Industry-Wide Smartphone "Kill Switch" Closer To Reality

mpicpp (3454017) writes "The 'kill switch,' a system for remotely disabling smartphones and wiping their data, will become standard in 2015, according to a pledge backed by most of the mobile world's major players. Apple, Google, Samsung and Microsoft, along with the five biggest cellular carriers in the United States, are among those that have signed on to a voluntary program announced Tuesday by the industry's largest trade group. All smartphones manufactured for sale in the United States after July 2015 must have the technology, according to the program from CTIA. Advocates say the feature would deter thieves from taking mobile devices by rendering phones useless while allowing people to protect personal information if their phone is lost or stolen. Its proponents include law enforcement officials concerned about the rising problem of smartphone theft."

Comments

Yay for government!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now they won't need to backdoor devices when they want to erase evidence.

Re:Yay for government!!!

[Tuidjy]

I wonder how easy it will be for someone unauthorized to force a cellphone off the air. And how easy it will be to get someone authorized to do it through social engineering.

I just hope that however they implement it, they make sure that emergency calls can still be made.

Re:Yay for government!!!

[Frobnicator]

The carriers already can (and do) block stolen phones. Each phone has a unique IMEI number, in addition to the SIM card number.

The carriers are already required to do this in some countries, and do it voluntarily in other countries. They just don't do it in the US.

IMEI blacklists are common in many countries, including the UK. When a device is stolen the IMEI number is put on the list and carriers reject the device and (potentially) notify investigators.

Re:Yay for government!!!

[lgw]

Just watch for the first riot in 2016 under some authoritarian government. They'll "kill" all the cellphones of all the rioters to prevent organization and photography of police, not even a question about it.

Re:Yay for government!!!

[Lumpy]

It is a royal pain in the ass to get a IMEI blacklisted. I had to fight AT&T even though I sent them the police report and the phone was in their records as my property.
"But it's currently activated" Yes, by the thief, blacklist it.
"but that is one of our gophone customers", Yes the thief blacklist it.
"but but....." Do I need to get a lawyer involved?
"One moment please...."

99% will not force them to blacklist the phone but just let it go. To hell with who they sold the phone to, I was not going to stop until the phone was forever disabled from being a phone.

Re:Yay for government!!!

[error_logic]

This right here. It's one thing to be disconnected from a network, and quite another to have your system/data wiped selectively.

Re:Yay for government!!!

[fche]

Be really careful though in whose hands (in theory and in practice) the kill switch will fit. The cure (unconsentual shutdowns or other unintended consequences) may be worse than the disease (occasional theft).

Re:Yay for government!!!

[popo]

It would be foolish to think that the government "wants" this for out benefit. One thing has become abundantly clear over the past decade and that is that our government(s) want power, however illicit, and they are prepared to override personal and constitutional rights at literally every turn in order to achieve that power.

While this new power may be useful in the event of a "stolen phone" one also can't help notice that it can also be used to instantly disrupt communications between entire groups of people, for whatever reason the government should deem necessary.

Re:Yay for government!!!

[VortexCortex]

IMEI blacklists are common in many countries, including the UK. When a device is stolen the IMEI number is put on the list and carriers reject the device and (potentially) notify investigators.

It's not the IMEI blacklists that I'm worried about. See, if we already have the technology to disconnect devices from the networks, and we have encryption available on the devices, so we really don't need this new "remote kill switch" anti-feature. Folks worried about losing data can use encryption if they want to protect their data, and the remote kill switch doesn't prevent theft because Faraday Cages exist, and black-market thieves will figure out a way to zilch the chip's radio or NoOP the part of baseband/firmware blob that activates the kill switch, etc.

What I'm worried about is getting a "device bricking" standard for all devices so that all they have to do is flip from blacklist to whitelist, and presto they'll only function if they ping corporate/government towers every so often and authenticate with an approved citizen's ID code. Can you say Forced Obsolescence? Intel demonstrated their capability for PCs, and cars now have black boxes standard. The Pentagon has plans to push things like this through for anti-activism purposes.

Here's how you know it's a government job: This non-feature isn't being implemented by customer demand. This isn't something that these folks started offering then got popular and now they're standardizing on, nope. It's something they're making standard whether you want it or not. That's a huge red flag. Isn't this a fucking capitalist country? No, it really isn't. This is anti-consumer collusion of the highest degree. The US Is a plutocracy. Just like Noam Chomsky has been saying for decades. If the USA was a capitalist country then we would allow the market to decide if end users actually want this non-feature whereby the government or your carrier can not just cut off the cell-tower, but brick the devices, cars, computers, etc. to prevent them from being used anywhere. Late on a payment? Oh, they don't just cut off your service, you won't have a device or car to drive to work. Say something "anti-American"? Well, your cell will die on the road and so will your car, then you'll just be black-hooded out of service too. Do consumers really want this? Of course the answer is no. Thus this will be legislated into place "for your own good". Just like censorship and wholesale warrant-less wiretap spying is, and for the same reason as always.

The Stasi would have creamed their pants for some shit like this on machines and typewriters. What soldier would sign up to fight for a country that's doing this shit? If not for uniforms, you wouldn't know which side to fight against: Given only a description of the country's behaviors you'd find us indistinguishable from our supposed worst enemies. If you don't think that's a valid comparison because of some moral high-ground, then you don't know about the Native American genocide or the US eugenics programs. What a sad time to be an American.

Re:Yay for government!!!

[mjwx]

The carriers already can (and do) block stolen phones. Each phone has a unique IMEI number, in addition to the SIM card number.

The carriers are already required to do this in some countries, and do it voluntarily in other countries. They just don't do it in the US.

IMEI blacklists are common in many countries, including the UK. When a device is stolen the IMEI number is put on the list and carriers reject the device and (potentially) notify investigators.

Blacklists are useless.

Steal phone in the UK, sell it in Poland or Hungary where the carrier doesn't have a blacklist.

Or better yet, change the IMEI.

A remote wipe will be equally as useless as the criminals will just learn to immediately turn the phone off and then give it to someone who can disable the remote wipe. There's always someone willing to sell their knowledge/skills with no morals. Why would you think this doesn't extend to people who hack phones.

Re:Yay for government!!!

[puto]

I will say this on my public account. I work for AT&T for the last year all you have to do is call customer service, we can see the phone was originally on your account and we can blacklist it, 30 seconds. And company policy no rep would have told you it was on another account, be it pay as you go or post paid.

Re:Yay for government!!!

[Lumpy]

Yes they did, I was told it was on an active account, specifically a gophone account. I had to fight to get them to deal with this. After talking to that rep I was transferred to a "manager" which had an even thicker accent.

It was the 3rd person I had to talk to after being transferred all over the place. You might follow the rules, but a LOT of your fellow reps do not. Regularly I get told different information by two different reps, it seems that either you guys do not get trained consistently or the offshore people are utterly useless.

My most recent AT&T fail. I wanted to change plans and get a new phone as I was eligible for a new one. well the CSR changed my plan and then told me I had to pay full retail for the phone because changing the plan removed my eligibility. He refused to fix it and it was only customer retention that fixed it after I said, "well then Cancel all my accounts if you can not do that"

suddenly something that was impossible was possible.

Re:Yay for government!!!

[__aarzwb9394]

Here's a link to a story about IMEIs routinely being worked around - by the dodgy phone shop in your neighbourhood, not by SIS.

Industry-Wide, Hacker Triggers Phone Kill Switch

[Kremmy]

One step closer to reality.

As a teacher...

[MindPrison]

...I'd love a Smartphone kill switch, oh sweet...the revenge!

Reversibility

[axlash]

Whatever they do, I hope they make the disablement reversible, for those who think they've had their phone stolen, only to find that it was just misplaced - or if the phone is later recovered from the thief.

Re:Bad, Bad idea

[timeOday]

What you describe is probably exactly how the kill switch will be implemented. (How else would it be implemented?)

All the hyperbole in here is silly. Try not paying your phone bill and you will discover there is already a "kill switch." The questions at issue are administrative - how to share the list of stolen phones between carriers, set the criteria for putting a phone on the list, etc.

You can bet NSA has the keys

[Darth Muffin]

The NSA is why this is a bad idea. Once this is in, I'll bet you'll start seeing this used by the govt. First at Boston Bombing type events, then later at demonstrations like Occupy Wallstreet, and then wherever the president happens to be touring at the moment.

What would the govt of some place like Egypt have given for a phone kill switch?

That would stop all those police brutality videos

[Anonymous Coward]

"and wiping their data"... Yes, I can understand why police would want the ability to remotely wipe the data - data would include all those "awkward" videos of police that keep getting on youtube. Back to the pre-Rodney King days where it was just the upstanding policeman's word against the nefarious 'criminal' trying to slander him.

We can't have the citizens able to record the police now, can we?
besides, the police can monitor themselves
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/04/09/1545251/la-police-officers-suspected-of-tampering-with-their-monitoring-systems

When someone else controls your stuff

[erroneus]

When someone else controls your stuff, it's not your stuff. Look at Germany's gold! Where is it? It's in the US. They want it back, it's supposed to be on its way over... slowly. Net result, it's not Germany's gold. And if this tech makes it into our phones? Yeah, same thing. We "give up" our phones in order to prevent them from being stolen. Nice trade.

Its only okay if I am the one that has the switch

[Karmashock]

If the government or the phone company has it, then it is not okay.

I RTFA....

[ABadDog]

From my interpretation of what's actually in the CITA program, this is no different than what's currently available in Apple's Find My iPhone capability. Allow the user to remotely lock (i.e. set a PIN) or wipe a device, and remove the pin and/or /restore the device if it's recovered.

It seems to me that all the armchair conspiracy theorists here are over-reacting.

Re:Is there a rising problem of smartphone theft?

[roc97007]

That article is an excellent example of the complete absence of usable statistics. "Involve a cell phone" is very different from "mugged for their cell phone". Thefts are up 40%... from what? 10 people to 14 people? Of those 1.6 million people who had their handsets stolen last year, how many had their handsets stolen in the commission of a robbery where they took everything? How many were a purse snatching which happened to include a cell phone? In other words, is the real issue that criminals are targeting cell phones, or is it that more people have cell phones than at any time in the country's history, which would necessitate an increase in having them stolen?

I could probably make a case that most muggings involve theft of driver's licenses. Does this mean that thieves are targeting driver's licenses, or is it because the card is usually kept in the same wallet or pocketbook as the cash and credit cards?

Stolen iphones can be sold for "upwards of" $2K. What's the median? What's the volume? Is this a real problem?

Why that would not work

[SuperKendall]

So, the more appropriate method is to ask (nicely, or send some guys with guns) the cell service providers to shut down all towers in the required area.

They are not going to do that because a cell tower covers a lot more area than any protest.

Consider the protest in Nevada recently over the Bundy Ranch cattle being taken by armed federal agents. If you shut down cell access for that group, you are shutting down cell access for a potentially very large area of I-15. That's just not going to happen.

The reason why the kill switch would be used is that it cuts off video/image feeds from newer devices, the older phones that still might work would not be as much of a concern. As long as the government can prevent video and images escaping real time they have a lot more latitude in dealing with civilians.