The Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, has asked the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, to force all phone companies to make stolen devices “unusable bricks” in order to make them harder to sell on and less desirable to steal.
No mere signal should be able to permanently render a computer unbootable, least of all remotely.
Don’t all devices have unique IDs beyond the SIM? I assume that already gets communicated, because the odds of true interchangeable anonymity seem implausible. A blacklist of devices flagged as stolen would be similarly effective and at least slightly less of a potential nightmare.
What an absolutely terrible way to deal with the problem.
Why is that?
Because it’s the police’s responsibility to stop the snatchers in the first place? Not insist that other companies make up for their lack of results.
It’s not a COMPLETELY terrible idea, I know Apple already bricks stolen phones upon request, but at the owner’s expense. It’s still the people hired to solve the problem passing the responsibility on to others.
