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California Passes Law Mandating Smartphone Kill Switch
alphadogg (971356) writes "Smartphones sold in California will soon be required to have a kill switch that lets users remotely lock them and wipe them of data in the event they are lost or stolen. The demand is the result of a new law, put into effect on Monday, that applies to phones manufactured after July 1, 2015, and sold in the state. While its legal reach does not extend beyond the state's borders, the inefficiency of producing phones solely for California means the kill switch is expected to be adopted by phone makers on handsets sold across the U.S. and around the world."
From the article:
Police can also use the tool, but only under the conditions of the existing section 7908 of the California Public Utilities Code. That gives police the ability to cut off phone service in certain situations and typically requires a court order, except in an emergency that poses “immediate danger of death or great bodily injury.”
An interesting case of how one US state could change worldwide products.
How many want to take up a bet when the next 'troublesome' protest gets targeted with the kill switch... in the name of public safety, of course....
I'm sure they can live without for a while. Why should everybody suffer is some state in some backwater country makes a bad decision?
"...The technological solution shall be
reversible, so that if an authorized user obtains possession of the
smartphone after the essential features of the smartphone have
been rendered inoperable, the operation of those essential features
can be restored by an authorized user...."
So, in essence this law protects nothing (data is not wiped), and I'm sure competent hackers will immediately find ways around this stupid "Kill Switch" idea. Let the market provide the solution! This does not need to be codified into law.
I predict it will be less than a year before law enforcement decides to shut down all cell phones of people they disagree with (like protesters).
I predict it will be less than a year before hackers figure out how to brick or otherwise damage cell phones.
Because, as usual, when you try to pass a legal solution to a technical problem, you will introduce new technical problems, and if law enforcement can abuse something they will.
This will be misused, it's only a matter of time. And, since manufacturers will decide to make the phone the same for everywhere, we're all fucked because of a decision in California. And I don't trust that the carriers won't brick a phone you own if your bill is late, instead of just cancelling your service they'll kill your phone.
Everyone around the world will now have a phone which has a loop-hole allowing law enforcement, government, and private industry to brick it. Add to that the likely back doors for law enforcement to look into your phone, and suddenly your phone is controlled by entities which aren't you.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
are remotely bricking phones for fun and profit?
And it's becoming worse. What can we do about it?
That I want to buy a phone that can't legally be purchased in California.
Isn't the better solution to get the carriers to refer to a "stolen phone" database before providing new service? As in you would tell your service provider that your phone had been stolen, the would upload whatever the unique identifier is for the phone to the database, and henceforth they (and everyone else) would refuse to connect that phone to their network. No need for remote wipes etc. unless the user wanted to go down that root and the goal of making stolen phones basically useless will have been accomplished in a way that would be very difficult to hack around.
They both do. How else do you account for all the rotational energy which spawns tornadoes in the middle of the country?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
California is basically a nation-state unto itself. It is so large and relatively wealthy that when it sets standards, it often sets them for the entire nation and occasionally the world.
IIRC, auto emissions controls were one of those things California began to mandate. Not selling cars in California wasn't an option, so automakers began basically making cars that met their standards and sold them everywhere because the economies of scale made it make sense to do so.
Apple phones have already had this for years.
Blackberry phones have already had this for years.
Android phones have already had this for years.
Windows phones have already had this for years.
What exactly is this law going to change, force FirefoxOS or Sailfish phones to add a remote killswitch? It sure sounds like people are getting riled up about something that has already been done to 99% of the smartphones on the market because now it's "the rules" that they continue to due what they're already doing.
... that we have to pay for features based on the lowest common denominator. Another law from the idiots in California that impact everyone, regardless of where they live.
Wish that San Francisco earthquake had been just a little bit stronger .. and sliced San Diego, LA and San Francisco into the ocean. Ok .. maybe not San Francisco, it's a pretty cool town. The other two are cesspools and I try to avoid them whenever I have to make trips that way.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
You do realize that both Android and iOS have this feature baked in, right? You can remotely wipe your phone, and with a court order the police can coerce you to do it as well (if you worry about such things). All that's required is the device lock, which is fairly trivial given the propensity for modders to brick phones accidentally.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
There are California and non-Californian versions of a lot of products, despite the inefficiency, so let's just hope that world-wide (non-Californian) demand for non-kill-switch phones is high enough.
iPhones have had the ability to be remote wiped for a long time. Yet I have not heard of a pandemic of hacker-led mass bricking of iPhones. Dirty hipsters and their iPhones have been at the center of a lot of protests yet we haven't heard of mass iPhone shutdowns by the police in response to demonstrations.
I think government/law enforcement already have the powers they physically need to fuck with cell phones. Between Stingray devices and the ability to present national security letters to carriers or service providers, if they wanted to they could get IMEIs blacklisted or get someone like Apple to brick a specific phone.
I think this just finally cuts off the ability of the cell carriers to encourage and profit from theft by activating stolen phones. Maybe if we treated AT&T stores like pawn shops and told them it was loss of their licenses and jail time for trafficking in stolen property if they activated stolen phones the kill switches wouldn't be necessary, but because corporate profits and lobbying we don't.
Just lol. All I'm sayin
Neo: "You can't scare me with this Gestapo crap. I know my rights. I want my phone call."
Agent Smith: "Tell me, Mr. Anderson... what good is a phone call... if you're unable to speak [on your bricked phone]?"
Every population gets the government it deserves.
Police can draw the curtain before arrests and shooting begin: effectively turn off everyone's camera and twitter feed.
Now, no one will know...
So, they are mandating that cell phone manufacturers implement a kill switch to be able to sell mobile phones in CA? Is the cell phone market in CA big enough for the manufacturers to really care? Or, will they tell to CA to screw off and simply not sell in CA and the Nevada cell phone business and black market phone market will boom?
This will be interesting to see how it plays out.
The thief will have to steal more phones in order to get one that has the feature disabled.
The thief will unfairly target older phone model owners.
The thief will have limited time to make a call on a stolen phone, so he'll need to steal another one to make another call. "Just in time theft."
Tracking of stolen phones will be disabled, so stolen phones will be harder to locate.
I think all these phones should come with a copy of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four and a copy of the US constitution... for irony's sake. They should also be made suscpetible to packet injection so that the authorities can alter the information that people receive through them. Down the memory hole!
First they tempt you with California legislation.
Next thing you know, you're hooked on NAFTA, ACTA, and God knows what other Profit-Seeking Acronyms (PSA's).
I suppose we should feel lucky that Amazon is not using United Nations Black Drones to deliver tracking devices (such as your new phone) to your door ... or wherever they know you are ....
-kgj
How free are we if the state can take control of our electronic devices and we have no option to opt out? What does freedom mean if the state can tell manufactures what features phones must have? Can I build my own phone that doesn't have this feature? Can I sell it to you? Will they put me in jail if I do? Will they put _you_ in jail for being in possession of a non-government phone? When things like this happen in countries like China everyone jumps on the bandwagon and says how great America because we are free but when it happens in America for some reason it gets justified.
while(true){
for every $phone in $world:
{
kill($phone)
Console.Write("lol");
}
}
This is fine so long as the key to do so is held only by the owner of the phone. Ex: It can't be some kind of message like "WIPE PHONE NOW" it needs to be "WIPE " or something like that.
what if they just pull the battery or put the phone in a faraday cage till they're shipped off to china/wherever so they cant be bricked?
I'd love to see crackers to find out how the kill switch works and mass disable smartphones. This would be great fun.
The technological solution shall be reversible, so that if an authorized user obtains possession of the smartphone after the essential features of the smartphone have been rendered inoperable, the operation of those essential features can be restored by an authorized user
...
An authorized user of a smartphone may affirmatively elect to disable or opt-out of enabling the technological solution at any
time.
Apparently in order to combat problem of theft of smartphones this law forces thieves to coerce the VICTIM of theft into disabling technological solution prior to walking off with the device making an already dangerous encounter more perilous and traumatic.
Yay! Now we all can live in our own extensions of Ferguson. All the police have to do is order an regional bricking of every phone that might be capturing their brutality against unarmed threats to our beautiful democracy. Rubber bullets and tear gas will teach our children proper respect for authority and no one but the poor will have to be held accountable.
According to the Federal Communications Commission, smartphone thefts now account for 30 to 40 percent of robberies in many major cities across the country. Many of these robberies often turn violent with some resulting in the loss of life.
Consumer Reports projects that 1.6 million Americans were victimized for their smartphones in 2012.
In order to be effective, antitheft technological solutions need to be ubiquitous, as thieves cannot distinguish between those smartphones that have the solutions enabled and those that do not.
Is there something wrong with the water in California? Did zombies, head crabs and giant bugs with straws feast upon brains of lawmakers?
It seems either California is going to single handedly put an end to cell phone theft OR they are going to single handedly further endanger the lives of billions of cell phone users around the world. Which is more likely?
How long until the phone companies start killing phones for late payment or cancellation of service? This does not bode well for freedom to choose your carrier or for unlocking phones.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
"except in an emergency that poses “immediate danger of death or great bodily injury.”
Nope, nothing here to be abused...
Start wearing cameras ladies and gents...
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
I've never really cared enough to replace the OS with a custom rom on my galaxy... but this seems like the best argument for doing this in the future.
Guess what I brought back from Vegas? My next phone.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I'm about ready to upgrade my iPhone 4, so I guess I will be in the market for a new phone around June 2015.
Because all those devices will be wiped.
The California legislature has been dominated by Democrats (by 2-to-1 margins) for many years now, and California Democrats are so extreme that they would despise John F Kennedy (who was for a strong national defense, low taxes, never supported homosexual anything, was not for massive waves of unlimited immigration, did not advocate for unrestricted abortion, etc). The party of massive control-freak government is in total control, so there is little debate and no moderation in any policies they want. Drivers licences for illegals? check. Pot? check. Crazy high taxes? check. Only plan for providing energy and water is rationing and high rates? check. etc. This is why so many businesses and middle class people have fled (the population is only growing because of immigration from other countries where things are worse). Eventually, corporations will NOT adapt their products to meet stupid CA laws like this due to 2 trends: [1] the US is not longer the only market that matters (CA was big part of US market, but smaller part of world market) and [2] per-capita consumer spending in CA (if you leave ut the super rich) is dying off. The state's population is shifting from "thriving middle class" to "massive welfare-dependent class" with CA now being the most-deeply in-debt state and the state with the most people on welfare.
Anybody who keeps voting for these totalitarian freaks (who alse appear to think they can power the state with unicorn farts and water it with fairy tears instead of power plants, upgraded resivoirs and aquaducts etc) deserves every single bit of lost freedom, lost privacy, and lost economic activity he/she gets. Gonna have a poorer furure than your parents and grandparents had? Too bad. THEY chose to build a great state of California and you, via your votes, chose to trash it. Enjoy your gay marriage or "medicinal pot" or whatever other "wedge issue" vote got you to disregard all the other, actually important things these progs would do to you.