GoKawiilThe Federal Communications Commission is poised to begin forcing the country’s telecom companies to collect names, addresses and government identification numbers for every cellphone customer.
If adopted -- a likely outcome given the FCC’s current Republican majority who support it -- the rules would effectively outlaw burner phones, devices that aren't specifically tied to identifying data, allowing the privacy-minded to maintain their anonymity.
The proposal is called “Know-Your-Customer Requirements,” and the FCC is framing it as a way to stop robocalls and scammers. Anyone with a phone can tell you the problem is very real: US consumers receive an average of 10 unwanted calls every week, a number that’s grown at a compounded 16% rate every year since 2023.
But privacy experts say the FCC’s solution doesn’t address the core problem. Instead, it punishes those who use burner phones, including journalists, travelers, whistleblowers and domestic abuse survivors.
“Collecting all this data is horrible for everyone’s privacy,” says Chao Jun Liu, a senior legislative associate at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit defending digital privacy. “You have to ask, do you trust the government to have that information at this current moment in time? A government that has proven that they are trying to centralize and weaponize your information.”
Who will be left disconnected?
While burner phones or devices are often associated with criminal activity, they’re also used by a wide variety of privacy-conscious people who don’t want to be tracked. The FCC’s proposed rules would effectively ban their use altogether and require “new and renewing” customers to provide identifying information.
“For decades, civil libertarians have looked overseas at authoritarian countries where the government requires people to register to get a mobile phone to ensure they can be tracked. We never thought that would happen here,” Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union, told CNET in an email.
The impact won’t just be felt by the digital privacy community, either. By requiring a government-issued identification number, the Know-Your-Customer requirements could leave millions of Americans unable to get a phone at all. As of 2024, nearly 21 million voting-age US citizens don’t have a current driver’s license, with Black and Hispanic Americans disproportionately less likely to have one, according to a report from the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement. Another 12 million people living in the US are estimated to be undocumented immigrants.
“What this rulemaking would do, if implemented as is, is disconnect people, especially the folks who are already the most marginalized,” says Liu.
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