Gadgetory

so the story is really about these kind of legislative efforts called kill switch build their basic goal is to turn off your phone remotely and that's not just turn it off like the power that's like disable it from being able to connect to ATT or Verizon or even be able to install apps so the big piece of legislation that's coming up is this bill from California it's basically passed the Senate it's gone through committee and now it's on the Assembly floor which means it's just a couple steps away from being signed into law by the governor if it gets approved and it's basically going to require cell phone companies starting next July to provide a way to remotely wipe with a way to disable it completely and way to revert everything when you're done the other side of this is that cell phone companies do cell phone manufacturers have already kind of agreed to do this they're a part of a consortium called a ctia and they all signed something a couple months ago that basically said we are going to provide all these features anyways because it's something we need to do and so that goes into effect next July as well so you kind of have the situation now where you have these laws bumping against the self-regulation of these companies the main reason to have this kind of legislation out there is the people's phones are being stolen faster than ever millions of phones are being stolen every year a lot of not really violently people are just kind of leaving them in restaurants or bars or taxicabs and it's very easy to flip them and sell them on one side is really about consumer protection but it's also about kind of making it really simple to make these things less worthwhile to steal I think the downside right now especially within this legislation and this is something that the Electronic Frontier Foundation is kind of arguing is that if you make all these companies do something maybe a better version comes out later but they still have to comply with this law that you could theoretically have a situation where they still have to provide this and it's hindering them from really innovating as quickly also you run it as some sort of issues where maybe it costs it brings up the expense to make these devices or it kind of creates this blow in software I don't think these fears are really well founded but they're legitimate issue