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Proposed California Law Would Mandate Smartphone Kill Switch

Posted by timothy on from the kill-kill-kill dept.

alphadogg writes "Kill-switch technology that can render a lost or stolen smartphone useless would become mandatory in California under a new bill that will be proposed to the state legislature in January. The bill will be introduced by Senator Mark Leno, a Democrat representing San Francisco and neighboring towns, and George Gascón, the district attorney for San Francisco. Gascón has been spearheading a push by major law-enforcement agencies across the U.S. for more to be done to prevent smartphone theft. The proposed law could reach well beyond the borders of California. Because of the difficulty and added cost of producing handsets solely for sale in California, it could serve to make kill-switch technology a standard feature on phones sold across the U.S."

12 of 252 comments (clear)

  1. No... by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 5, Insightful

    On the surface one might thing âoeThatâ(TM)s a great idea, it would make stolen phone useless!â

    But beyond the idea that eventually hackers would find a path around such measures, it also opens the door to abuse by âoeLaw Enforcementâ, who are notoriously unable to police themselves from both breaking the law and abusing the privileges they have been given.

    --
    If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
    1. Re:No... by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Funny

      On the surface one might thing âoeThatâ(TM)s a great idea, it would make stolen phone useless!â

      But beyond the idea that eventually hackers would find a path around such measures, it also opens the door to abuse by âoeLaw Enforcementâ, who are notoriously unable to police themselves from both breaking the law and abusing the privileges they have been given.

      "Oh, you found your missing phone, which you thought was stolen, so we bricked it. Certainly we can unbrick it - for a modest fee of $85 - MUAH HA HA HA HAAAAAAH! Oh, pardon I dribbled a bit at the thought of extracting this fee for 5 seconds work. Excuse me while I get a mop and a bucket."

      Nah, it wouldn't be abused.

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    2. Re:No... by cayenne8 · · Score: 5, Insightful
      More importantly...

      I'm getting sick of CA putting out rules and "standards" that spread to other states that don't want/need them.

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    3. Re:No... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Now you know how the rest of the planet feels about the US...

    4. Re:No... by TENTH+SHOW+JAM · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Each phone has an IMEI burned into it's hardware. This IMEI and the phone number are transmitted to the cell tower every time you communicate. All IMEIs for a given carrier are whitelisted. What the system does is remove the IMEI of stolen phones from the whitelist. A hacker would have to change the IMEI of the phone to another one on the whitelist. This may be trivial or hard based on the hardware, but such systems have been active in Australia for 20 years now, and the market for stolen phones is still non existent.

      --
      A sig is placed here
      To display how futile
      English Haiku is
    5. Re:No... by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Oh, you found your missing phone, which you thought was stolen, so we bricked it. Certainly we can unbrick it - for a modest fee of $85 - MUAH HA HA HA HAAAAAAH! Oh, pardon I dribbled a bit at the thought of extracting this fee for 5 seconds work. Excuse me while I get a mop and a bucket.""

      That might be their ideal intent, but it ain't gonna happen.

      The reason is this: the only way to do a "kill switch" reliably, which can't be bypassed, is to truly brick the phone, beyond repair. Anything else, and hack solutions to un-brick would be available for free in 2 weeks.

      Aaaaaannnddd... to illustrate the true idiocy of this idea: if they do implement "remote kill", hacks to do THAT will also be available soon for free. So thousands if not millions will be able to kiss their phones goodbye because someone who doesn't like them pulls a malicious prank.

    6. Re:No... by LunaticTippy · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You don't have to brick it. Other countries use a blacklist of IMEI numbers. Phone theft has decreased because stolen phones won't be able to connect to any mobile networks. Yeah, there are various workarounds and hacks but it's not intended to stop smart people.

      --
      Man, you really need that seminar!
  2. And the other uses for this are? by demachina · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Very uaseful for law enforcement to kill the smartphones of anyone they consider problematic, like leaders of streets protests or occupy movements.

    --
    @de_machina
  3. Canada has similar by trainman · · Score: 5, Informative

    We went a similar but different direction in Canada, rather than killing the phone there's a list of IMEIs for stolen phones, and all carriers will honour not allowing phones in the database on to their networks. Which this solution sounds little less onerous than re-engineering every handset OS to have this kill ability.

    Also the phone doesn't actually have to be turned on to be blacklisted, how often will you send the "kill" pings out when stolen? Would a thief simply have to wait a few weeks until the heat dies down?

    We have devices that register with networks when activated, isn't it far easier to wait for that event than to try and push a command to a phone that may never be turned on again?

    Reference:
    http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/stolen-phones-blacklist-launches-in-canada-1.1873674

  4. Did we already forget... by Taelron · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Its already possible to do, but the Phone companies do NOT want to do this. They make money off you buying a new phone and the selling coverage to the user of your lost/stolen phone.

    There was an article about this less than a month ago in the huffington post... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/20/iphone-kill-switch_n_4308924.html

  5. Re:Watch by s.petry · · Score: 5, Informative

    Logical fallacy. The Government having one form of control does not indicate that they don't want more. The concepts of dominance are not new, please stop trying to ignore them.

    --

    -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

  6. Potential of misuse of the Kill Switch by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The law, as I understand it, is to allow the authority, to issue a command to render a particular smartphone totally unusable.

    However, the same law could be misused by the authority as well (think of what NSA is doing, for example) - instead of killing a smartphone that has been reported stolen, the authority could issue a kill command to smartphones that are being used by "dissidents", cutting off their communication lines.

    Do not ever forget that inside the NSA datacenter they have all the information of who is using what phone, who calls whom and when and how often and where they call from, etc.

    Right now, without the KILL SWITCH, all they could do is to LISTEN IN to the communications of people. With KILL SWITCH, they could kill off all the communication channels of the anti-NSA people, and render them totally unable to communicate with the world.

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !