Federal Bill Would Mandate Anti-Theft 'Kill Switch' in All Smartphones

[Flood123]

Bottom-line:
Since we are the consumers we should be able to choose if we want this installed on our phones. If I am paying for the replacement phone if my phone is in fact stolen, and it's not a public safety issue then what business is it of anyone other than myself. It just does't sit well with me. I am obviously not alone here.

 

[Eraserhead]

That pretty much sums up the endgame of government over reach and "for your own good" policies and practices.

This is why I resist all of these attempts by the government to step into my life and be my mother or father.

They already are into health care. I have to apply, pay a fee and get licensed to do just about anything. Clearly defined constitutional rights are being infringed (for our own good they say) and require permits to exercise.

In the end, the government is just going to need to put a traceable mark on us so they know where we're at, what were doing so that they can "keep us safe". Heck, just tie our bank accounts to it so no one can buy or trade without this mark. Freedom though control! YAY!

Plenty more important regulations to get worked up about than this one which will reduce crime and cost a tiny amount of money given phones already do encryption anyway.

 

[mw360]

What could POSSIBLY go wrong?

Time to vote for Libertarians, folks.

Tell us, what could possibly go wrong?

Apple already have activation lock. It doesn't provide any remote deactivation feature but if your iPhone does get deactivated, all you have to do is type in your password to reactivate it.

Remote wiping has been available for years. Some people have fallen victim to malicious use and nobody cared. In fact, so insignificant are the events, that I'm not sure anyone has even raised it in this thread.

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Bottom-line:
Since we are the consumers we should be able to choose if we want this installed on our phones. If I am paying for the replacement phone if my phone is in fact stolen, and it's not a public safety issue then what business is it of anyone other than myself. It just does't sit well with me. I am obviously not alone here.

Yeah, but this doesn't actually work if not enough people adopt it. If the chances of a phone getting bricked after theft are only 10%, crime isn't going to fall at all. Since there isn't any credible reason not to adopt something like this, mandating it is best for everyone.

 

[Thunderhawks]

Plenty more important regulations to get worked up about than this one which will reduce crime and cost a tiny amount of money given phones already do encryption anyway.

Crime will never be reduced. Depending on what it is, criminals just shift to the next thing.

Same amount of crime, just in a different area.

 

[Eraserhead]

Crime will never be reduced. Depending on what it is, criminals just shift to the next thing.

Same amount of crime, just in a different area.

Crime is down in every rich country over the past 15 years thanks to technology.

For example cars are much harder to steal.

 

[mw360]

Crime will never be reduced. Depending on what it is, criminals just shift to the next thing.

Same amount of crime, just in a different area.

You've never heard of "opportunist crime"?

If everyone in the country started openly carrying $500 in a wad of notes with a blue light tied to it, opportunist crime would go up. If that amount were then reduced to $100 opportunist crime would go down. You're stubborn or insane to claim otherwise.

 

[Renzatic]

That is quite naive if you think manufacturers don't pass costs down to the consumer either directly via hardware or service price hikes or indirectly by using inferior parts to compensate for the mandated feature.

Oh, they will if it costs any huge amount. But how much did it cost to upgrade to iOS 7? The infrastructure was already there. All Apple had to do was provide that one extra feature within their ecosystem. Microsoft and Google already have the infrastructure in place as well. It's literally just one extra feature, and the costs and effort would be fairly minimal to implement for any of the big mobile OS manufacturers.

All it is consists of is being able to log into your account from outside your smartphone, and requesting the phone to format itself whenever it receives it. It costs considerably less to implement than all those free cloud storage accounts we're all set up with when we buy a new mobile device. Hell, it's probably only slightly more complicated than sending a text to yourself.

Sometimes these mandated requirements are clearly in the public interest -- air bags or center brake lights, for example. But here we are talking about anti-theft for not just $600 iPhones but also $99 low end pay go Androids, and of course, it won't save a single life. Why not mandate anti-theft devices for cars and burglar alarms for homes too and require GPS tags in all children's clothing -- heck clothing can be removed so lets embed the chip in kids at birth? I can think of a billion other well meaning but bad public policy ideas.

Smartphones are far more likely to carry personal information in them that can be easily accessed, and being so small and widespread, are more likely to be lifted off you than a kid getting kidnapped, your house broken into, or your car stolen.

What if you forget your phone on the table after a night at the bar? It happens to everyone. With just a tiny bit of know-how, someone could take the information you have on your phone that you inconveniently left lying around to make your life a living hell. It's got your credit cards on it, your personal correspondences, your emails you've been sending back and forth for both personal and business reasons, your schedule for the next month, your Facebook account within easy access. Why would you NOT want to be able to wipe all that information off remotely?

 

[CalWizrd]

...All it is consists of is being able to log into your account from outside your smartphone, and requesting the phone to format itself whenever it receives it. It costs considerably less to implement than all those free cloud storage accounts we're all set up with when we buy a new mobile device. Hell, it's probably only slightly more complicated than sending a text to yourself...

I don't have a problem with that kind of functionality being part of a mandated standard, as I think it's a worthwhile capability.

I question, however, the portion of your post I quoted above. It prompts me to ask if you are/were a software engineer. If not, then you have zero qualification to state that which you have stated.

 

[knewsom]

Why do you care so much?

What other issues are you politically active about?

Quite a few. Not sure how it pertains to the discussion at hand, though.

But like I said, it's a mandate that only inconveniences the manufacturers. For you, it's entirely opt-in. You've got the option, but you don't have to use. Though I bet you would if your phone were stolen.

As for the potential abuses by the NSA, it doesn't give them any more power than what they already have. Let's assume for a moment that this is yet another way for them to exert control over you. What do they get from wiping your phone? For someone just exercising their right to free speech, it's a minor inconvenience. They get their phone wiped and bricked by the NSA, they take it to their local Apple Store to get it fixed, then the employees there say they can or can't for various reasons. All it ends up doing is annoying people, which would give them even more reason to bitch about the NSA. They're still walking around free. They still have access to multiple computers. If you're some political dissident they want to shut down, they'd get better results going after your Facebook, Twitter, and/or Google+ accounts.

If there's a political protest going on, and everyone is organizing via text and voice, they're not going to shut down everyone's phones individually. They're going to kill the cell towers.

So it doesn't actually provide the NSA with anything that could be considered truly damaging to you and your freedoms. But it does protect your information from thieves, and that's why I'm all for it.

They can use this to preemptively attack those organizing a protest or other action, BEFORE they're all using a certain area's cell towers. They can also prevent someone from calling for help without shutting down a whole area, etc. There are a whole host of potential abuses here, and why would want to give them MORE power, when you can already choose to have this? Why do you want to FORCE it on everybody else?

Tell us, what could possibly go wrong?

Apple already have activation lock. It doesn't provide any remote deactivation feature but if your iPhone does get deactivated, all you have to do is type in your password to reactivate it.

Remote wiping has been available for years. Some people have fallen victim to malicious use and nobody cared. In fact, so insignificant are the events, that I'm not sure anyone has even raised it in this thread.

Sure. Apple. I don't have to buy from Apple. I can buy from whoever I want - and I DON'T want to buy from a company that has given back-door carte-blanche to the Federal Government without warrants, and has the power to kill my phone whenever they want to. It's tremendous overreach to mandate that this be implemented on every phone.

 

[Renzatic]

Are you really that thick skulled that you continue to ignore the flawed logic of your position here as it pertains to the freedom of choice of both individuals and producers alike?

Your idea of freedom of choice is narrow minded and shortsighted, and sounds like a bunch of nonsense sprouted by a guy wearing a silk print American flag t-shirt and a 10 gallon hat to rile up a bunch of people at a Texas rodeo.

"THE GOOOOVVVEERRRNNMMMEEENNNNNT wants to take away your FREEDOM to CHOOSE the right to be safe or not. Who are THEY to tell us what we can or can't do. BARRACK HUSSEIN OBAMA, THAT'S WHO"!

You don't have an opinion on this. You don't have a point. All you have is a reactionary stance because you heard that the government is defining some security guidelines for cell phone manufactures to follow. THE GOVERNMENT!

You don't think about what you're saying, man. You knee-jerk, then spew out little clever tidbits you've read in some demagogue Libertarian pamphlet. Don't say I'm being disagreeable because we have a difference of opinion. I disagree with a lot of people about a lot of things, and rarely ever go after them directly. I'm being disagreeable with you because you don't actually have an opinion. Just a vague notion of things angry people who make their dollars off your fear have told you that you should be afraid of.

You're not having a discussion with me. You're throwing sound bites at me. And for some reason, that just drives me up the damn wall.

 

[Eraserhead]

Quite a few. Not sure how it pertains to the discussion at hand, though.

I want to see what your priorities are.

They can use this to preemptively attack those organizing a protest or other action, BEFORE they're all using a certain area's cell towers.

Wouldn't you organise any such action in person? Besides if you were that important to the Federal government I'm sure they could hack you anyway.

They can also prevent someone from calling for help without shutting down a whole area, etc.

So borrow someone else's phone...

I DON'T want to buy from a company that has given back-door carte-blanche to the Federal Government without warrants

I guess you could buy a smartphone from ZTE or Huawei, but they've probably giving back-door carte blanche to the Chinese government instead.

 

[Renzatic]

They can use this to preemptively attack those organizing a protest or other action, BEFORE they're all using a certain area's cell towers. They can also prevent someone from calling for help without shutting down a whole area, etc. There are a whole host of potential abuses here, and why would want to give them MORE power, when you can already choose to have this? Why do you want to FORCE it on everybody else?

But, scary as it is, all these things can be done now! This new mandate changes absolutely nothing for the NSA. It gives them no more power than the already have.

The question is, why should I be against something because it could potentially in a worst case scenario be used to my detriment at some point in the far future when the government as we know it has practically collapsed and we're all living under the thumb of a dictator out to destroy our God given rights, when it's offers a HUGE benefit to me in the immediate present.

It's like not ever going outside your house because you could get ebola while going to the grocery store.

If things ever get to the point where those abuses you described above could come to pass, we'll all be ditching our smartphones and going off the grid to keep from being tracked by the government anyway.

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I don't have a problem with that kind of functionality being part of a mandated standard, as I think it's a worthwhile capability.

I question, however, the portion of your post I quoted above. It prompts me to ask if you are/were a software engineer. If not, then you have zero qualification to state that which you have stated.

I'm not a software engineer, so no, I can't really say exactly how easy or difficult it would be without any absolute certainty.

But think about this. How hard would it be to send a remote signal from your iCloud, Google+, MS Live account over wifi/celluar to tell your OS to format itself. Most of the work would actually be on the OS end. And since all mobile OSes are designed to be able to format themselves quickly and easily, the hooks are already in place to set up such a system. Like I said, I can't say how easy or hard it would be to implement exactly, but I doubt it'd cost millions upon millions of dollars in R&D to do.

 

[Eraserhead]

Security improvements are usually pretty straightforward.

 

[mw360]

Sure. Apple. I don't have to buy from Apple. I can buy from whoever I want - and I DON'T want to buy from a company that has given back-door carte-blanche to the Federal Government without warrants, and has the power to kill my phone whenever they want to. It's tremendous overreach to mandate that this be implemented on every phone.

Look, make up whatever fantasies you want, but Apple's implementation doesn't give power to anybody to kill your phone. Its very simple: your phone will not activate without your password. That is the supposed "kill switch".

Its already possible to kick you off your phone network, should the evil government wish to do so. This much should be obvious to you. Take a look around you and see how many people it has actually happened to.

 

[CalWizrd]

...But think about this. How hard would it be to send a remote signal from your iCloud, Google+, MS Live account over wifi/celluar to tell your OS to format itself. Most of the work would actually be on the OS end. And since all mobile OSes are designed to be able to format themselves quickly and easily, the hooks are already in place to set up such a system. Like I said, I can't say how easy or hard it would be to implement exactly, but I doubt it'd cost millions upon millions of dollars in R&D to do.

Having been in the software business since LBJ was in the White House, I can tell you some of the most important things I have learned (quite the hard way):

- It's always more involved than it seems
- Software implementation will take double, triple (or more) the amount of time originally estimated for its implementation.

... and the most important rule ...

- Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.

 

[Eraserhead]

Having been in the software business since LBJ was in the White House, I can tell you some of the most important things I have learned (quite the hard way):

- It's always more involved than it seems
- Software implementation will take double, triple (or more) the amount of time originally estimated for its implementation.

... and the most important rule ...

- Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.

It's probably a couple of weeks work .

I do agree with you in general though.

 

[CalWizrd]

It's probably a couple of weeks work...

Cute.

 

[Renzatic]

Having been in the software business since LBJ was in the White House, I can tell you some of the most important things I have learned (quite the hard way):

- It's always more involved than it seems
- Software implementation will take double, triple (or more) the amount of time originally estimated for its implementation.

... and the most important rule ...

- Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.

Good points. It won't be easy by any stretch of the word, and I do know enough about programming to know that there are a thousand problems that could arise from even a single bad or misplaced line of code, or even worse, a bad implementation of a good idea. When it comes to something like formatting your whole phone and wiping out everything you have on it, no one, Apple, Google, or MS, would want to leave anything to chance.

...but would it be prohibitively expensive? Would it require any of these companies to raise the price of their goods by a noticeable amount?

 

[bflowers]

i want an actual kill switch where it would fried the circuit board/lcd so they can't sell for parts.

No, you have it all wrong! You need a Kill Switch that will make it explode in the hand of the thief. If it doesn't kill them, at least it brings back the old punishment of costing a thief a hand.

Actually, though, all this legislation is really going to do is make a new target for jerk hackers to kill peoples' phones for fun.

 

[Eraserhead]

Actually, though, all this legislation is really going to do is make a new target for jerk hackers to kill peoples' phones for fun.

Has that happened with blackberry who have had this feature for years?

 

[CalWizrd]

Good points. It won't be easy by any stretch of the word, and I do know enough about programming to know that there are a thousand problems that could arise from even a single bad or misplaced line of code, or even worse, a bad implementation of a good idea. When it comes to something like formatting your whole phone and wiping out everything you have on it, no one, Apple, Google, or MS, would want to leave anything to chance.

...but would it be prohibitively expensive? Would it require any of these companies to raise the price of their goods by a noticeable amount?

As a pure guess (being a software guy rather than a hardware guy), I doubt that it would require much of anything on the hardware side. As for the software cost... software design, implementation, QA, rollout, etc. have costs associated with them. What they might be, and what percentage of overall costs that would represent... who knows?

Probably not a lot, but I wouldn't want to estimate the implementation time in the dark.

 

[bflowers]

Has that happened with blackberry who have had this feature for years?

Let me put it this way, the info I just found with a quick search found Blackberry 3Q 2013 at 2% of smartphone shipments. It's kind of like the old Mac/PC virus issue. Are you going to waste your time attacking 5% of the market? No, you attack the vast majority. Once every US smartphone is killable, I'm sure someone will attack it. That is just the way black hat hackers are. They do it because they can.

Oh, and way to beat up on BlackBerry. That's kind of commenting to a girl about her weight or a woman and her age. Just tacky!

 

[Eraserhead]

Let me put it this way, the info I just found with a quick search found Blackberry 3Q 2013 at 2% of smartphone shipments. It's kind of like the old Mac/PC virus issue. Are you going to waste your time attacking 5% of the market? No, you attack the vast majority. Once every US smartphone is killable, I'm sure someone will attack it. That is just the way black hat hackers are. They do it because they can.

Oh, and way to beat up on BlackBerry. That's kind of commenting to a girl about her weight or a woman and her age. Just tacky!

Yeah ok that's the position now in 2014. But blackberry had this functionality way before 2008 say, when they were a big deal.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

How much is this really going to cost?

The kill switch hardware and s/w + network to ensure the switch can be activated 24/7 + the paperwork and administrative work to prove to certify will cost each manufacturer will cost a lot, esp. for companies that make lots of models and update them often and don't have big data farms like Apple. You'd be shocked how much regulation compliance alone cost businesses.

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Oh, they will if it costs any huge amount. But how much did it cost to upgrade to iOS 7? The infrastructure was already there. All Apple had to do was provide that one extra feature within their ecosystem. Microsoft and Google already have the infrastructure in place as well. It's literally just one extra feature, and the costs and effort would be fairly minimal to implement for any of the big mobile OS manufacturers.

It's there for some of the big companies like Apple and Microsoft, but we are not really talking about them here b/c both already have their own infrastructure for their products. But most Android manufactures do not b/c it's a more open system. Are the telcos going to take on the cost and liability of compliance? Not willingly. See all those fees at the bottom of your phone bill. Add another $2 per month. This type of legislation only ends up hurting middle and lower income people -- the people who use cheap phones, mostly pay go, which are easily replaceable.

Sure, say "it's not that much" but it's not your money, is it? What is the public policy rationale for requiring a kill switch? I can't think of a solid one myself. Please tell me what it is? And don't say it dissuades thieves b/c they are not interested in cheap Android phones now anyway and it wouldn't dissuade them either b/c parts are money makers too just like they strip cars.

 

[CanadianThomas]

what does it matter?

Honestly this is a non starter. Just like Apple's iCloud and find my iPhone it will be beaten in no time at all.

Just yesterday A friend of mine was lucky enough to track down her stolen iPhone 5s. The thief had it all signed into a new Apple ID and iCloud account so she couldn't restore and get her iPhone back to being hers. She came to me for help, i've been an Apple/Mac tech for years and in 5 min tops I had it all figured out and was able to restore her iPhone to "stock" so she could sign into her account and continue on with life.

We all are here on a tech board and as such I'm surprised no one sees it this way.

NO tech developed to stop people will ever work for long. Too many smart people in the world that can find a way.

I might be a new poster here but I'm a long time reader.

Big thanks Arn, you the man!

CanadianThomas