

Congress, wireless industry team up to make stolen phones worthless - mrsebastian
http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/125681-congress-wireless-industry-team-up-to-make-stolen-phones-worthless

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mseebach
Oh, they're going to make it illegal to tamper with the IMEI. That's all
solved then.

Why don't they just make it illegal to steal peoples phones instead?

~~~
rimantas
Stealing is legal in US? That's some news.

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mseebach
Yes, it is, isn't it?

Without sarcasm: Why would it help to make tampering with the IMEI illegal,
when the illegality of stealing in the first place doesn't solve the problem?

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mrsebastian
Well, I guess if you (unwittingly?) buy a stolen phone, the feds would want
IMEI tampering to be illegal?

I assume there's lots of bulk IMEI tampering done by fences, too.

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mseebach
If it's unwittingly, why would I bother with changing the IMEI?

If it's wittingly, I'm already a criminal.

And you're right, IMEI changing probably already is a default part of fencing
a phone.

The solution would be to make it a requirement that phones have tamper proof
IMEIs.

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yardie
This changes very little for the moment:

1\. Most of the phones in the US are CDMA carrier exclusives; they maintain
their own stolen/lost databases. Even 10 years ago you could call Verizon or
Sprint and they would blacklist the ESN/MEID.

2\. If you've probably noticed the majority of the US is currently on CDMA
which isn't anywhere else outside of US/CA/SKorea. Taking that stolen Verizon
flip phone to Mexico gets you a brick.

In the future with a larger LTE footprint this can be effective but I'll have
to see.

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pimentel
Regarding the selling of the cellphone to a friend, you probably should change
legal ownership of the device, just like you should when selling/buying a car
from a friend.

I'd feel safer with this mobile device blacklist, and I believe there are no
issues of privacy, since we're not talking about permanent tracking of a
cellphone's location.

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pppp
Won't most of the stolen phones be sent out of the country where they will be
unaffected by this arrangement?

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mrsebastian
If this is implemented in the US, and enough privacy safeguards are put in
place, I'm sure it'll spread to the EU and then the rest of the world.

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bennysaurus
This already exists in Australia and has for years. It's as simple as getting
a police report done and ringing your phone company to get the IMEI blocked.

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AznHisoka
I found a Nexus phone, and a Droid Razor phone the past few months. Didn't
even try to see if I could use it with T-Mobile. I was just glad I got a
couple of free Androids with different screen resolutions to test my app.

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maeon3
Congress should not be concerning itself for making certain programming
functions legal and other ones illegal. The illegal action should be
identified and made illegal, not the events leading up to the illegal action.

Backspace out that line of computer code citizen, don't make me taze you.
Legislating what i can and can't do with the wires in my own device because I
_might_ be stealing the phone?

Sounds to me like a chess move to increase congressional power over the
citizens through tapping into the computer in every pocket.

~~~
mseebach
I don't see the link between your first two lines and the third. How are they
"tapping into" your phone? You do realise that your phone has a _phone
number_?

