US Carriers Said To Have Rejected Kill Switch Technology Last Year

alphadogg writes "U.S. cellphone carriers were offered a technology last year that supporters say would dramatically cut incidents of smartphone theft, but the carriers turned it down, according to sources with knowledge of the proposal. The so-called 'kill-switch' software allows consumers to remotely wipe and render their phones useless if stolen. Law enforcement and politicians believe the incentive for stealing a smartphone or tablet would be greatly reduced if the technology became standard, because the devices could quickly be rendered useless. A proposal by Samsung to the five largest U.S. carriers would have made the LoJack software, developed by Canada's Absolute Software, a standard component on many of its Android phones in the U.S. The proposal followed pressure from the offices of the San Francisco District Attorney and the New York Attorney General for the industry to do more to prevent phone theft."

Comments

That's a great plan...

[Lab Rat Jason]

... until someone hacks into a carriers network, and deactivates and wipes EVERY PHONE on the carriers registry.

Re:That's a great plan...

[mark-t]

There are, theoretically, quite secure ways of implementing this... although I would not be surprised if nobody bothers.

One mechanism that most immediately occurs to me would be that a device with a remote-brick feature would have a password, created and assigned by the user of the device, which would not get reset by wiping the firmware or installing a new sim card. To brick a device would require transmitting not only the unique code that physically identifies that particular piece of hardware, but also the password that is supposed to be associated with it. The physical device, if it received an intent-to-brick signal that was actually intended for it, would compare the pasword in the signal to that which was set for the device, and if they matched, the device would be bricked at a level that is irrevocable. The phone could only be used to call 911, and that's it. Legitimately selling a phone would require the user to reset that password to a default state... but doing that, in turn, would require that the old password be entered first.

Re:That's a great plan...

[VortexCortex]

the immediate response on /. is always "But what about the hackers!" as if there's a group of malicious hackers just waiting for the technology to appear so they could exploit it.

They're called the NSA, you idiot, and they have a long history of silencing activism.

This is device kill switch just a more targeted version of the Internet Killswitch. What, you think they aren't planning on needing such device killing tech? Because that's what the Pentagon says.

This is just the first step. The next step will be to not allow the device to function unless it pings government approved systems and authenticates with your valid citizen ID. They'll turn the blacklist into a whitelist. Black boxes are mandeded into cars already, and Intel has demonstrated their capability for remote wireless PC kill switches too.

Every time they say: "Trust us, this is good for you", or "It stops Terrorism!" or "It' stops Theft" or "Think of the Children" your red flag should go up. Another red flag? The bill proposed in California would make this Mandatory. That's not Capitalism. We should let the people decide if they want this feature in their hardware. Mandatory is a huge red flag.

Phone not-a-friend plan

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Each stolen phone that they make the victim pay to replace or make them eat the remaining contract with no phone. that gets hooked back up to their network should gain them a fine and jail time for participating in the laundering of stolen goods.

That's exactly what's going on -- they are dragging ass because they profit, knowingly and deliberately, from participating in this cycle. Some interstate criminal conspiracy charges on executives would also be welcome.

+1 from Iran, Venezuela and the Ukraine

[PackMan97]

Can't you just imagine this tool when it comes to mass protests? Especially when things turn violent as they have in plenty of countries over the year. The primary way news is getting out is cell phone cameras and videos.

Wouldn't any freedom loving government just die to have access to a kill switch?

Re:Well duh?

[DarkOx]

To use a car analogy, demanding carriers implement a kill switch would be like demanding SUNOCO keep a registry of stolen vehicles and verify license plates at all their filling stations before selling anyone gas. Not that most US cellular operators don't deserve to be spend to 'that special hell', its still not fair to burden them with problems which are not their own.

You are responsible for your own property. If you can't hold on to your phone buy some theft insurance for it. As others have stated there is a huge risk to consumers posed by remote wipe and kill switch technology. What happens when your angry girlfirend falsely reports your phone stolen? What happens if the carrier's network get breached and someone sends the kill commands to all devices. What if its just a leak like Verizon's text portal awhile back and someone just spams the system with tons of false reports?

These guys don't have the track record to properly manage this kind of power. They also don't have any moral obligation to you in the first place.

Not really for theft prevention

[Anonymous Coward]

They are framing this as something for theft prevention, but the main reason they want it is because they want to make sure that if shit starts to go down here, the federal government can simply shut off all the phones in an area so no one can tweet/sms about it.

People WILL exploit it

[sjbe]

the immediate response on /. is always "But what about the hackers!" as if there's a group of malicious hackers just waiting for the technology to appear so they could exploit it

That would be because there IS a group of malicious people looking to exploit technology, some of them merely because they can. The topic gets brought up because it usually is insufficiently considered in the beginning. If something can be exploited you can be pretty sure that sooner or later it will be exploited.

. Most systems get hacked because there's some profit to be made out of it or someone is trying to put a message out there.

You think there is no profit to be made in wiping people's cell phones? Ever hear of blackmail? How about terrorism? Think there is no profit to be made in selling technology to mass kill cell phones to terrorist groups who might want to cause problems? There is profit to be made in exploits if you really think about it hard enough.

We don't need new tech, just use what is there

[dirk]

The ability to disable cell phones is already there and used in most of the rest of the world. All the carriers have to do is to ban the IMEI number of the phone when it is reported stolen and the phone can't be activated on the network. Yes, the phone isn't wiped, but it removes the primary cause of phone theft, which is selling them (since people will not be able to activate and use the stolen phone). This is used to great success almost everywhere except for the US where the carriers refuse to do it. We don't need something new, we just need the carriers to do the same thing carriers all over the world are already doing.

My guess is that carriers don't want to halt phone theft since it is a money boon for them. If someone's phone gets stolen, then they have to buy a new one from the carrier at full price, and the carriers make more money that way. If they start banning IMEI numbers and phone theft goes down, they don't get than extra money in their pocket. All the government has to do is mandate that the carriers not allow stolen phone's IMEI numbers on their network and everything takes care of itself.