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UK Government to Shut Down GSM Networks

Posted by Zonk on Sat Apr 01, 2006 07:50 AM
from the worrisome-most-worrisome dept.
Government Privacy Politics
An anonymous reader writes "Mobile Gazette is reporting that the British government wants to shut down the UK's GSM networks next year and re-use the frequencies for gambling terminals and a new citizen surveillance program extending the use of the new compulsory ID cards. Although we should perhaps welcome the move away from old-style 2G mobile phone networks, there are perhaps a few worrying things about the new "Big Brother" citizen monitoring that the government is proposing to put in."
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UK Government to Shut Down GSM Networks 25 Comments More /

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  • This has to be another april fools joke.....

  • I know this is Truthday, and Big Brother tells me the Prollies will love this doubleplusalot.

  • Ouch (Score:5, Insightful)

    by taskforce (866056) on Saturday April 01 2006, @07:58AM (#15041162) Homepage
    The worrying thing is, I didn't bat an eyelid, and totally expected this from my government, until I got to the comments reminding me that it was April Fools Day... (Despite a full knowledege that it was April Fools Day, when I saw the words UK and Government in the same sentance I entered paranoia mode)
    • Shutting down the GSM networks would pretty much kill every mobile phone out there - so that shoulda been a dead giveaway to.

      Well, that and the fact that the ID cards aren't cumpulsory - yet ;)

      [note to self, spellhink mistaxe]
      • well maybe 15% are 3G. That's not far off the 25% or so of TVs which were digital prior to the announcement that the analogue signal would be switched off - which has now reached 70% or more...
      • For me the eyes-burning pink-colored css-styled atrocity that is today's main page was kind of a giveaway.

        After games.slashdot.org, nothing would surprise me.
  • They'll never beat the ol' Spaghetti Tree Hoax of '57...

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/a pril/1/newsid_2819000/2819261.stm [bbc.co.uk]

    Apparently the supermarkets sold out for fear of a shortage.

  • Wouldn't surprise me... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dyftm (880762) on Saturday April 01 2006, @08:46AM (#15041270)
    It wouldn't surprise me if I saw this story in a couple of years time, but not on april fool's day. We really are the lobsters slowly being boiled.
  • This is just like that famous book, Fahrenheit 1987 by Joel Chandler Harris [wikipedia.org].

    I love it when governments get ideas from my favorite Sci Fi! But I think a lot of other people on slashdot really like that book, so I'm sure I'm not the only one who can't wait for this to become a reality!

    Ok, gotta run, my gf is calling me back to bed...

    --
    Happy AF /.

  • no joke (Score:3, Insightful)

    by fermion (181285) on Saturday April 01 2006, @10:25AM (#15041493) Homepage Journal
    Especially the gambling thing. We seem to be increasingly turning to sin taxes, not as a means to make it more expinsive to 'sin', but as a means to facilitate the behavior that many find unethical. The fact that many high and mighty alleged christian condone this behavior remind me of a person who got angry at the moneychangers in the temple.

    One example of this is the Texas State lottery, which exist under the guise of increasing funding to education. Of course funding for education, as a percentage of the Texas budget, has fallen considerable over the past 15 years even as lottery revenue has grown. So what is the new proposal? Well a official named Strayhorn want gambling machines. Now this is the lady that attempted to start the process of a state religion for Texas by attempting to rescind the tax exempt status of a church, the denomination of which has existed from the birth of the United States and in many ways reflects the values of our founding fathers, as many of these men had input in it's creation. Combine this with the fact that the demonination has no profit motive, unlike the megachurches that infest Texas, and one wonders if Strayhorn is primarily concerned with well being of the average Texan or the a personal campaign of religious zelotry in which those that disagree with her liberal view of gambling are ignored.

    To be clear I am not concerned if people gamble or not. I do not see how we can justify lottery machines in an time when we no longer have cig machines. How can one say that we can enforce the 18+ limit on tickets any more that cigs? I am not sure that having gambling machines in every corner is a net benifit. Like illegal drugs it take money to feed the habit. But, at the end of the day, in a capatilist conservative country like ours, built on a the standards of minimal government and private enterprise, I suppose the government is in the best position to effecintly run a gambling bussiness.

    • Funny, I don't remember anything too obvious or lame on 4th of January this year.

      • Me neither, grandparent poster? What are you on about?
        • Of course not! India has always been using the dd/mm/yyyy format, and 4/1 means 4th of January.

          It is true that in China, 4/1 means 1th of April, but that's because they use the yyyy-mm-dd format, which is a logical order (most significant–least significant), unlike your American mm-dd-yyyy order which makes no sense.

          The ISO standard [iso.org] (ISO 8601 [cam.ac.uk]) is to use yyyy-mm-dd (as you see in dates on Slashdot and all websites that actually realise it's the World Wide Web).

          To prevent ambiguity, it is best
    • yep. I think I'll go back to bed until tomorrow.
    • It's you... because as far as I know, it's not the 4th of January in the UK.
    • >its gone 12 noon and as such april fools day jokes are *redundant* (owing to the custom of stopping at noon)

      I do not think this word means what you think it means.
    • firstly, we do not have an American flag as a representation of our government (that's only for a section of North America)

      I would not be so sure. At least until the country is governed by a government lead by Antonio Bliar.

    • The only reason not to believe it is because our government would never be able to roll it out so quickly, otherwise given the authoratarian and stupid nature of "New" Labour it hits quite close to the mark. Infact some official probably read that and thought "what a good idea".
    • If you're going to make up an April Fools hoax at least make it remotely plausible. Only a total muppet could believe this story.

      You obviously don't live in the UK. It's a bit of a stretch, but not that much less believable than doing away with parliament next and have ministers pass laws personally.

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