Germany to need ID for shopping prepaid phones

“You could buy a prepaid phone currently in a name of Donald Duck,” Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière pronounced after a weekly cupboard meeting.

“Knowledge is power. And we wish to conflict militant organizations powerfully,” he went on in a press discussion fortifying a new anti-terror law that a order falls under.

Telecom companies will be compulsory to ask for ID – German ID card, unfamiliar pass or proxy ID papers released to migrants and refugees  – when business buy a prepaid SIM or phone.

Until now a law usually asked that those shopping pay-as-you-go phones give a name, residence and date of birth – that authorities contend is all simply falsified information if not checked.

More powers for investigators

As good as a new manners for telecoms, there will be new powers for Germany’s domestic comprehension service, a Office for a Protection of a Constitution (VS).

The law will sanction a VS to set adult common databases with “important unfamiliar comprehension agencies” – generally beside countries and EU or NATO allies – to lane apprehension suspects as they pierce opposite borders.

Information on apprehension suspects could shortly be issuing from German supervision servers to beside and associated countries. File photo: DPA

German comprehension services will also be compulsory to urge information pity among themselves.

“If general terrorists are networking among themselves, confidence authorities also have to couple adult improved than before,” de Maizière pronounced on Wednesday.