Califonia embraces Kill switch smartphone bill

Today Califonia embraces anti theft security measures and approves the “Kill switch” Bill.

This bill was presented by Senator Mark Leno back in Febuary and singed into law by California Governor Jerry Brown on Monday. This Califonia State law states that all phones sold after July 1st 2015 must have and enabled by default a remote disabling option which can render a stolen device unusable.

The penalty for not complying with these requirements will be a fine between $500 to $2,500 per device. There are other states who enforce similar law, but none of which require this anti theft measure to be enabled by default. (San Fransisico, Minnesota)

Reports of iPhone thefts have steadly decreased over the past year, mustly due to the implementation of activation lock by Apple. Which is Apples version of anti theft protection and has been in place for some time now. The thinking here is If thieves cannot sell or utilise these devices, there becomes no market for them.

With that being said, not all mobile manufactures have a form of anti theft currently in place like Apple. These antiteift messures to ensure your mobiel device will not be stoel, they can be stolen for parts and i'm sure their is a large market fot that. Now most thieves these days will just steal a mobile device that does not have anti theft measures leaving the harder ones alone. However, what happens if all the mobile devices in Califona get them? I fear thieves will evolve through necessity and become smarter in time.

As with anything, these mobile manufacturers will need to remain one step ahead and continue to evolve their security measures as well.

This will weed out the good from the bad mobile manufactures.