Smartphone Kill Switch, Consumer Boon Or Way For Government To Brick Your Phone?

MojoKid writes We're often told that having a kill switch in our mobile devices — mostly our smartphones — is a good thing. At a basic level, that's hard to disagree with. If every mobile device had a built-in kill switch, theft would go down — who would waste their time over a device that probably won't work for very long? Here's where the problem lays: It's law enforcement that's pushing so hard for these kill switches. We first learned about this last summer, and this past May, California passed a law that requires smartphone vendors to implement the feature. In practice, if a smartphone has been stolen, or has been somehow compromised, its user or manufacturer would be able to remotely kill off its usability, something that would be reversed once the phone gets back into its rightful owner's hands. However, such functionality should be limited to the device's owner, and no one else. If the owner can disable a phone with nothing but access to a computer or another mobile device, so can Google, Samsung, Microsoft, Nokia or Apple. If the designers of a phone's operating system can brick a phone, guess who else can do the same? Everybody from the NSA to your friendly neighborhood police force, that's who. At most, all they'll need is a convincing argument that they're acting in the interest of "public safety."

Comments

Why such paranoia ?

[x0ra]

We all know our leader are just aiming to our best... don't they ?

Re:Why such paranoia ?

[mcl630]

Doesn't the kill switch also wipe the phone? The existing Android Device Manager and whatever Apple's version is called wipe the phone remotely, to protect personal information from the thief.

The beat cop doesn't need a "kill switch", he just has to call the station and they can do it or contact whoever does it, quick enough.

Frankly, I'm more concerned with hackers or script kiddies bricking thousands of phones for lol's, than I am about hypothetical law enforcement abuse of it, but it remains a possibility.

Re:Why such paranoia ?

[R3d M3rcury]

They would, however, be able to keep the story about what's happening in Ferguson, MO (for example) from ever trending on Twitter, simply by killing every phone talking to a particular tower.

Or by shutting down the tower or by saying, "Phone number (whatever) cannot communicate with this tower."

And yet, somehow they haven't done this.

Re:Bricking or Tracking?

[Mister Liberty]

Consider what the gov would call 'emergencies'. We may call them protests, even rebellion. Suppose the next banking crisis has come around. Suppose this time things don't evolve so orderly for all those presidential advisors and what have you. Suppose these, those protests, get out of hand -- from the perspective of the gov, mind you. Yes, they would see it as rebellion. Now is the gov gonna want to track you and the rest of your 10,000 protestors? No, they just want to kill any organizational aspects of it asap and thus disperse the lot into chaos. Divide and conquer, on the street level, so to speak. I don't think I have to tell you where your phone came into this picture. Comms, pictures taken, police being filmed, free YouTube placement -- bah!, don't want any of that anymore. The gov want to be able to brick it -- even if temporarily, while at the same time having their own communications channels up and running in spiffy order all the time.
You can seen where all this fits in, our latter days of class warfare.