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Comment by discardorama | Hacker News Reader

You're not considering the second-order effects. Sure, the law in Cali says police must do X, Y and Z before killing the phones. But the phones already have the kill switch; and, because of convenience, all phones sold in the country will have this kill switch. Now what's to prevent the police in, say, Ferguson MO to just nuke everyone's phones in a region? California law doesn't apply in MO, and the police there will be free to do whatever they want with this switch.

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Counter-argument: If what you're saying is really how the law works, then why is CA attempting to pass this at all? By your logic, if they don't pass it then they can use it all they want, but if they do pass it then there are restrictions.

The entire reason for attempting to pass a law like this is because it's assumed it would be illegal for the police to do it without a law passed specifically saying they're allowed to (Like everything else). If the police in MO did this, they'd have tons of lawsuits against them.

The argument is that they would have to pass the law first to compel the manufacturers to implement the switch in every phone. Then any other agency outside that law's jurisdiction can take advantage of the presence of the switch with little oversight.

It would still likely result in lawsuits anywhere it was used regardless of the law.

That doesn't explain why the bill includes all the restrictions on government, though. If the aim was to empower government, they could simply have been omitted.

I haven't seen anyone claim the bill empowers the government implementing the law beyond what it states.

The bill includes restrictions on the government at the level that falls within the jurisdiction of the law. The argument is what about jurisdictions that have no such law nor restrictions and take advantage of the existing hardware feature?

If we're talking Federal law then what you say makes sense, but as far as I know this is about a state law.

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.

Personally, I just read the Bill a bit closer, and this is right in section 2.b.1:

"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.

The top post is devoted to a discussion of those second-order effects. I'm pointing out that it ignores some rather significant checks upon government's use of this.

the police there will be free to do whatever they want with this switch.

Why, do they not have any law about interfering with communications in MO? If not, why hasn't cellphone service been shut down there already?

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