Anonymity for burner phones coming to an end

After more than a decade of back-and-forth, parliament appears ready to finally bring to the plenum a bill obliging users of burner phones to identify themselves.

Marinos Mousiouttas, chair of the House transport committee, said on Thursday that the bill would go the plenum for a vote soon.

He recalled that the discussion about pre-paid phone cards dates back to 2009.

On several occasions previous bills almost made it to the House floor, only to be withdrawn at the last moment.

The current proposal provides that the buyer of a pre-paid phone card must provide some personal identifying information before the card is activated.

This, Mousiouttas said, would help reduce spam calling but most importantly crime.

Fighting crime is the primary reason given for making it compulsory of burner phones to register their name.

In previous discussions, main opposition Akel had voiced reservations, saying the step would lead to a police state and a ‘Big Brother’ who would monitor every move.

It would also lead to a loss of revenue for mobile telephony providers as many people and tourists would not bother to register.

The issue came to the fore after the office of a company belonging to the chairman of the Cyprus Football Association Costas Koutsokoumnis was bombed in November 2009.

According to Koutsokoumnis, he had received a threatening call the day before but he did not report it to police as they had been unable to do anything about it on previous occasions.

Police, who want the law changed to oblige users to supply their identities, said it was impossible to track down perpetrators under the circumstances.

Mobile telephony providers raised objections in the past citing loss of business.