of other foreigners). 

[gandalf12]

29 minutes ago, digibum said:

 

It's not feasible.  A phone without GPS can't send GPS coordinates.  The fact that someone in charge of the communications infrastructure of Thailand couldn't see the problem with that, speaks volumes.  

From the mind of the same people who wasted hundreds of millions of Baht by adding an extra, not needed, digital to mobile numbers

[maoro2013]

Firstly they have already backed away from the plan for all foreigners to have these SIM's, it, in the last instalment, was just for 'tourists'.

 

The plan is doomed from the start, there is  no chance at all that this will have any meaningful use. Some tourists will be on global roaming with their home country provider anyway.

 

It would be good to hear what the benefit of this plan is to Thailand. I would think the cost of ensuring compliance would outweigh any benefits.

[mtls2005]

If it was actually feasible then the mobile operators themselves would be drooling

 

Clean up in aisle 4 (drool)

 

Not only is it totally simple, easy and feasible, AIS introduced SIM tracking over a year ago, as a business offer, mainly for staff/fleet tracking.

 

You can log in to a website and find a very precise location of any registered SIM. Totally simple, even the RTP could manage the app/interface? Of course it could be easily hacked and used for nefarious purposes, or just to round up political opponents (at least those that the ISOC are not currently surveilling).

 

AIS launches SIM only tracking solution

 

Thailand’s largest telco AIS has announced a partnership with W-Locate and Morpho for SIM-based tracking for corporate customers.

 

Morpho has licensed technology from W-Locate for its SIM which use an applet to collect network data and then send it via SMS or USSD to a server that will do the processing based on actual surveys to determine location. This does not require any GPS or indeed any phone intelligence as all the applet does is only collect cell data while all the calculation is done in the cloud.

 

http://www.telecomasia.net/content/ais-launches-sim-only-tracking-solution

 

 

 

Edited August 18, 2016 by mtls2005

[ClutchClark]

19 minutes ago, Pib said:

Turning into a Big Brother is a slippery slope...implement little by little...pretty soon you arrive the See All, Know All.   

 

Hell, if they implemented this I would just go cancel my SIM, have it transferred to my Thai wife's name, and/or just get a new one under the Thai wife's name to avoid Big Brother potentially tracking me like some criminal (which I'm not...nor are 99% of other foreigners). 

 

Good news. You can put your tinfoil back in the kitchen cupboard  ;-)

 

they never were planning to track you IF you were not a criminal. They never intended to track everybody every second of every day if that is what you were thinking.

 

They want the ability to track IF someone is a suspect of a crime or ongoing criminal enterprise. 

 

 

[hawker9000]

2 minutes ago, ClutchClark said:

 

Good news. You can put your tinfoil back in the kitchen cupboard  ;-)

 

they never were planning to track you IF you were not a criminal. They never intended to track everybody every second of every day if that is what you were thinking.

 

They want the ability to track IF someone is a suspect of a crime or ongoing criminal enterprise. 

 

 

 

Or maybe just an unlucky scapegoat who was in the wrong place at the wrong time...   Being able to read a user's texts or review the time & phone numbers of calls made or received is one thing.  That certainly doesn't require a "special SIM", just the cooperation of the cell service provider.  Triangulation based on cell tower connection is also already possible.  But being able to actually identify the perpetrator of a crime based on the position reported by a cellphone just sounds like fertile ground for extorting totally innocent people who happen to be somewhere near a crime scene at a perhaps indefinite time.  Or is this all just pretext for a cop to stop foreigners to search their phones for the required SIM, and perhaps collect a little more tea money?  The real answer, as we all very well know, is that there needs to be an end to the never-ending infernal negative whistle-blowing that keeps popping up on social media...  

[mtls2005]

Good news. You can put your tinfoil back in the kitchen cupboard  ;-)

 

Ah yes, the "you have nothing to fear if you have done nothing wrong" argument. That's never gone sideways.

[ClutchClark]

1 minute ago, mtls2005 said:

Good news. You can put your tinfoil back in the kitchen cupboard  ;-)

 

Ah yes, the "you have nothing to fear if you have done nothing wrong" argument. That's never gone sideways.

 

Why do you think they want to follow you?

 

And do you understsnd that they already can track your phone today at this very moment? 

[sharecropper]

It would be good to hear what the benefit of this plan is to Thailand. I would think the cost of ensuring compliance would outweigh any benefits.

 

The only benefits will be to those involved in skims and backhanders in the SIM supply contracts I suspect. Same as usual in Thailand.

[Kevin2012]

15 hours ago, petedk said:

 

I disagree with this tracking but it will never be implemented. It is far too difficult to administer. Imagine the queues at immigration as sims are handed out to tourists and then registered.

 

 

It is not just the queues and the tracking

 

Unless I am missing something, they are asking every tourist to take out their existing sim card (existing phone number) and replace it with a new sim with a different number???

 

So, 20 million tourists are going to be told that they are now out of touch with friends, family and work during their stay in Thailand?

 

Is that correct?.

 

...there will be riots on arrival if that is what they mean

[connda]

17 hours ago, jcsmith said:

If they implement this I'm going home. From this, to single gateway internet, to the bs draft charter, this country seems to be heading full steam in the wrong direction.

There are ways around all of these 'broad brush stroke' digital surveillance proposals.  At the moment they are 'proposals', and Thailand implements these proposals at the risk of incurring the criticism of allies and potential trading partners.  Thailand is not China.  If international trading partners boycott Thai goods and industries over 'privacy violations', the Thai economy couldn't absorb the sanctions. 
Don't be in a rush to leave over this nonsense.  If you can handle the Machiavellian immigration reporting requirement that Thailand foists on foreigners, tourists and long-stay expats alike, these 'proposals' are simply bumps in the same road.  

[connda]

Pravit said he only supports a special SIM card for tourists that would see their unused numbers return back to the pool of available numbers more quickly, and any balances on their cards steered into government coffers.

 

And cooler minds prevail perhaps.  Providing SIMs to 'tourists' in order to recycle available numbers make perfect sense to me.  This obviously morphed into, "Well, if we are giving them unique SIMs let's track them too, ummm, for their own 'safety' of course. 

Edited August 18, 2016 by connda

[louse1953]

So it will be exactly the same card,re-badged at 4X the price.

[ClutchClark]

7 hours ago, hawker9000 said:

 

Or maybe just an unlucky scapegoat who was in the wrong place at the wrong time...   Being able to read a user's texts or review the time & phone numbers of calls made or received is one thing.  That certainly doesn't require a "special SIM", just the cooperation of the cell service provider.  Triangulation based on cell tower connection is also already possible.  But being able to actually identify the perpetrator of a crime based on the position reported by a cellphone just sounds like fertile ground for extorting totally innocent people who happen to be somewhere near a crime scene at a perhaps indefinite time.  Or is this all just pretext for a cop to stop foreigners to search their phones for the required SIM, and perhaps collect a little more tea money?  The real answer, as we all very well know, is that there needs to be an end to the never-ending infernal negative whistle-blowing that keeps popping up on social media...  

 

I thought I read the various articles pretty thoroughly but I never read they are going to do what you describe and that is not even possible with this technology discussed. That would require continuous tracking and recording of all cell phones and that is not how this works.

[Pib]

The SIMs for foreigners will probably charge a Bt200 fee per minute or SMS if the Thai Bankers Association has an input.

[lust]

These idiots just say what's on their mind without any thought of repercussions. It's crazy.

[ClutchClark]

1 minute ago, lust said:

These idiots just say what's on their mind without any thought of repercussions. It's crazy.

 

No kidding.. It would be nice if these TV posters would atleast read the article before getting so freaked out.