SIM '100-point checks' get police thumbs up

The NSW Police Commissioner, Ken Moroney, has called for security checks on buying a SIM card to be as tight as those around opening a bank account.

Moroney said that SIM card purchases should be subject to the same 100-point check as bank accounts, where applicants are required to produce identification such as a passport or a birth certificate, in order to help the police trace any criminal activity later associated with the mobile number.

The idea was first proposed at the a meeting of the joint committee on the Australian Crime Commission into the impact of serious organised crime last month, where Moroney told the committee he believes the 100-point check would aid policing.

"It seems that their acquisition, purchase and distribution [is] so [easy] and could be equally as regulated in terms of providing an appropriate means of identification, in terms of the acquisition," Moroney told the ABC, adding that criminal gangs can change their SIM cards several times a day.

In last month's committee hearing, Elizabeth Foulger, Manager, Intelligence, at the Queensland Crime and Misconduct Commission said that SIMs are regularly registered by users in false names as some SIM card sellers do not require identification to activate an account. Foulger added some such resellers have links to organised crime rings.

While the committee is likely to back the introduction of the 100-point check when it reports later this year, such security measures will only prevent accounts being registered in false names: the committee has already acknowledged that there is currently no way to prevent organised crime from carrying out identity theft to generate mobile accounts with the help of corrupt SIM resellers.

"There are also a number of significant organised crime people with links to the providers of mobile phones, so they are able to get phones using legitimate details. Someone else has connected a phone through that provider, so the organised crime figure is able to come in and use exactly the same details to connect a phone and then continue to use that phone for their purposes. Then it is very hard to track down the actual user of a service."