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Federal Smartphone Kill-Switch Legislation Proposed
alphadogg writes "Pressure on the cellphone industry to introduce technology that could disable stolen smartphones has intensified with the introduction of proposed federal legislation that would mandate such a system. Senate bill 2032, 'The Smartphone Prevention Act,' was introduced to the U.S. Senate this week by Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat. The bill promises technology that allows consumers to remotely wipe personal data from their smartphones and render them inoperable. But how that will be accomplished is currently unclear. The full text of the bill was not immediately available and the offices of Klobuchar and the bill's co-sponsors were all shut down Thursday due to snow in Washington, D.C."
This technology will be co-opted and otherwise downright available to the TLA government agencies.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
But if it really is called the 'Smartphone Prevention Act', that would pretty much say everything needed about this government, wouldn't it?
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
If I can brick my phone over the air, so can THEY, and I don't trust THEM.
equivalent of "lorem ipsum." It's just nonsense placeholders. Of course, all of his fellow Republicans are the same so I don't know why I expected different from someone of his kind.
Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. Just like the remote kill switch that was proposed in cars. This is a solution looking for a problem, and more over it's a solution that's ripe for abuse.
Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick Two.
And, let's see how long after this goes into effect that one of them has THEIR phone hacked and wiped/killed and they all bitch that they hate it and want that feature removed by law?
And it is shlasdot apporved, beta lovers to the max!
Now if we can only get a Federal Slashdot Beta Prevention Act.
Fuck Beta!
Federal Smartphone Kill-Switch Legislation Killed
As others have stated, this is exactly how Apple's iCloud lock works. If the owner of the device remotely locks it or it is factory reset through iTunes, it will be useless except for displaying a screen prompting for the owner's Apple ID and password. So far, all it has really accomplished is giving some extra headache to businesses that accept phone trade-ins and slightly lowering the value of lost/stolen iDevices on eBay. We also already have a national IMEI blacklist, which mostly seems to have succeeded only in increasing the number of scam artists re-selling unusable phones to gullible people (in most cases, they're generally not stolen - the sleazy cell phone companies here in the US are happy to block a phone's serial number if the phone was associated with a service contract or handset financing plan and the previous owner defaulted on it).
Besides, what's to stop a thief from taking a page out of the trade-in services' books and simply demanding you turn off/sign out of your phone's remote kill switch feature? If they're threatening someone at gun/knife point, it's not exactly like the victim would have much choice in the matter.
If people are being robbed, your city has a crime problem that needs to be solved with good, old fashioned police work.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
HOWTO Remote kill phone
iPhone requires having an iCloud account.
Android has push capabilities. Micrsoft's is pretty good too I don't know if you have to create a windowsphone.com account since I don't have a Windows phone. And Blackberry allows you too, but who wants a Blackberry? Theft wouldn't be an issue for them. :-P
Instead, here's a link to a substitute to "Flappy Birds" for browsers for those feeling deprived.... http://www.dogetek.co/game/
Will this be activated by simply logging into someone else's, oops. I mean, _MY_ Apple/Google account and filling out a form? No reason why. Just wondering.
Do a blacklist instead. Phone on the blacklist? Don't allow it on the network (and call the cops). A kill switch invites abuse more than an industry blacklist might.
A not so smart Act to kill phones. That's how I interpret this.
By installi9ng special government software, that there is even a question how shows how fucking retarded this country has become.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
The federal government has no legal authority to mandate this technology.
Could be anything from insurrection, a terrorist attack, a plague, to a Christoph Dornier type manhunt. A hacker would certainly find it entertaining to disable their targets cell phones. remember the movie the Net, Enemy of the State, Swordfish, or a dozen others. The only person who should be able to disable a phone should be the owner of the phone, and law enforcement with the owners permission; or a court order identifying the specific phone to be disabled.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
It's spurred mostly by the fact that AT&T and T-Mobile have been sand-bagging, claiming GSM/SIM's don't allow for black-listing. The utility of Sprint and Verizon's blacklists is predicated on the "SIM" being integral to a CDMA phone; they can limit access to their networks to phones locked to their networks. The proliferation of phones containing GSM, CDMA and LTE hardware regardless of the carrier's network, opens the distinct possibility of a stolen phone being unlocked/jailbroken/rooted and re-used on a different carrier, rendering even Sprint and Verizon's blacklist useless.
This law is looking to have all the carriers actually implement a lost/stolen black-list, and to further have communication between the carriers, so that a black-listed phone can't be re-used on anybody's network. This sounds like something that could (and should) be implemented in response to market forces. The proliferation of passive anti-theft systems in late model cars provides a good model. There's no legal requirement for car-makers to implement RFID-encoded key-fobs, yet they are nearly ubiquitous and have massively reduced theft of vehicles so equipped.
so if they are found to be breaking the law or any misconduct they find their phones wont work, their computers wont have internet access, their credit cards wont work, their automobiles wont start and they have to ask a police officer to take them to jail until their transgression is cleared up
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
What will the reaction be when someone has their phone seized by the police and then wipe it remotely?
- My question is: Can Slashdot be Slashdotted? -
This is already circumvented by the fact you can live-stream to the internet. Wipe the phone, crush it under a cop's boot-heel it won't help them 'cause it's stored and mirrored in a server in Amsterdam or wherever.
It's not the shutting down I would want as a government, it would be the ability to destroy data. You filmed the incident you say?
We really don't need another mechanism to prevent cell phone theft, we already have it. Each phone has a unique IMEI number associated with it. In most other countries if your phone is stolen, you report it and your carrier, along with all the other carriers, ban the IMEI number so the phone cannot be activated on any cellular network. This basically makes the phone useless.
We could easily implement this in the US, but the cell phone carriers refuse to do it. If I had to guess, the reason they don't want to do this is because if your phone gets stolen they get to sell you a brand new non-subsidized phone at full price, which makes them a lot of money. So why would they want to do anything that would help cut down on the number of stolen phones, since each one translates into more money for them?
So why should we set up a new system that can be potentially hacked and abused to wipe phone when all we have to do is to force the cellular carriers to ban the IMEI numbers of stolen phones?
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Why not laptops?
Why not cars?
Why not any of a thousand things that are stolen all the time.
I wouldn't mind this as much in cars or laptops. I'm pretty sure I could disable it if I wanted. But in a smartphone? How?
This whole thing gives me the creeps.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
A bill to require mobile service providers and mobile device manufacturers to give consumers the ability to remotely delete data from mobile devices and render such devices inoperable. I'm not sure where this shorter title that is traversing the internet is coming from, it was never a submitted title for the bill.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
So there's a definite public safety problem going on, with people getting mugged for their phones and what-not. For the record, I think this concern is what's driving this legislation. But there's definitely room for the Big Brother Let's Stop the Flash-Mob-esque City Square Filling Demonstrations appeal to the Kill Switch, so the government shouldn't have any access to it. Hell, ideally the carriers shouldn't either. Make it something only the customer can initiate.
As others have mentioned, this won't be used exclusively for the owners of the phone. It will be used by the government.
Can't they do it already. I came across some option in the settings of my Android phone that was for remote factory default or something. Like use a web site to erase your phone. It won't disable it but would wipe data I guess. I want remote explosive triggering, like overheat the battery and burn the jerk who stole my phone.
it's only under the control of the device owners and nobody else, then i'm okay with it.
Morons on AT&T, ignore this. For just about everyone else, this already exists for CDMA. It's called not having a clean ESN. Not paying your bill or getting your phone stolen means the phone will never be activated ever again anywhere else because the ESN is flagged.
Rather than killing my phone, why not track the sucker so I can get it back? Leave "remote lock" and "remote kill" between me and my security provider (AVG anyone?).
The kill switch has its name, because now the mugger needs to kill the one who he stole the mobile phone from to make sure that he does not report it as stolen.
Wait until this legislation is approved, and measure again in 5 years whether gun point mugging has been reduced. Problem is, hackers and criminals will find overnight a way to circumvent this protection. So in the end, we won't be able to measure anything.
for obvious usage.
I'm as confused by the legislation as by the responses (or lack there of) as I speed-read through the comments. My phone came with at least four ways to remotely lock and/or wipe it when I bought it: Google, Samsung, Lookout, and my carrier's apps. Admittedly, this is only one phone on one platform, but my last Android phone (years old) had at least three remote lock/wipe options out of the box as well. I have to assume I'm missing the throngs of newish phones that don't have any remote lock/wipe options.
If they are dumb enough to pass this I can see phone-bricking viruses leading to calls for repeal before the end of the year. Ransomware ahoy, "pay me $20 or I'll brick your phone". It is a dream come true for anyone who wants to cause mayhem for the laughs. Let alone any hacktivists who wants to prove a point or poke an eye out of survalience state.
Has everything to do with silencing political dissidents and having yet another coercive power over people.
Oh, and there will be an encryption-bypass amendment to the bill before it is signed into Law.
People start protesting their corporate government? Kill their phones. Permanently. How many of the rabble will protest if it costs them ~$200 a pop?
Today, a group of vigilanties known as the 99%'ers decended upon downtown's across America in a violent protest against what they consider the 1%. Armed with smart phones, these vigilanties attempted to try to launch a violent smear campain against law enforcement. But after the quick intervention of the FBI with disabling the primary communication platform for these wanton criminals, local troops in each city were able to quickly suppress the thugs ensuring a minimium disruption for city centres in Chicago, New York, and LA. Police in Washington DC are still interviewing vigilantes in that city in order to better understand the organizational structure of the so-called 99%.
The question here is whether or not a coorporation would cooperate. If you wanted to take out the middleman from this equation to have a unilateral ability to disable phones in mass, an automated technique would make it easier to implement.
The ability to remote wipe a phone is not complicated. But ATT/Verizon/etc do not want to implement that feature since they make millions from selling us 'phone insurance products' to do these jobs at a premium.
For a phone to become inoperable at the will of the OWNER it suffices to have the owner input a crypto key into the phone at each boot and encrypt all personal content with it. Lose key->all becomes useless. No "remote" needed. Remote disabling BY THE OWNER would be accomplished. Remote bricking of
phones seems too dangerous: authorities who overstep bounds (you read about incidents with police all the time) or crooks intent on mischief could do this.
Note: if having such a key prevents any new key from being entered, phone is useless without it.
If this is done though, how many customers will forget or lose their key? How many will write it on the back of phone or someplace like that?
If instead networks stopped accepting calls from stolen IMEI numbers they could prevent use of stolen phones (without more difficult
fiddling that your average mugger would not bother with) with no mods. Might slow down call setup but I suspect they already check
IMEI today to check billing.
Who needs a mobile oppression palace when you can turn off a malcontents ability to communicate?
they already have a kill switch.
don't believe me?
stop paying your bill.
this technology has been in cell phones for years.
the cell phone companies want to sell more phones period.
complained it would cost to much to implement.(referring to the technology already built into the phones and software systems)
mean while all those little self phone repair shops seemingly impervious to this bad economy are making a pretty penny
reprogramming stolen cell phones.
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for quite a while.
Where government needs to be involved escapes me completely
The ONLY reason I can see for this OR "The Internet Kill Switch" would be to interrupt communications and coordination between Citizens in case of the government doing something untoward and wanting to isolate a group/town/region from communicating with the outside world
I try not to be a conspiracy nut... but sometimes the only reasonable answer isn't reasonable at all!
Christopher you right wing characters are delusional. You are in a minority & shrinking. You can't even get a significant number of people to agree to your paranoid scenario, let alone have enough of an armed group willing to risk their lives in an uprising. And what do you think you could do against an Apache, a Cobra or an armored personnel carrier, let alone a tank or a fighter bomber. You are playing cowboys and indians with pop guns. I worked as a senior engineer in the worlds largest aerospace company. I know where of I speak. The US Army beat the 4th largest well organized Army with the latest equipment in 88 days over a decade ago. You and your gun nut ammo hoarding buddies wouldn't last a week today. ...that is called a "Shake out" as companies who succeed at new manufacturing improvements cause a reduction in price and companies who are stagnant (or just not making improvements fast enough) go under...because their products are too expensive on the ever lowering market. Solyndra died because their cylindrical solar tubes (which were a good competitor at $8 a watt) could not compete against other solar manufacturers products at $3.00 a watt; which is where we are today and its still going down!!
1. America is a forward thinking progressive nation, always has been and will likely continue to be. We left horses & buggies behind and invented the airplane. not vise versa.
2. The majority of humans want to do better in their lives. This means that "welfare" (Actually it is called family assistance) lifts tens of thousands of people up into the middle class every year. Poor kids get an education and a significant proportion of them more up.....when the stupid Republicans aren't letting the bankers, corporations & cheats run amok.
3. Climate affects by mankind is REAL and the world is moving on with superior alternatives to burning fossil fuel. Families with electric cars are NOT stranded & dying on the roads.
4. Solar is cleaner and the SUN is 3 million times larger than the earth. That STAR our tiny planet orbits is a thermal nuclear fusion phenomenon our best world scientists have not yet been able to reproduce even at nanoscopic levels in a laboratory. It makes more energy every few seconds than mankind has used in 10,000 years. The latest CSP (that's Concentrating Solar Power station gets so much energy from that star in a few hours, that the power plant continues to make electricity for as much as 15 hours after the earth initially rotates away. Of course 15 hours is more than enough for it to rotate back and get another charge. Yes cloud cover reduces power, but there is still light being concentrated and making power. Even you must admit there is still light during the day during a storm. Besides there wouldn't be a storm all over the USA all at once. So when we have Solar facilities in more locations, then storms and clouds won't be a big issue. Then there is the real option to put mirrors up into a geosynchronous orbit and bean concentrated sun down from space and make power 24-7-365.
5. Solar photo voltaic industry is BOOMING. It is up something like 35% more than last year. That booming industry is why Solar manufacturing is so competitive and so many companies are being overtaken
Rush Limbaugh, and all those other right wing talking heads are extremely highly paid "Pushers" (exactly like drug pushers) who are there representing the corporate agenda.
Rush Limbaugh is paid $70 million a year. That is more than Walter Cronkite made as a REAL investigative journalist in his entire life bring you the real news!! Why is Rush paid so much? The Corporations pay his talk (propaganda spewing) show... why? Because he is so good at making the corporate line of BS sound like perfect logic to you and then you vote Republican and help those corporations consolidate more and more control (and reduce your freedoms & rights) and there is a name for it: "Oligarchy".
And you know what....I understand you don't get it.
Fact is it is easier to fool a man, than it is to convince him that he is being fooled.