The California State Senate gave approval Monday to a cellphone kill switch bill and now seeks a signature from Gov. Jerry Brown.
Approval from the governor would require all cell phones made after July 1, 2015, to incorporate a feature that owners can use to make the device inoperable if it gets stolen, according to The Washington Post. The bill was introduced in February by Sen. Mark Leno, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon and other officials as a way to stop phone robberies that sometimes turn violent.
"This legislation will literately stop smartphone thieves in their tracks by ensuring all new smartphones sold in California come pre-enabled with theft-deterrent technology," Leno said after the bill passed the Assembly last week.
Data from Gascon's office states that smartphones have been involved in more than half of thefts in San Francisco in 2012, as well as more than three in four thefts in Oakland in the same year. Similar trends have been reported in cities through the U.S. in the past few years.
The bill says that a smartphone with the kill switch software and/or hardware should "be able to withstand a hard reset [to] prevent reactivation of the smartphone on a wireless network except by an authorized user," PC Magazine reported. It also exempts phones that were introduced before Jan. 1, 2015 and aren't able to support kill switch tech. Users also have the option to opt out of the tech enabled on their phones as soon as they buy the device. Fines of $500 to $2,500 are given to those who violate the law.
A report in June found that Apple's addition of Activation Lock to iOS 7 led to a decrease in smartphone robberies in New York, San Francisco and London. Google and Microsoft had also agreed at the time to update their mobile operating systems with kill switch technology.
"With law enforcement agencies reporting a drop in thefts of phones that already provide kill switches to their customers, it is clear that this is an idea whose time has come," Leno said.
Major technology companies, such as AT&T, Motorola, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon volunteered in April to integrate kill switches into their new phones by July 2015, PC Magazine reported. However, law enforcement officials and regulators said the move wasn't as successful because the technology was opt-in and not integrated by default.
The bill has received opposition from the trade group CTIA-The Wireless Association and other interest groups that believe the legislation is unnecessary, The Washington Post reported. Concerns over the bill include hacking and protection of privacy.
California would follow Minnesota in passing a kill switch bill into law. Four Democratic senators in Minnesota introduced a similar bill in February, and the state became the first to pass it in May.
