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San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman criticized carriers for rejecting their proposal to install a “kill switch” in smartphones to deter theft, a move they called “highly disturbing.”
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The officials said yesterday the carriers rebuffed the plan, which would have rendered lost or stolen phones inoperable — a kind of LoJack for smartphones. It was part of the “Save Our Smartphone” coalition the officials launched in June, which started by opening a dialogue with the handset vendors.
But it wasn’t the handset manufacturers, including companies such as Samsung and Apple, that balked. Ultimately, the carriers felt the creation of a national “blacklist” of stolen devices was enough of a deterrent. The CTIA, which is the trade group for the wireless carriers, felt the kill switch idea would carry too many risks.
The officials said that if the carriers were prioritizing profits over the safety of its consumers — as the statement suggests — it “was even more egregious.”
“Since smartphone thefts so often result in violence, we call on manufacturers and carriers alike to make the opt-out kill switch an industrywide standard,” the officials said in a joint statement released Tuesday.
They said they would continue to pressure the industry to consider the kill switch plan.
