Today I went to register my cellular phone numbers with RICA. At the CNA I produced bar code ID, Municipal Account and a typed sheet with all these details legibly printed out. Just to make life easier for everybody. Could I register? No. Why? You see, the Municipal Account is in my wife’s name, as she went to open the account. I have to produce another Municipal Account, in my own name. ?? Is this an attack on marriage as an institution or just a comment on our society?

As Virgin Mobile say on their website, we’ll have to find something else to do with those cell phones. Indeed an interesting thought. Is life at all possible without a cell phone? It used to be. Are the rumours true that cell phone use is linked to the increased incidence of brain cancer? Well maybe we should do without them. I’m sorely tempted.

Besides, if I want to I can take my laptop to a hotspot and communicate from there. WiFi anybody? Skype, Windows Messenger, Linkdln etc. Or some unsecured network, using Admin and Password.

I have lost 2 phones through theft, my daughter (9) 2, My wife 3, my father 4 (he was mugged for the phones in broad daylight on several occasions).
I used to drive a big tank of a BMW520i, the sort they use in cash-in transit heists. The idea amused me until I became the target of highjackers who wanted to use the car for that specific purpose.

The point is that if criminals want to use a cellular phone for some illegal purpose, they will rob some innocent person of his phone, use the phone for a crime and then discard or sell it. Now the victims will have to convince the authorities of their innocence. The fact that their number was used in a crime will be prima facie evidence to arrest and hold for trial an innocent person. Avoiding arrest and incarceration in the notoriously evil police holding cells will become a survival skill in South Africa, if it is not already. Many opinions are that whistleblowers will be easy to trace with RICA. So RICA will be revealed for what it is: an instrument of oppression in the hands of the government apparatus.

I would suggest a better solution than RICA. When a voice call is made in the commission of a crime, and a recording exists, the voice prints should match those of the perpetrator. I would rather have my voiceprint be used as a registration biometric. This could be as simple as setting up voice mail, something all cellular service providers are able to do with their existing infrastructure. I do not want my personal private data populating the databases of ten score spammers.

Identity theft is rife. Anybody can register a cellular number with a fake or stolen ID, and produce bogus account information prepared on a home computer. What next? Is the KGB going to do house calls to make sure you gave the correct address? In an update to the anarchists cookbook there will probably be a new chapter: Revenge using Rica. Register a phone sim card in the name of an enemy, and then use it in the commission of a crime. Stand and watch from a distance as RICA SWAT teams abseil from helicopters, break down the doors and windows, and drag the “perp” away, Judge Dredd style.