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California Law Now Requires All Smartphones to Have Built-In Kill Switches By July 2015
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Except, I challenge you to go to google set your search parameters to the past month and search for California police layoffs. Then search for absurd California politician salaries and bonuses. Then search for teacher layoffs and furloughs. Then realize your taxes are extortion, not rent.
Do you think that will worry them if they feel there is a need to block your phone?
I'm not sure it worries the NSA when they are constantly violating your rights.
The simple fact is that if the authorities feel a need to block your phone then they'll block it...they don't need this new law to do so and this new law won't make it easier, but it will save an incredible amount of people from experiencing a street robbery for their phone.
1. reduces incentives for theft
2. appears that the industry, including Apple, is already putting this feature in place. So, California seems to be requiring a feature that is already an industry standard.
3. This makes more sense to regulate than requiring a micro-usb port/adapter on all phones in Europe.
The mandate will probably become unnecessary as the price of used smartphones fall. Technology does that.
I guess because a 20-40% reduction in phone thefts is a really good thing for
a) Anyone that owns a phone and is now less likely to experience a street robbery
b) The police who now have to deal with less phone theft, thus freeing them up to deal with other crime
c) people who buy insurance, more theft = higher premiums, less theft = lower premiums
I could go on, but I think you get the point
? National Parks?
Do you even know what either of those 3 terms actually mean? Please, compare and contrast. Looking forward to your enlightened response.
Apparently according to the party of stupid (GOP), progressivism is the same as socialism now. Lmao! Let's keep glorifying their ignorance....
I see the paranoid, anti-gubmint nutjobs are out in force in this thread and railing against California while conveniently ignoring the fact Minnesota is doing the same and Apple have been doing this for years. But they still own iPhones and iPads anyway.
Also convenient to forget the Think Different hippies and artists from California are the same people who created the products they use, but the hippies and artists of the Apple community were a lot smarter and reasonable back then too.
Please turn in your Apple card before you catch a progressive disease and then you won't stain your iPhone screens with the rainbow tears of hypocritical disillusionment as the fabric of society is torn apart just because other companies who make products you don't even use need a kick in the ass to update their security.
Kind of like how most companies don't really give a damn about their consumers until they are ordered to.
Also convenient to forget the Think Different hippies and artists from California are the same people who created the products they use, but the hippies and artists of the Apple community were a lot smarter and reasonable back then too.
Please turn in your Apple card before you catch a progressive disease and then you won't stain your iPhone screens with the rainbow tears of hypocritical disillusionment as the fabric of society is torn apart just because other companies who make products you don't even use need a kick in the ass to update their security.
Kind of like how most companies don't really give a damn about their consumers until they are ordered to.
To all our friends in the rest of the world, ^^see what we have to deal with?^^
It's pretty pathetic, and quite embarrassing. There is a large portion of the population here in the US that subscribes to this sort of brainwashed philosophy.
Please don't think it's all of us though. There are plenty of us who have our feet planted firmly in reality.
Not sure why this needs to be a law when a solution already exists
The problem has and always will be getting law enforcement to retrieve the stolen device when the exact address is known from Find my iPhone. They are swamped with murders, other violent crime, and theft of larger value items such as vehicles. Making this a law won't solve the issue. My coworkers MacBook Pro was stolen by one of the cleaning crew and it was tracked to a rowhome in the city. It took 2 days of battling between precincts on who is responsible to investigate - where the theft occurred or where the MacBook currently is. When that was finally sorted out, there was a triple murder and the cops said it would be at least 2 weeks. A day after they said this, the signal was lost bc they likely parted it out on eBay. She never got a signal again. There was a narrow window that leads to a near 100% success rate of retrieval but the lack of resources and incompetence means the Find My iPhone ends up being worthless when you need it most.
That's great that my phone will be bricked but I would rather get it back. How about creating an auto-dial alert to 911 or an automatic "theft in progress" GPS tracking that is sent to the nearest patrol car's computer.
The problem has and always will be getting law enforcement to retrieve the stolen device when the exact address is known from Find my iPhone. They are swamped with murders, other violent crime, and theft of larger value items such as vehicles. Making this a law won't solve the issue. My coworkers MacBook Pro was stolen by one of the cleaning crew and it was tracked to a rowhome in the city. It took 2 days of battling between precincts on who is responsible to investigate - where the theft occurred or where the MacBook currently is. When that was finally sorted out, there was a triple murder and the cops said it would be at least 2 weeks. A day after they said this, the signal was lost bc they likely parted it out on eBay. She never got a signal again. There was a narrow window that leads to a near 100% success rate of retrieval but the lack of resources and incompetence means the Find My iPhone ends up being worthless when you need it most.
That's great that my phone will be bricked but I would rather get it back. How about creating an auto-dial alert to 911 or an automatic "theft in progress" GPS tracking that is sent to the nearest patrol car's computer.
This would be like an easily accessible hard reset switch which would "kill" the iPhone on demand. Much faster than holding down the sleep actuator and waiting 20 seconds for it to power down, the "kill switch" would zap the flash, wiping the device, and hard shutoff and immobilize the iPhone in less than 1.5 seconds.
Any attempt thereby to power on or retrieve data would be pointless, because it would be wiped, deleted, and the iPhone's power manager would be deactivated, not allowing any power on of the device. The device could then be recycled for scrap parts after it is "killed..."
Any attempt thereby to power on or retrieve data would be pointless, because it would be wiped, deleted, and the iPhone's power manager would be deactivated, not allowing any power on of the device. The device could then be recycled for scrap parts after it is "killed..."
I know it's less theft. But that's the point of the local government/police, to deal with crimes within the citizens whom they're serving to. It's not any corporation job to deal with crimes or assist the government to deal with any kind of crimes.
I am not saying locking/wiping features like iCloud (Find My iPhone) are useless or bad. It's that it should be up to the manufacturers to decide whether or not they would want to implement those kind of features in their devices. Then up to the consumers if they want to buy a phone with that feature included.
This is more about preventing stuff being stolen in the first place.
As I've now mentioned a few times in this thread, when Apple introduced activation lock within 5 months iphone thefts had decreased by between 20-40% in several major cities around the world.
If every phone came with this and the same trend applied then that's possibly half as many phones being stolen in the first place.
It needs legislation because with the exception of Apple the manufacturers have been dragging their heels doing this (or anything) as theft is beneficial for them.
Yeah it's so horrible that some people in the US want to think for themselves instead of having the (corrupt) government make laws for everything. Such horrible free thinkers
Do you even know what either of those 3 terms actually mean? Please, compare and contrast. Looking forward to your enlightened response.
Apparently according to the party of stupid (GOP), progressivism is the same as socialism now. Lmao! Let's keep glorifying their ignorance....
Funny that you point that out, I'm actually amazed how so many people hate my state over buzzwords propagated by idiot conservative talking heads.
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I see the paranoid, anti-gubmint nutjobs are out in force in this thread and railing against California while conveniently ignoring the fact Minnesota is doing the same and Apple have been doing this for years. But they still own iPhones and iPads anyway.
Also convenient to forget the Think Different hippies and artists from California are the same people who created the products they use, but the hippies and artists of the Apple community were a lot smarter and reasonable back then too.
Please turn in your Apple card before you catch a progressive disease and then you won't stain your iPhone screens with the rainbow tears of hypocritical disillusionment as the fabric of society is torn apart just because other companies who make products you don't even use need a kick in the ass to update their security.
Kind of like how most companies don't really give a damn about their consumers until they are ordered to.
Well said sir, well said indeed.
This IS local government/police doing something about it, it's called prevention...if you make it pointless to steal ALL phones then crime reduces.
A thief doesn't care or know what phone you have when they demand it, they find that out later...if they know all phones are going to be useless it's less likely that they're going to steal any phones
Translation: When the sh_it hits the fan and we're getting ready to put you in the FEMA camps and you want to communicate warnings etc we will shut you the F down.
They don't need this to do that, if / when that happens they'll just mass block by IMEI...like they've been able to do for years
Yet thefts of iPhones are at an all time high in NYC so that small reduction years ago is meaningless and has already been exponentially overcome.
Depending on the model and iPhone or iPad can be worth a few hundred dollars when parted out and as long as there is a resale value for parts on eBay or craiglist, more and more phones will be stolen than ever before.
If people realized that law enforcement will be directly alerted of their location once reported stolen, that more than anything will reduce thefts
Did you read the Section. It most certainly is not 'carte blanche'. And is not just probable cause. It requires a court order. It looks like it was adopted prior to this law and this one simply references it in order to lay out exactly what the requirements are for 'interrupting communications'.
Take your tin foil hat off.
http://law.onecle.com/california/utilities/7908.html
Activation lock came in ios7 this time last year, the figures I'm quoting are from this year
Same reason you don't get turned into a thin red smear on your driver's seat now when someone taps the front bumper of your car.
Just because a solution to a problem exists means nothing if the company involved is too cheap to implement it. Even if that means the consumer is the victim.
History has shown over and over that most companies don't give a crap unless ordered to.
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Yeah it's so horrible that some people in the US want to think for themselves instead of having the (corrupt) government make laws for everything. Such horrible free thinkers
Yet you don't own any Android products so why do you care?
And please turn off all your radio-based Apple devices. FCC regulations must be interfering with your brain. It's not as if you want to use them anyway. They are strictly controlled and enforced by the government.
Or is it a case of you only want the government making laws for things you agree with?