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California Bill Proposes Mandatory Kill-Switch On Phones and Tablets
alphadogg writes "Politicians and law enforcement officials in California will introduce a bill on Friday that requires all smartphones and tablet PCs sold in the state be equipped with a digital 'kill-switch' that would make the devices useless if stolen. The bill is a response to a rise in thefts of portable electronics devices, often at knife or gunpoint, being seen across the state. Already half of all robberies in San Francisco and 75 percent of those in Oakland involve a mobile device and the number is rising in Los Angeles, according to police figures. The trend is the same in major cities across the U.S. and the California bill, if it passes, could usher in kill-switch technology nationwide if phone makers choose not to produce custom devices for California. California Senate bill 962 says all smartphones and tablet PCs sold from Jan. 1, 2015, should have 'a technological solution that can render the essential features of the device inoperable when the device is not in possession of the rightful owner.'"
dice trying out kill-switch on /.
Boycott!
Already half of all robberies in San Francisco and 75 percent of those in Oakland involve a mobile device and the number is rising in Los Angeles, according to police figures.
Really, what we need, is a kill switch for Oakland, San Francisco and LA.
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
It will be used against you. Next "bigger" protest they will kill switch the entire area. Record away ...
If you start making phones with kill switches, that is going to be a very attractive target for hackers.
Imagine if you could wholesale destroy thousands of phones in one go?
And since legislators only barely understand their intended outcomes, and not the unintended consequences, they won't be mandating any proper security with this -- and it will be badly implemented.
But, really, what black hat isn't going to be giddy with glee at the prospect of wiping out a whole bunch of phones in an area?
Yeah, yeah, offtopic because I didn't say 'fuck beta' ... I'm just tired of the nerd rage, it gets old after a while.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Isn't this what IMEI blocking is supposed to do?
I'm sorry. A remote kill-switch is unacceptable. The big time thieves already put your cellphone in a Faraday cage when they swipe it. The real purpose of this device remote kill switch is to allow a more target approach to the Internet kill-switch -- Which as we've recently seen is what oppressive governments do to silence public opposition. Keep in mind that the USA has a long history of silencing public activism, and they are actively planning to ensure their capability to silence activists.
It's quite telling indeed that this would be made mandatory, and not present at the user's option. Why not let the market decide whether this feature is wanted? This mandatory oppressive non-feature creep is anti-capitalism, anti-freedom, and anti-American.
This would be a disaster. Even if the objective is noble, there's an ugly architectural fact: as with any other DRM scheme, you can't have effective control unless the 'owner' of the device is no longer the most privileged user of the device. Whether you bake it into the OS, some sort of hypervisor, the firmware, or whatever, there has to be an agent one level higher to enforce restrictions on the user.
The only exception (in this bill's case, not in that of DRM generally) would be if the control mechanism were cryptographically keyfilled by the user, leaving them as the root of control but still providing for strong lockout of third parties. I'm just guessing that that concept won't be a big hit in consumer electronics, though...
In practice, this would make it illegal to sell a tablet or smartphone that isn't tivoized and locked down, since anything that lets you reflash the firmware would be overwhelmingly likely to allow a modestly competent attacker to neutralize a killswitch. Fan-fucking-tastic.
This perfectly covers the need of police and secret agencies for a simple "switch off method" for mobil phones and devices in particular areas of interest in which officials, independant of reason, want to shut down public spread of information at all cost. Censorship at its best, Orwell would have jumped of joy ^^.
... you can all count. If you want information to leave an area in which you are active, just switch off any device thats not yours. (Good I still can make photos with my analog camera).
The device list for such a maneuver is easily obtained through the telecommunication companies which already give free acess to NSA & Co.
Spawning from riots which have to be covered up.
To civilian killings + shut down of areas.
Etcetc
The idea is good but the use for others is terrifying.
Someone tries to rob or kill you for your phone, you switch from "Safe" to "Fire."
Already half of all robberies in San Francisco and 75 percent of those in Oakland involve a mobile device and the number is rising in Los Angeles, according to police figures.
Some missing stats here: How many robberies is that, how many were there five years ago, and what percentage of robberies involved a wallet? Is this a sign of increasing crime due to cell phones, or are cell phones just a thing of value that most people carry that is taken along with the victim's wallet and watch? What percentage of these crimes will be prevented if a kill switch is implemented?
Without that information, this is just another case of, "Bad things happen, therefore we need more laws!" Effective laws do an excellent job of reducing crime. Crime stats in the US have been on an impressive and near continual downward trend, and that is an excellent thing to achieve. Ineffectual laws do not solve problems, however, and they weaken the system.
Also: Fuck beta. I am not the audience, I am one of the authors of this site. I am Slashdot. This is a debate community. I will leave if it becomes some bullshit IT News 'zine. And I don't think Dice has the chops to beat the existing competitors in that space.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
It sounds very much like some kind of DRM to me.
It's a digital lock - which can be activated remotely, so certainly can be activated (and deactivated) locally. It may be hard to unlock, but it will be possible.
Like DRM, it'll inconvenience the casual offender, who has limited technical ability. And sooner or later people will get accidentally locked out of their genuinely owned devices. Indeed maybe due to a ransomware type malware, maybe due to a simple error at the manufacturer's server, whatever. It can happen, so it will happen.
A "kill switch" will just brick devices the first time they connect to the network in California or a network that transmits "kill switch" orders outside of California. I wouldn't expect it to work if the thief dropped the phone in a metal-lined bag until it was safely outside of the country.
Blacklisting the ESN is just as effective and doesn't require special phones.
Besides, if the phones are being bagged and stripped for parts in a shielded room, neither blacklisting nor a kill switch will do much good.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"...can render the essential features of the device inoperable when the device is not in possession of the rightful owner."?
Well the rightful owners of our phones are technically still Samsung / Apple / LG /
Does that mean they can arbitrarily decide which phones to disable remotely whenever they'd like?
Suppose this is implemented. Then imagine a new escalation in the patent wars: say, a phone model is found infringing, and judge mandates not only to stop sales, but to remotely destroy all devices sold in the US.
This already exists and the rest of the world uses it. It's called the IMEI number. Simply report the phone stolen and the carriers can kill the IMEI and put it on a list so that it can't work on any of their networks. Yes, thieves could still use the phone offline, but it puts a HUGE dent into reasons for stealing a phone. But carriers continue to fight against this, IMO, because stolen phones means they get to sell the customer another phone (and at non-subsidized prices). We don't need a new kill switch for the phones, we just need to legislate that the cell companies uses what is at their disposal.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Stolen phones cannot be used withouy the acquiesence of phone companies in providing service to the phones and their new "owners".
So fine and jail phone CEOs for designing a business model that incorporates, deliberately, the laundering of stolen property.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
That would be fine, except Dice has stated its clear intention to eliminate classic mode. If classic mode weren't going away, most people wouldn't care.
Beta delenda est.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Because they didn't learn from that....
According to whose definition of "what is broken" and "is fixed"?
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
This bill proposes to put the kill switch under the control of law enforcement officials. That's asking for abuse from an oppressive government. Look how Obama has used IRS, ATF, OSHA, and other agencies as political weapons to intimidate political enemies.
If the government were REALLY concerned for the public good, they would put the kill switch under the control of the CONSUMER. We already have it for credit cards - we call up a phone number, report it stolen, and wala credit card becomes an instant brick. There is no reason this couldn't be done for mobile devices.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
But it's obligatory:
"What could possibly go wrong with this?"
This is never going to work. Thieves can just turn off the phone until they can get it into a wireless enclosure, such as the one Ramsey's makes. Then you can jailbreak, root, or whatever, whenever you want while the device is in the enclosure. Until standards require authentication of the user, on a device, to a network, and authenticate the network to the device, you are going to have mobile theft. I have proposed solutions for this to numerous entities in the past and have greater with brick walls every time. And this bill is just going to result is a piss-poor implementation of a kill switch that will quickly be circumvented by hackers and will cause more problems than it fixes.
Voila.
Never try to write a word you've only heard spoken - you'll look like an idiot if you guess wrong in a spectacular way.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Nerds; usually so mild-mannered but suggest they shave their necks or other form of heresy and it's digital pitchforks and torches time.
Requiem for the American Dream