Cabinet is investigating monitoring of SMS traffic and ban on prepaid SIM cards
The Dutch cabinet is still investigating the possibility of banning anonymous prepaid SIM cards. It should also become possible for telecom providers to look at the content of text messages, Security.nl discovered.
The cabinet is started a consultation for changing the Telecommunications Act. It contains several proposals to protect Dutch citizens against spoofing, phishing and other forms of fraud, such as friend-in-distress fraud. The bill states that providers must, among other things, facilitate that a number can always be traced and can be linked more easily to a user. In addition, the legislator wants to look at various future measures to combat spoofing and crime.
One of those measures is a possible ban on anonymous prepaid SIM cards, discovered Security.nl. It would then become mandatory for buyers of such a SIM card to register, as they already have to do when taking out a subscription. The obligation to register in combination with a ban on extraterritorial use raises a relatively low threshold for malicious parties to carry out deceptive practices from abroad with such SIM cards, and improves the traceability of the users of these SIM cards. the Explanatory Memorandum. That measure is only a consideration: it is not yet in place the bill. The current Telecommunications Act already includes a possibility to set up an identification requirement via, for example, an Order in Council.
It is a striking turn for the Netherlands. The discussion about a ban on prepaid SIM cards has been going on for years, but it never got there. In 2017, the then Minister of Justice and Security Ard van der Steur commissioned a study into the added value of a ban. This showed that a registration obligation in countries where it applies has hardly any effect. The registration obligation can easily be circumvented. In 2019, Van der Steur’s successor Ferd Grapperhaus repeated that conclusion.
The Explanatory Memorandum to the law states: “Practice shows that anonymous SIM cards facilitate the commission of online fraud and can make tracing users more difficult.” That is why the cabinet wants to ‘look more closely at the effectiveness’ of a registration requirement.
The Explanatory Memorandum also discusses the possibility of obliging telecom providers to monitor the content of ‘message traffic’. That is not yet specified in the bill. The Memorandum states that “an analysis is being made of whether legal measures can be taken” that make it possible to monitor text messages. “Examples include enabling telecom providers to monitor the content of message traffic under certain conditions on a voluntary basis, and an obligation to offer a facility to end users to filter text messages,” the proposal says. “On the one hand, this affects the duty of care for telecom providers to protect their users against unwanted messages and, on the other hand, the fundamental right to secrecy of communication and the protection of personal data.”
The legislator recognizes that in that case a constitutional amendment is necessary, because the secrecy of communication must be adjusted. The GDPR and the e-Privacy Directive must also be complied with.