On 3/26/16, Ray Dillinger wrote:

On 03/26/2016 07:24 AM, Henry Baker wrote:

...

It'll be interesting to see how this bill is received.

IMHO the vast majority of these phones -- at least here in California -- are used by undocumented residents, who have no papers, no driver's licenses, no bank accounts, and operate 100% on cash.

I'm also in California but the main use I see is at halfway houses and womens' shelters. There are a lot of scared battered women out there who can't disentangle exes from their financial crap fast enough to establish independent phone service without them, and a lot of shelters that go through them like tissues.

It's a pretty big deal for them because there are *LOTS* of violent loons who are trying to find those places, and everyone who winds up there is completely inexperienced in the art of Not Being Seen. Lots of chances for one person's mistake to become everybody's problem, and phones are like the "ablative surface" that can be gotten rid of for mutual protection when someone makes a mistake.

I see their IT manager at Urban Ore, buying a basket full of old used phones, almost every time I'm over there.

You would be surprised how many *men* have to deal with crazy battering women and need to seek refuge in shelters and safe supportive halfway houses for men. Either way, all such people who are innocent enjoy the right for the government and commerce not to impede upon their right to privacy, including shielding their innocent selves from warrantless govt and commercial tracking and datakeeping. Stop giving away your rights and taking those of other innocents. For it is not the criminal they are after, but control over you.