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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
One: Can we expect petty criminals to be up on this latest news and be aware of this feature BEFORE they have already mugged you and tried to fence the phone?
Yes. Criminal communications are good. I would be surprised if it took as much as a month for robberies targeting a protected model to stop.
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 a kill switch. The carrier should not be able to fix the phone afterwards. The phone manufacturer might be able to fix it, but not if the kill switch is properly implemented.
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