Slashdot Mirror
Do Kill Switches Deter Cellphone Theft? (arstechnica.com)
evolutionary shares an article from Ars Technica:
San Francisco's district attorney says that a California state law mandating "theft-deterring technological solutions" for smartphones has resulted in a precipitous drop in such robberies. Those measures primarily include a remote kill switch after a phone has been stolen that would allow a phone to be disabled, withstanding even a hard reset. Such a kill switch has become standard in all iPhones ("Activation Lock") and Android phones ("Device Protection") since 2015... When measured from the peak in 2013, "overall robberies involving smartphones have declined an astonishing 50 percent... Because of this hard-fought legislation, stealing a smartphone is no longer worth the trouble, and that means the devices we use every day no longer make us targets for violent crime."
You can use pretty much every component in a stolen iPhone except for the logic board and touchID sensor (which is paired with the logic board).
So stolen phones are still valuable because you can sell the parts, especially the screens which are the most common component to need replacement since there's so many klutzes out there.
On one hand, pairing the screen and other components with the logic board in a way that only the manufacturer can, like the Touch ID sensor, would solve this problem. On the other, servicing our own devices will become even harder if they do this.
It's a trade-off. It's good that features like activation lock have reduced theft so much though.
My used cell phone suddenly stopped working.
The connection is obvious, but the announcement was pathetically weak. See here for the actual page from the district attorney: http://sfdistrictattorney.org/...
To show a kindergarten bar chart from 2015 to 2016 as the data behind that claim is pretty pathetic. I mean, cmon, the main claim is that crime decreased from 2013 when these tools became available, and they show only 2015 and 2016 data, which by the way, shows crime increasing or at best, variable during this period?
What summer intern put together this press release?
All I would trust this data to say is that no one wants LG, HTC, and Motorola phones...
I have opted for one of my own. Most people take a look at my phone and say "Holy Crap, what is a Motorola Razor and why does it flip open like a Star Trek communicator? What are you, in the 20th century still?". Hey, problem solved.
When measured from the peak in 2013, "overall robberies involving smartphones have declined an astonishing 50 percent...
In my little world these include cellphone attributes that have made them cheaper and therefore more available: -
1: More powerful but cheaper at the same time
2: More varied especially in the Android world
3: No longer *the gadget* to have, i.e. They aren't a status symbol anymore. Heck, you can finance an iPhone at 0% at WalMart!
No, the "kill switch" idea is as silly as the "smart gun" idea, thieves will not give a shit and hackers will defeat the kill switches anyway.
Yet another idea from someone who doesn't understand the technology.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
As doctor Strangelove taught us, a doomsday machine only works if the enemy knows about it.
Or in this case, it only works if the thief knows your phone has a kill switch.
Since he can only find out by stealing it, it cannot possibly work.
The law went into effect summer of 2015. IPhone activation lock was in IOS 7, fall of 2013.
Political jerks should stop taking credit for things they have nothing to do with.
Android finally got the feature in 5.0/5.1, late 2014/early 2015. So maybe the law prevented a few cheap phones from getting older versions that summer.
Bottom line: the feature probably prevents thefts. The law doesn't do much of anything.
In the SF Bay Area -- as many here know -- the local media has been covering a recent uptick in electronic device theft (iPhones and iPads of course) on BART. TFS is reporting these types of thefts are down, but not on BART.
I hate to be "that guy", but for fucks sakes, put the fucking thing away when you're on BART (or any public transit) and pay attention to your surroundings. Why do we have to tell people this? Many of these thefts are grab and dash right when the doors are about to close. That nimrod standing right by the door, headphones on, staring at the screen..? You're a mark.
Beware of the Leopard.
The answer to this particular article should be "no".
The original article presented in TFA had a different title: "San Francisco DA: Anti-theft law results in huge drop in stolen phones". The summary as posted here screwed it up.
Bettridge's Law is an acknowledgment of a general journalistic principle. If something's an astonishing truth, put it in the headline to get more attention. Therefore if a headline asks a question, the answer's probably going to be "no". Journalists who ask a question in the headlines are usually trying to hide a lack of actual factual information. Either EditorDavid or the original poster reframed the article with a question when it should have been (and originally was) framed as a statement of fact.
It only works if the IMEI ban is for every provider. In Canada, its per-provider, not all providers.
dumb people will still try to swipe them.. and dumb people will still buy phones off craigslist of 'questionable origin'.
kill switches are somewhat effective, but they also make it easier for others to turn off your phone.. whether it's a prank or to help squash a rebellion. the cost of this 'feature' is too high.
dumb phones, however, deter all phone thefts. if you don't want your phone stolen, DON'T CARRY ONE WORTH ANYTHING. besides being worthless to thieves, they're smaller and easier to carry, and you don't need to carry a charger everywhere you go. 2-3 weeks between charges is fucking awesome.
Do Kill Switches matter at all to people who steal phones and sell them on the street?
The answer is: no. They don't care about that, they only care about their next fix for the day which comes at the price of a few stolen phones.
The real question is: Why don't we help addicts instead of turning them in to hopeless thieves? The answer by most Americans is: This the American way! You reap what you sow, morons.
"no longer"?
We don't need government mandating locks. This sort of thing has negative side effects and the free market is already providing products that can do this. I want a phone I control- not a phone some corporation that refuses to support it for more than a year controls. I want a phone I control- not a government device to control me. Yet that becomes nearly impossible to do when government gets its hands on my devices and mandates laws like this. There are so many ridicules laws in California. How about the one where everything causes cancer in California. Maybe if everything causes cancer in California it's best to just not live in California. The absurdity of the laws in states like California, Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey just keeps getting more ridicules every day. Well, I guess that's why I moved to New Hampshire where the Free State Project is having an huge impact and not only curtailing dumb laws like this- but also changing things such that we have more freedom and even getting rid of bad laws. Several just this year alone- from eliminating regulations on crypto currencies to concealed gun permits (no need to ask for government permission any more in NH to conceal a firearm).
there's not that many nerds here anymore it's mostly assholes discussing politics now
Phone companies were partners in the thefts. They had the customers on the hook for the rest of their contract, and they'd dutifully buy another phone.
Meanwhile, the stolen phone must sign up with someone, often that very same carrier. So they in effect get the robbed customer to subsidize a second new customer for them.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
A lot of the stuff people are addicted to are mostly psychologically addictive--it is very possible for a person to pretty much go "Fuck this shit I'm done" and quit, permanently and successfully. This covers most of the nastier addictions; people will quit physical addictions cold turkey...even when it's something where that can be fatal.
The flipside of this? If the person isn't signing themselves up, the only thing that can possibly be accomplished by forcing somebody to go into an addiction program is to waste money, time, and space in that program. That last is particularly bad when there may be a waitlist of people who want to be there.
So, in fact, if you really want to help? Be less sympathetic. Help them reach rock bottom--the point at which they decide that they're an addict and being an addict sucks.
Mooch, what are you doing? I need you back here at work. We're about to have a tremendous meeting, I need your help thinking of some vulgar nicknames for Senators. We're going to invent the best nicknames, believe me.
Violence and disloyalty is what you can expect from a scarcity-baded economy.
Remember when Republicans had integrity? Me neither...
"chop shops" for phones really aren't a "thing" right now and the perception that a phone can be remotely "killed" makes a stolen phone less valuable.
Taken together, these will tend to reduce the number of stolen phones.
It might change with Apples new $1200.00 device, but until then...
The same people committing crimes over and over. That's a fact. Eliminate them, and crime drops to nearly zero. That's basic common sense.
The tragedy of life is not that we spend so much time rediscovering basic truths, but that we spend so much time rediscovering basic idiocies.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
We'd catch catch the perps faster if BART released video of the crimes. Oh right, BART states it withholds crime videos. *To not encourage racism.* Let that one sink in. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
My experience, very recently was to consolidate carriers. The carrier you're leaving *can* make life very hard to leave... Very hard. AT&T was relatively easy, sprint were nazis...
iPhone Activation Lock - iOS 7.0, 2013. :)
Android Device Protection - Android 5.1 (Lollipop), 2015.
Governments across the world perked up their ears when they saw how cell phones and Internet access permitted the Arab Spring protesters to rapidly coordinate their efforts and to evade government attempts to control them physically and electronically. A few years later controls against an Arab Spring-like event come to the USA coincidentally in the form of "cell phone anti-theft kill switches". Just look how the Dakota Access Pipeline protests allegedly were surveilled. If that had gotten really out of hand I'm betting a kill switch would have been thrown. When you isolate individual pockets so they cannot communicate, protests die off. Just look at all of the people who no longer have paper maps and rely on GPS. Most cell GPS applications rely on an Internet connection to get the maps. No cell service means no driving to unfamiliar areas.
You shouldn't have to protect yourself from theft. Many countries don't have a culture of theft. go live in one and you'll see this is the approach of having nothing worth stealing is the wrong approach. it's so freeing to live somewhere I can carry whatever and not worry about thieves