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Prosecutors Push For Anti-Phone-Theft Kill Switches
New submitter EdPbllips writes "Law enforcement officials nationwide are demanding the creation of a 'kill switch' that would render smartphones inoperable after they are stolen, New York's top prosecutor said Thursday in a clear warning to the world's smartphone manufacturers. Citing statistics showing that 1 in 3 robberies nationwide involve the theft of a mobile phone, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced the formation of a coalition of law enforcement agencies devoted to stamping out what he called an 'epidemic' of smartphone robberies. 'All too often, these robberies turn violent,' said Schneiderman, who was joined at a news conference by San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon. 'There are assaults. There are murders.'"
Apple described a system like this in their presentation about iOS 7 at WWDC.
I'm sure that with everything we've learned recently regarding the Government and phones, there's no way this could -possibly- be abused!
The IRS/etc. would NEVER use this to disable someone's communications ability because they were doing something the government didn't like. No sirree. Not ever. Pure as the driven snow, this design is.
It's like people can't think past the next episode of their favorite TV show.
I don't know why, but I have the idea that I'm going to accidentally turn that switch on.
Something similar has been available for YEARS- all you need do is ask the phone company to invalidate the IMEI number.and/or activate the memory wipe software built into Android, iOS, and Windows phones.
Has Symbian and Blackberry been left out of this feature? I would have thought consumer demand for it would have produced it on those platforms as well long ago.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
At what level does this kill the phone? Some value in the NAND that prevents it from booting? Blocking at the provider level? I'm not sure there's any way to "disable the phone so its worthless". You can disable it so it has to be taken apart for scrap, but it will still be worth something. Even if the NAND has to be replaced. Even if the main CPU has to be replaced. I think they're attacking the wrong problem.
you will take their phone regardless of whether it is any good to you. Why? because it can be used to call the police as soon as you leave.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
The problem is that the lack of a kill-switch gives incentive to steal a nice phone, no matter what it takes.
The response is to make the stolen phone remote-brickable, even after a factory-clean wipe.
The counter-response is to make sure the theft of the phone is never reported. And dead men tell no tales.
Of course, this means that the trackable live phone is in the hands of a murderer or an accessory-after-the-fact, so law enforcement has both incentive and means to pursue justice... so it's self-correcting, except for the whole "original victim is dead" part.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
I'd rather use an app that I control myself than put a universal "kill switch" on phones... People should be actively seeking out ways to prevent theft of their cell phones, such as the plethora of apps available on several platforms. I mean, if you had 600 dollars in your pocket, you'd take precautions to avoid it getting stolen, wouldn't you? It's not the police responsibility to track down your personal property using federal tax dollars to do so when there are cheap or free solutions for protecting your data and helping track the thief.
Let them mandate it... then you can do the following:
1) Steal Phone
2) Remove SIM card / power down phone / Airplane mode the bitch.
3) Root
4) Change IMEI number that the device reports to a valid one.
5) Profit.
Who's going to inform all of the would-be muggers that the world of cell phones suddenly changed? Bad muggers! Stop mugging! That'll show em! They know they can still sell the phones for parts and make more money than they would just selling a phone. It's not going to deter them from stealing the phone. Besides, JTAG and such will continue to render inoperable phones operable, not to mention that it may be possible to bypass the kill function if you get into the phone fast enough.
Look at Egypt and Turkey and wherever else. This is an excellent way for a government to say "No more smartphone for you, protestor!" Even if they don't use it in the USA, who WILL use it? The hardware will be built to allow it, so the next nation to have unrest will simply broadcast the kill bits en masse, and the protestors will be censored. Sounds quite delicious from a dictatorship's standpoint.
The cool part will be the GPS location of the stolen phone... even if the user tries to wipe it... Even if jailbroken, if a call is made with a stolen phone, it should be easy to tell its stolen. This should lead to craigslist postings where it says, iPod Touch for sale, do not attach to iTunes, do not update the firmware, and do not attempt to use the phone.
1. install app that secretly activates radio pulses when phone receives an innocuous text message
2. install companion app on tablet that will exactly track the location of the phone by these pulses
3. hire a couple of goons or get some big friends to break the fingers of the guy who has your phone and take it back
I AM wary of the whole kill switch idea being used by someone else, but maybe thats a little paranoia. Its not like they couldn't deactivate your service if they didn't want you to use the phone, they wouldn't have to kill it.
If theft of phones become unprofitable, criminals will switch to other crimes!
If this page can swell up with well thought out objections within the matter of minutes, something tells me preventing thefts is not the real motivation for something like this...
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
In the course of a strong arm robbery it is important to get away. That means taking the victim's phone whether or not it is smart.
All your database are belong to U.S.
Without a clear ESN, nobody can activate a phone anyway. So the owner would just mark the phone as not having a clear ESN manually or simply don't pay their bills and tada, it's useless. At least CDMA works that way. The vastly inferior GSM system is a theft waiting to happen.
By the way, what's going to stop people from stealing the screen glass, screen, and battery from a smartphone and ebaying it? Do they have a killswitch for that?
If 1 in 3 robberies involve stealing a tracking device that can lead police back to the culprit, shouldn't that be making the job of police much easier?
Instead of a "kill-switch", shouldn't law enforcement be asking for a tracking beacon that can be turned on to help track down all of these stolen phones? (I know Apple's kill-switch does enable GPS tracking, but that doesn't seem to be what the Attorney General is asking for). It's not like criminals are going to say "Oh geeze, I can't sell a stolen cell phone anymore, guess I should finish up my degree and get a real job" -- They are still going to be committing crimes, but will steal cash and expensive purses instead of cell phones.
It's my understanding that phones have a limited life outside your hands -- thief doesn't get the charger, you report the phone stolen and the SIM card is deactivated, boom. Done. And if you're smart you already had a lock on your phone and/or encryption, so it's not like they're going to get your personal info either. Why do we need a way to remotely deactivate cell phones?
Nuke the phone after it's been stolen? really? really really?
They are the best tracking devices out there and you want to disable it. The guy with the phone is a known thief, you can now track him/her/hir without problem.
The police are lazy, they really don't want to arrest anyone. They'd rather sit round at dunkin donuts eating egg and bacon donuts.
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Is that how now is called an enforced remote backdoor? What ensures you that it won't be used to i.e. track everyone, where they are, what they use, what they write or how licensed is the media they are playing? Will be outlawed (or at least, not offered by the companies) the "non-approved" phones because of this?
Probably "think on the children" and "or the terrorist will win" were too used this week, and they had to invent something else. But i would had waited a few weeks so the massive awareness on how they are tracking us deflates a bit before proposing such kind of things.
carriers and handset manufacturers have absolutely no incentive to make this happen. a market for phone theft insurance exists already, and the ability to disable a stolen phone would arguably reduce the number of phones providers could vend to a specific customer. District attorneys enjoy taking up cause celebre things like 'phone kill switches' because its an election year for most of these guys. rampant theft of the most coveted cellphones is a side effect of the philosophy of futility. That the very idea one might lose their bugati, prada, or iPhone is not only understood, but actively encouraged by advertisers subconsciously as a selling point of the product. exclusivity, social inequality, and elitism are all parts of the culture of conspicuous consumption we've all agreed are acceptable, nay, even ancicipated.
the effective solution is to keep expensive personal electronics secured on your person or away from view in questionable or dangerous areas and situations, or simply stop keeping up with the joneses and start buying something practical and affordable.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The companies get new sales and the government gets a stealthed system to quickly kill organized protests and evidence of police brutality with the push of a button. Win-Win!
in addition to the 'kill switch' every phone should come with a hand gun to protect the user from robbers!
...why not just issue a CCW with every smartphone purchased, under the condition that the purchaser passes the required training and background checks?
If thieves knew that smartphone owners might be armed and dangerous, they just might stop thieving.
Why would the phone need special support? Every phone has a burned-in IMEI. So the subscriber registers the IMEI to their subscriber ID (IMSI) when they activate their phone. It can even be automated: when a SIM's issued to a subscriber, the first time it's put in a phone the carrier associates that phone's IMEI with the IMSI. Then, when the subscriber reports his phone stolen, the carrier publishes the IMEI to a database. All carriers check that database, and when an IMEI that appears in the database tries to connect to their network they reject it. The phone can still be used stand-alone, but how useful is a cel phone that can't connect to a network? And of course since the carrier now knows at least the cel tower the phone's connecting to if not the actual GPS coordinates, it's easy for them to forward the location to the local police and if there's a unit in the vicinity not doing anything more important they just got an easy bust. And maybe a big one, if the cel phone was being used by criminals because it was stolen and not directly traceable back to them. If the phone sent GPS coordinates you've got air-tight probabl cause: you know the phone's been reported stolen, you know it's at this location, that means that whoever's got it has to be at least receiving stolen property and that should more than satisfy any judge as probable cause to search the place. No phone support for any of this needed, it's all carrier-side and can't be bypassed short of disabling the radio in the phone so it can't connect to a carrier's network (which kind of defeats the purpose of stealing a cel phone in the first place).
Riot starts, demonstration starts, somebody says "Kill the phones." The providers will love it. They'll just slap a "reactivation fee" on everybody, even innocent bystanders, whose phones got zapped.
If a violent criminal knows that you can totally disable the phone, what's stopping him from killing you to prevent that from happening?
Some years ago I attempted to pay for some goods in a store in Helsinki with my credit card.
The stores cash register refused and the next thing I knew I was in the back of a police van on the way to the police station.
Turns out the cash register alerted that my card was stolen.
It took me some time to convince them who I was (Even though I had my passport in my pocket) and that the card was mine and that their was sufficient funds available to cover the purchase.
How much more easy to kill my phone by accident?
No thanks.
There has been a recent uptick in sales of Faraday Bags...all cash sales, of course.
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
I just can't imagine how this could possibly go wrong for all those apple lovers.
This might be the killer feature that will transition OSX to iOS, so those computer users can also benefit from this marvelous technology.
It's just a matter of time before the government will be replacing Social Security numbers with Apple IDs and retirement benefits will move over to iTunes gift cards.
The realization of Corporate America is almost here.
"Law enforcement officials nationwide are demanding the creation of a 'kill switch' that would render automobiles inoperable after they are stolen, New York's top prosecutor said Thursday in a clear warning to the world's automotive manufacturers. Citing statistics showing that 1 in 3 robberies nationwide involve the theft of an automobile, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced the formation of a coalition of law enforcement agencies devoted to stamping out what he called an 'epidemic' of car robberies. 'All too often, these robberies turn violent,' said Schneiderman, who was joined at a news conference by San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon. 'There are assaults. There are murders.'"
When there is so much work that needs to be done. Short term solutions abound that can be selected by those who do not care but are in a place guiding others to act. Why would someone have so much free time that waiting for another to victumize is considered a best choice? Why is stealing a phone punishable, but robo-filing to forclose a home not?
Wait, your Android and iOS based phones don't do this? Mine does. Thank god for Blackberry. The Z10 is awesome!
Why not kill the robber?
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
As long as Apple names the killswitch mechanism "Laputan Machine."
What about a national registry of stolen phones which would be refused access to the cell network. Don't destroy the phone remotely, just refuse to establish a connection.
When someone hacks Onstar (tm) and bricks a few thousand cars on a long weekend, perhaps some folks will get a clue. OTOH, some folks would approve of a govt kill switch in their computer. Evolution never sleeps.
Dumbasses need to realize there is solutions out there already. One of them I use, it's called Lookout!
A phone that is being used one-handed is a really easy target for someone to grab on the run...much easier than trying to get someone's wallet or purse.
two-thirds of robberies involve cash.
we should outlaw physical currency.
While it's an interesting idea, many phones can be used in multiple countries so you're talking a global database of valid IMEI numbers. Good luck getting that organized.
Also, a workable kill-switch would make it totally useless. If all we do is block cell connectivity it's still essentially an ipod or equivalent, so not entirely without value.
A lot of small crime often leads to big crime.
Get a warrant to search the grounds of somebody who's stolen an iPhone... and often find a bunch of other stolen stuff, or drugs, or whatever.
Two: If the phone is deactivated accidentally (or intentionally as a prank or malice against the owner), how much would you trust your mobile carrier to be reasonable in their process to reactivate the phone?
THIS is what law efferent concentrates on? How about go find and arrest the crooks - you know YOUR JOB!
Just ask the protesters in Turkey and Brazil about what they would think of their government being able to render their phones useless. I mean, the media's not reporting on the issues right now, so the governments already have black-out power of the presses, you want people to give up the power to have a working camera phone too? Even after earthquakes and tsunamis have shown how valuable they are?
Anyone who thinks this is a good idea is a fucking moron.
or for political dissenters, too?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Ok, I have been reading this thread with mod points, and the sheer wall of stupid I am seeing is massive.
This isn't the sort of tool a government would used to stifle freedom of speech, or shut down a protest with. For that, you need to kill communication in a zone or shut down a users account. If you brick a single phone, their account is still active and they can just switch to a secondary phone to keep doing whatever you are trying to stop. Also, because this would use some sort of hardware id in a specific phone, you can't shut down all the phones in an area. You would need to know the phone id in advance to deactivate it. Also, it would be killing the phone itself, and not the SIM card, obviously killing a SIM card would then just cause a thief to put a new SIM in the $600 phone.
Fuckin think before you post, people. Now, I need to go back to modding the stupid down to keep it minimally at bay...
As long as you take the government out of it. The OWNER should be the only one authorized to have their stolen phone killed, NOT the government.
Wow. Mass cellfone-death wars! Awesome! Unfortunately, it's not like just anyone can hack into vendor or provider DBs, or social engineer themselves into anything like that. They're just too punctilious and secure. Specially in these upstanding times, what with the full employment, rising economy, and all. Sigh! Nor do they tag important people's lines for special care. Totally unspoofable. Yep, that's fer sure.
:1, $ s/Theft/NSA/g
; )
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
Most UK muggings, for example, include the theft of a mobile phone, but it's rarely the phone the thieves want. They've read about tracking and hidden camera apps, and few of them have the technical nous to spot such a thing.
The purpose of stealing the handset and then discarding it is to delay pursuers, thus providing more time during which stolen credit cards and other spoils can be turned into cash.
THAT is the problem. Not the presence of phones.
I'd like to have a phone which had, around 8 SIM slots. The first of these would hold the encryption keys for all of the Flash memory except a tiny little bootloader area. This special chip would need to talk to a computer I own and control at least once a week in order not to stop giving the OS the keys. If this special SIM was absent, replaced with another SIM or hit the timeout, the phone would send packets to my computer giving me its GPS coordinates. The extra SIM slots would allow things like contact-required credit cards, since that way I can know how much is being authorized instead of having to believe a possibly tampered terminal, as well as one of them containing a normal subscriber identity module to connect to a cellphone network. This was I control everything.
It's called a Smith & Wesson.
In Australia if you report the phone as stolen, the IMEI is blacklisted across all carriers. No one directly targets phones for theft any more, it's pointless when a week later you're unable to make calls anywhere in the country.
http://www.amta.org.au/pages/Lost.and.stolen.phones
They already make a kill switch app that deters people from stealing your phone. It's called a Glock. Get yours today.
We just need to remove the rules about "disguised guns" and have someone come up with a .22 Magnum double barrel derringer that fits in a smart phone-looking case. The problem will solve itself in a few weeks.
"No problem, I don't want any trouble, here's my phone bro BANG! BANG!.... thud."
All the violent phone theft going on is the reason I use a 3310!! Not only does it work awesome after all these years it also works as a weapon to beat any would-be assailants to death almost effortlessly.
NRA Says: Just build guns into smart phones.
it will push up prices on ebay. what do you think they do with all those confiscated phones?
I can only imagine the wonderful advancements in service that cell carriers and hardware manufacturers could provide with this!
Looks like your 2-year contract is up. (Click) Time for a new phone!
"libertarian paranoia", Really? Do you use 'libertarian' as a reflexive insult like many people use 'gay'?
I'm a libertarian; I'm ALL for having a kill switch for the very reasons you suggest. For one, unlike what Jane Q. Public thinks, there are portions of the USA/World where I would not venture for my phone. There are areas where I would not venture without police protection, and in much of the USA you're not going to get a cop over a phone; which I believe is a shame because there's very good odds that they'll bust other sorts of criminal activities. Many 'petty' thieves are quite proliferate. I remember one bust of like 3 of them where they were burglarizing, on average, ten homes a week.
I don't read AC A human right