(keitai-l) Re: JPhone introduces Prepay

From: Benjamin Kowarsch <benjk_at_mac.com>
Date: 10/31/01
Message-Id: <61DA2DBC-CDA6-11D5-8859-003065501888@mac.com>
On Wednesday, October 31, 2001, at 08:30 , cfb wrote:

> Benjamin Kowarsch wrote:
>> The only problem with that is that in practise you "need" an alien
>> registration card (gaikokujin tourokusho) in order to get a prepaid
>> phone in Japan. With the help of Japanese hosts and a lot of hassle 
>> some
>> people I know have been able to get one with a passport only, but that
>> appears to be the exception.
>
> This is incorrect.... I have been able to buy several pre-pay for
> friends with little more than a Japanese issued international
> driver's license... and it was expired at the time!

And how many tourists happen to have a Japanese issued international 
drivers license ?

>  You might find
> keitai shops that are more anal than others... or you might find
> that most keitai shops are driven by new sales and couldn't
> give a rats ass about the "rules".

Their rules actually say that they are to ask for a Japanese issued foto 
ID, which your driver's license would have been - even though they're 
probably supposed to check validity, too.

In most cases I have witnessed, the decision was made back at the mobile 
phone company, not by the shop keeper. However, it is the clerk in the 
shop who will usually say no and you have to go past that hurdle to get 
them to at least try and wait what the guys at the mobile operator have 
to say.

>   Beware capitalism and freedom
> at work...

I would love to see that.

>> You only have to watch Japanese news when another kidnapping or remote
>> fraud case makes headlines. The use of a prepaid mobile by criminals is
>> *always* heavily emphasised, which probably has further contributed 
>> to a
>> bad public image of prepaid and it makes you wonder if you are being
>> sized up as a potential criminal when you ask for a prepaid phone and
>> the clerk doesn't really seem to like the idea of selling one to a
>> gaijin.
>
> In every part of the world, the powers that be *hate* pre-pays.
> To that degree, pre-pays are the tool of the freedom loving,
> privacy protecting, rebel patriot everywhere.
>
> The police NZ are trying to get their very liberal pre-pay access
> policies changed.  The strawman used by the NZ police is bomb
> threats.   As it is, I you can walk into a Dick Smiths or Harvey
> Norman and pickup a pre-pay with cash over the counter.  No
> registration... just slip in the SIM and start dialing.  Use SMS and
> the man can't even use voice recognition to track you (of course
> it's almost impossible to have your bomb threats taken seriously
> when SMSed).

What most people don't realise is that it is technically far easier to 
track a prepaid mobile in real-time than it is to track a postpaid one. 
The prepaid mobile is charged in real-time on a real-time processor 
outside of the switching centre and it is therefore possible to obtain 
data about the phone (inclusive its whereabouts) in real-time.

I have yet to see a mobile phone company that would be able to find a 
CDR (call detail record) of a postpaid phone in under 1 day. No matter 
how important the project and whether the CEO personally stands behind 
pushing for it, it is always quite an experience to see how they 
struggle getting that data out.

When we do call scenarios for planning purposes, we always reserve at 
least two weeks for getting data about test calls we made and that is 
already very ambitious. Often, a roaming postpaid phone would be even 
more elusive as many operators rely on the foreign operator to send the 
data back and that can take up to a full billing cycle.

With prepaid, you can watch that data live on screen while you make that 
test call. Part of that data is the cell site ID and the signal 
strength. In a city centre this would pinpoint you within a few hundred 
yards.

A criminal who would like to make detection as hard as possible would 
get a postpaid phone with false papers (like they usually do when 
picking up a rental car) in a different country and carefully *avoid* 
using prepaid altogether.


> Australia requires that you register your phone initially, using either
> your passport, national id or driver's license number.

This of course assumes that you cannot track the phone in real-time 
while the crime is being committed  and therefore need the registered 
data to track the individual who was presumably using the phone long 
after the crime has been committed.

Another case of procedure-in-place foolishly adopted to prepaid, where 
adaptation would have been better than adoption. Oh, well ...

>   Of course,
> there's no cross checking of the database entries for validity, so
> a made up passport number will keep your phone working
> indefinitely (or maybe the man is just silently tracking the potential
> rebels... use a passport number gleaned from a goole search if
> you're really paranoid).
>
> At any rate, you can always pickup a working, registered pre-pay
> on the second hand market in *any* country... that's what's
> wonderful about capitalism and freedom... they're unstoppable
> no matter how brain dead the government they flurish under.

I am fully on your wavelength ;-)

regards
benjamin


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Received on Wed Oct 31 04:28:13 2001