Items tagged with killswitch
Apple introduced a kill switch to its iPhones last autumn, and it appears that the new security measure is actually curtailing theft. Eric Schneiderman, New York’s attorney general, and George Gascón, San Francisco’s DA, both believe that kill switch technology has led to fewer robberies involving iPhones. “The introduction of kill switches has clearly had an effect on the conduct of smartphone thieves,” Schneiderman told the New York Times. “If these can be canceled like the equivalent of canceling a credit card, these are going to be the equivalent of stealing a paperweight.” Although both men have a bit of a bias towards the usefulness of kill switch...
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Senate democrats introduced new legislation called the Smartphone Theft Prevention Act (senate bill 2032), which would mandate a killswitch option on all smartphones. The big four wireless carriers as well as the CTIA are all on record as being against such measures, but if the bill passes, they won’t have much of a choice in the matter. Headed by Minnesota democrat Amy Klobuchar and co-signed by Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Mazie Hirono (D-HI), the act would require carriers to provide the technology that would allow users to remotely wipe their phones of identifying information and brick the devices, as well. (Source: Ed Yourdon via Flickr) Klobuchar cites FCC...
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Smartphone theft (and, let’s be honest with our absent-minded and clumsy selves, loss) is a major problem, and a potential solution proposed by lawmakers in San Francisco and New York has been shot down by the big four wireless carriers. San Francisco DA George Gascón (who has been working on solutions with New York AG Eric T. Schneiderman) told the New York Times that he had been working with Samsung--a company that makes a great many of the nation’s smartphones--to put antitheft software on the company’s handsets that would give carriers a killswitch to deactivate a stolen smartphone. Gascon (center) and Schneiderman (second from right) (Credit: Bebeto Matthews/AP)...
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