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by lemonlyman87
4320 days ago
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I think the main reason they're passing the bill in general is a genuine desire to deter smartphone theft, and the result is a very bad policy outcome. But keep in mind absent this law there is no mandatory kill switch in phones in the first place, so the possibility of police use en masse aginst protesters - regardless of whether law permits such co-opting or is silent on the subject - becomes much lower. |
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"The smartphone shall, during the initial device setup process, prompt an authorized user to enable the technological solution. The technological solution shall be reversible, so that if an authorized user obtains possession of the smartphone after the essential features of the smartphone have been rendered inoperable, the operation of those essential features can be restored by an authorized user."
And section 2.2:
"An authorized user of a smartphone may affirmatively elect to disable or opt-out of enabling the technological solution at any time. However, the physical acts necessary to disable or opt-out of enabling the technological solution may only be performed by the authorized user or a person specifically selected by the authorized user to disable or opt-out of enabling the technological solution."
And Section 1.g:
"As a result, the technological solution should be able to withstand a hard reset or operating system downgrade, come preequipped, and the default setting of the solution shall be to prompt the consumer to enable the solution during the initial device setup. Consumers should have the option to affirmatively elect to disable this protection, but it must be clear to the consumer that the function the consumer is electing to disable is intended to prevent the unauthorized use of the device."
Personally, as long as those things are both true and implemented correctly I don't see any reason to argue. If disabling it on the phone doesn't work, everybody with those phones could sue the company making them (If they live in CA...). Outside of CA, they could legally sell phones with kill-switches inside with no disable option, but that's legal to do right now anyway so this law wouldn't change that. And, seeing as in CA it'd be illegal to sell them without the disable option, I don't see why they would spend the extra money to design a version without a disable to sell outside of CA, so it probably wouldn't change things much.