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Mexico will cut off mobiles to fight drug war
MILLIONS OF MEXICANS will have their mobile phones cut off this weekend as the government takes action to disconnect unregistered phones.
If Mexico's government goes through with a new law on Saturday up to 30 million mobile phones not registered with an identity could be disconnected. The law is intended to fight organised crime, which is obviously a big problem in Mexico.
This is obviously something that wouldn't happen in the UK, you'd think, but when you realise that many of us are already registered through mobile phone contracts and we are tracked in so many other ways, the government wouldn't really need to enact anything anyway.
In Mexico and other countries cash is all you need to get a mobile phone. As there are a lot of unregistered phones about, the idea is that if they are registered with the identity of an owner it will cut down on things like kidnapping for ransom and drug related violence that are facilitated by anonymous phones.
Of course many phones still haven't been registered, with laziness and privacy concerns being named as big reasons why so many people haven't registered their phones.
Sure, you'd think criminals probably won't want to register. But then again the simple way for the drug cartels to get around this will be to steal somebody's phone and get them in trouble. µ
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The issue is there aren't the politicians with big enough balls to do this and too many people who spend their time reading the Daily Mail and other associated "news"papers scaremongering about drugs.
Mephedrone is a prime example. The number of deaths actually related to the drug are 1 or 2 (at last count) as oppose to the numbers the "news"papers have been reporting. I think we will see more deaths from illegal and impure mephedrone than we will do from the pure product before it.
Legalise drugs, tax drugs, remove the criminal element and make enough money to pay for top quality rehabillitation. It seems like a no brainer.
Making this that and whatever illegal is a futile and expensive exercise.
Malcom I salute you.
It is rare to read such an intelligent insightful commment.
Cheers!
It's good to know there are some sane people out there!
Most mobile users are Pay As You Go... what a silly comment
What happens if you happen to roam there with your foreign cash only pay as you go?
This would prove only a minor inconvenience to the drug cartels. Since many of them use satelite phones, anyway.
;P
Having unregistered or clone sim cards and imei numbers is a very bad idea and should be stopped asap. Most terrorists , drug dealers, criminals, illegal immigrants benefit from this loophone. It will make the world a much safer and better place if these anti social elements cannot exploit the mobile networksto their advantage. AS mobile companies get lot of their revenue from these calls , they are reluctant to block them
The only good drug dealer is a dead drug dealer.
sounds to me that someone from the country to the north is slow trying to erode the sense of privacy and freedom mexican people have enjoyed ever since their revolutions.
keep fighting the good fight.
In the united states you can buy unregistered phones from several vendors. I personally use TracPhone which is owned by a Mexican telecom company.
You can buy the phone and start it with no identification if you pay cash, and then you buy these reload cards for cash, and there is no way to trace you. The best deals for TracPhone are had online though, and once you enter your credit card number to pay on line they got you.
Prohibition is a sickening horror and the ocean of incompetence, corruption and human wreckage it has left in its wake is almost endless.
Prohibition has decimated generations and criminalized millions for a behavior which is entwined in human existence, and for what other purpose than to uphold the defunct and corrupt thinking of a minority of misguided, self-righteous Neo-Puritans and degenerate demagogues who wish nothing but unadulterated destruction on the rest of us.
Based on the unalterable proviso that drug use is essentially an unstoppable and ongoing human behavior which has been with us since the dawn of time, any serious reading on the subject of past attempts at any form of drug prohibition would point most normal thinking people in the direction of sensible regulation.
By its very nature, prohibition cannot fail but create a vast increase in criminal activity, and rather than preventing society from descending into anarchy, it actually fosters an anarchic business model - the international Drug Trade. Any decisions concerning quality, quantity, distribution and availability are then left in the hands of unregulated, anonymous, ruthless drug dealers, who are interested only in the huge profits involved.
Many of us have now, finally, wised up to the fact that the best avenue towards realistically dealing with drug use and addiction is through proper regulation which is what we already do with alcohol & tobacco, clearly two of our most dangerous mood altering substances. But for those of you whose ignorant and irrational minds traverse a fantasy plane of existence, you will no doubt remain sorely upset with any type of solution that does not seem to lead to the absurd and unattainable utopia of a drug free society.
There is an irrefutable connection between drug prohibition and the crime, corruption, disease and death it causes. If you are not capable of understanding this connection then maybe you're using something far stronger than the rest of us. Anybody 'halfway bright', and who's not psychologically challenged, should be capable of understanding that it is not simply the demand for drugs that creates the mayhem, it is our refusal to allow legal businesses to meet that demand.
No amount of money, police powers, weaponry, diminution of rights and liberties, wishful thinking or pseudo-science will make our streets safer, only an end to prohibition can do that. How much longer are you willing to foolishly risk your own survival by continuing to ignore the obvious, historically confirmed solution?
If you still support the kool aid mass suicide cult of prohibition, and erroneously believe that you can win a war without logic and practical solutions, then prepare yourself for even more death, corruption, terrorism, sickness, imprisonment, unemployment, foreclosed homes, and the complete loss of the rule of law and the Bill of Rights.
"A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."
Abraham Lincoln
The only thing prohibition successfully does is prohibit regulation & taxation while turning even our schools and prisons into black markets for drugs. Regulation would mean the opposite!
Instead of fighting efficiently against corruption, illegal traffic of weapons, money laundry, etc. compulsory registering of cell phones are believed to be a magic solution. As the author wisely said some people here in Mexico are afraid of losing phones or be taken by drug dealers. Of course, you have the right to cancel your number in case a phone is lost/stolen, time is an issue. Congress men and senators -same party most of them- discussed until the last minute to extend term, possibly to be seen as redeemers of poor people who have not registered yet.
When last seen, O2 makes provision of personal contact info a condition of use of their SIM. I don't know if that applies to all the others - but when I got an O2 pay-as-you-go phone, several years ago, its advertised initial credit was to be granted in exchange for contact info PLUS consenting to its use for promotional use by anyone whatever. That wasn't advertised; I didn't take the "free" credit.