Law enforcement officials hope kill switches will deter phone theft

[captaincranky]

How about a self-destruct button? If the phone is reported stolen, the thief tries to turn it on and it spontaneously combusts. Of course that is incredibly dangerous, but it is a funny thought.

I'm thinking more along the lines of a dye pack like the banks use. For cell phones, something like a 50/50 mix of squid dye and skunk piss oughta do the trick.

 

[TheBigFatClown]

The NSA and others don't just want the ability to listen in, they want to interrupt communications as well. 'Stolen phones' is just the sales pitch for rolling out the capability.

Agreed. This is another bullshit campaign presented to consumers as a way to protect them, ultimately though, to be used and abused by the government to control the people. We live in an imperfect world people. Things get stolen. Accept that. You can either be more responsible about not making your property accessible to others or you can concede your responsibilities to other people. And let them control the things you own. I'll choose the first option.

If my phone is stolen am I actually gonna care that somebody can see some pictures I took or some text messages I sent? No, not me. Why put in a kill switch? How does that get my phone back?

Auto-delete all text messages? Sure, okay, Auto-delete all contact information at my request? Okay. A ****ing kill-switch? For what? So I can laugh at the criminal? No thanks. Keep this technology out of my phone. And keep it out of my CPU Intel (*cough, cough*).

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

How about a self-destruct button? If the phone is reported stolen, the thief tries to turn it on and it spontaneously combusts. Of course that is incredibly dangerous, but it is a funny thought.

I'm thinking more along the lines of a dye pack like the banks use. For cell phones, something like a 50/50 mix of squid dye and skunk piss oughta do the trick.

And if that fails to work, maybe a bit of C4 could help.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

All types of thefts happen all the time that's why we have something called insurance.

 

[Guest]

Isn't a kill switch sort of like shutting the door after the horse left the barn? So a thief steals a phone and finds he can't use it, then what? The phone is already stolen, he's not going to return it even if he could. Plus, doesn't he now have to steal more phones to make up for it?
It might work if every single phone had one, but there are far too many already that don't. I'd think we'd need a software solution that could be rolled out to existing phones. Maybe an alarm that would go off if your phone was ever separated from your iWatch for an extended period of time.

The idea is the thief doesn't get to benefit from the stolen device making the theft pointless (unless they stole it for parts). If this (for what ever reason) increases the number of thefts, then that would increase the need for the anti theft system and the amount of devices it's implemented on.