photo credit: Office of Governor Mark Dayton
It is done. Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton signed legislation late yesterday (Chapter 241, SF1740) which requires that all new smartphones sold in Minnesota after July 1, 2015, have an anti-theft “kill switch” function. A kill switch function enables smartphone owners to remotely disable their smartphone if it is lost or stolen, rendering the devices useless to thieves and reducing the incentive for a growing wave of violent cell phone thefts.
“This law will help combat the growing number of violent cell phone thefts in Minnesota,” said Governor Dayton. “I thank Representative Atkins, Senator Sieben, Senator Dziedzic, law enforcement officials, and the many student advocates who championed this legislation.”
More on the Governor’s blog post is here.
The Verge published this article late last night which had some interesting perspective that calls this bill in to doubt and whether it’s a moot point anyway:
Strangely, the actual text of Minnesota’s “kill switch” bill doesn’t actually require a kill switch at all. The letter of the law simply states that phones be “equipped with preloaded antitheft functionality or be capable of downloading that functionality,” without specifying what “antitheft” means or what sorts of protections the software might actually offer.
However, that might be a moot point: nearly every major player in the smartphone industry has already promised to offer remote lock and remote wipe functionality by next July. Minnesota’s law and other legislation like it are simply codifying what smartphone manufacturers and US cellular carriers are already working towards. The law gives those companies until January 2015 to explain how antitheft software will help.
It remains to be seen if this will be an important tool for consumers—and actually slow down or stop thefts of smartphones—or there will be a workaround thieves will discover and use anyway. We are also uncertain whether or not a “killed” smartphone can simply be sent offshore and re-enabled on an overseas carrier’s network.
Hopefully built-in kill switches won’t also be targets of black-hat hackers who install malware on smartphones and are thus capable of remotely killing a phone.