Deja vu… cell phones

I’m STILL in the process of moving.    My phone line (and computer connections) won’t be in until next week, so am going back and forth between the old and new place, which means posting will still be irregular for a few days.  But speaking of phones, I ran across TWO of my old, unregistered cell phones, which reminded me that Mexico is sometimes still a trend-setter in Latin America, for good or ill.

Julio Rank Wright in Americas Quarterly:

… there´s been an unforeseen consequence of cell phone penetration in El Salvador and presumably other developing nations: the use of cell phones to commit criminal acts, specifically extortions.

El Salvador’s security and defense authorities claim that 85 percent of extortions are committed using cell phones from penitentiaries across the nation. Given the fact that access to a cell phone number is easy through pay-as-you-go schemes, phones can be used within jails for any range of criminal purposes, including extortion.

In response, the Attorney General is calling for a legal reform that would allow for verification of the location of the owners of some 300,000 cell phone lines and request pre-registration with personal information. Those that don’t register will have their line blocked permanently. This solution is used in many countries including South Africa and most recently Mexico.

There was a lot of whining here about registering phones. The ONE I did use (and could find two-thirds of the time) was registered easily enough… but, with the number of unregistered phones still something like 15 to 20 percent, TelCel got a court injunction to hold off on cutting service to unregistered phones… most of which, I suspect, are probably lost, stolen or strayed anyway.