Smartphone Theft Protection Act will require cellphone makers to incorporate the way to disable communications devices remotely to discourage theft.
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A week after California State Senator Mark Leno (D-CA) proposed a bill requiring a kill switch for smartphones sold within the state, federal lawmakers have recommend an identical bill.
On Thursday, US Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Mazie Hirono (D-HI) introduced national legislation to require how to disable smartphones remotely. The goal is to discourage theft and protect consumers, but this defense against thieves might include greater vulnerability to hackers, in step with a mobile industry trade group.
Certainly, cell phone theft is a significant problem. Cellular phone thefts account for 30% to 40% of all robberies in major cities nationwide, in step with the FCC, and that figure is asserted to be as high as 50% in markets like San Francisco. Per Consumer Reports, 1.6 million Americans were victimized by smartphone thieves in 2012.
“Mobile phone theft has become a large business for thieves trying to benefit from these devices and any valuable information they contain, costing consumers greater than $30 billion each year and endangering countless theft victims,” Senator Klobuchar said in an announcement. “This legislation might help eliminate the incentives for criminals to focus on smartphones by empowering victims to take steps to maintain their information private, protect their identity and finances, and render the telephone inoperable to the thieves.”
[Smartphones will only become more ubiquitous. Read 1 Billion Smartphones Shipped In 2013.]
The text of the Smartphone Theft Protection Act is not yet available online and a decision to Senator Klobuchar’s office was not immediately returned.
Law enforcement officials, notably San Francisco district attorney George Gascón and Manhattan State attorney general Eric Schneiderman, were pushing phone makers to adopt kill switches since last year. But mobile carriers have resisted, in response to Gascón, because they make billions annually from selling theft insurance to their subscribers.
The mobile industry says a kill switch requirement could increase the danger of being hacked. The CTIA, a telecom industry group, points out that a kill switch would necessarily be triggered by the remote transmission of a kill message and the technical details involved will be widely recognized among mobile operators. Inevitably, the crowd argues, hackers would find out how to send these messages maliciously, thereby shutting down phones permanently — a kill switch isn’t any good if it’s reversible because thieves would presumably be capable to use an identical recovery tools as theft victims.
“[A kill switch] can be used to disable entire groups of shoppers, reminiscent of Department of Defense, Homeland Security or emergency services/law enforcement,” says the CTIA, which have been promoting software tracking and knowledge erasure options for smartphones alongside theft prevention measures and call insurance.
The urge to create electronic tethers to guard property has moved beyond cell phones in Europe, where authorities reportedly were developing a kill switch for cars as a defense against dangerous car chases.
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Thomas Claburn was writing about business and technology since 1996, for publications reminiscent of New Architect, PC Computing, InformationWeek, Salon, Wired, and Ziff Davis Smart Business. Before that, he worked in film and tv, having earned a not particularly useful … View Full Bio
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