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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?
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.
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.
... 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?
Why not, they make California legal and California illegal versions of firearms. Most of the firearms I've bought in the last decade are illegal to buy in cali.
How many iPhones and Android devices are currently being remotely wiped? I ask because both have the feature to do so currently.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
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.
Every population gets the government it deserves.
I would assume that reversal requires physical access to the phone, and also the manual entry of the correct password into the device itself, the password being one that is created by the user (initially randomized at manufacture, the default code for it being on a small slip of paper that comes with the phone when you buy it brand new). Since each password attempt would have to be manually entered, there is no viable way to expedite cracking such a phone, and I would imagine that most people even trying to do so would probably quickly abandon the attempt. And if the point of the law is to simply make theft of cell phones unprofitable, I think it would probably succeed.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
The Android app does not lock the phone, it erases it. The phone itself would still be usable once you replace the sim card. The point of the law is to make the theft of protected cell phones unprofitable by requiring that the functionality be embedded into the device itself, and make the phone unusable for anything beyond making an emergency call, or using the keypad to enter in the appropriate unlock code.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
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.
I predict that as soon as a phone with the (undoubtedly standard) kill switch is released, someone will write a software program to reverse the locking. For good measure, that software program will probably also users to kill a phone remotely by spoofing the signal to make the kill switch program believe it's coming from the telecom company or law enforcement.
Unless there's a hardware component (say a physical key you need to insert into a slot on the side of the phone) the security WILL be broken quickly because the financial and bragging rights rewards for doing so are huge. If there IS a hardware component, the thief will likely turn mugger and demand the person's keys -- I suspect many people will probably put the key on their key ring.
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 wondered the same thing. Don't know how to do it on an iPhone but for Android: https://www.google.com/android/devicemanager
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.
and everyone else
That's the hard bit. If you block the phone from all networks in your home country the theives will just export it. Theives have also found ways to change the identity of at least some models of phone.
Good luck getting the whole world to block your stolen phones.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
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?
No different at all, as long as you can't bypass the lock screen by changing the sim card.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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."
What about having to physically enter a passcode on the device's keypad? The locking itself can be in software, but that locking software can easily be hardcoded onto the silicon, and not something you can bypass with any software technique.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
"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"?
Ask Sony about how well hardcoding physical hardware works out for them..... (PS3 encryption keys)
Good-bye
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.
That's only applicable if the key is the same for each and every device. The key itself can still be set uniquely for each device, and put into an eeprom circuit that is built into the device's hardware, and not changeable simply by swapping out any IC's that would not also amount to basically swapping out the entire innards of the phone. In the end, the only useful component of such a bricked phone would be its casing... making theft unprofitable, and when it's common enough, hopefully discouraging such theft from occurring in the first place.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Because all those devices will be wiped.
All the law does is increase the cost/effort of reselling stolen phones. It's impossible, as with any security measure, to prevent anything 100% of the time. But if you make it more complex/expensive, it discourages the attack because criminals will move on to easier/more rewarding targets.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
That doesn't lock out USB connections.
That's kind of my point - it already exists. And it exists on the most gullible user, cash-rich platform ever - iOS. Find My iPhone would allow an attacker to send a message to the user informing him or her of a complete wipe of their data unless they paid up. These are folks who would have no idea if they've backed up their phone or not, and even if they had half of them done' know how to reinstall what they lost. Tens of millions of phones with owners who would drop $100 in a heartbeat not to lose their friends texts or pictures of their grandkids. And yet it's not happening.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?