Smartphones’ remote shutdowns would reduce robberies, Lanier says

By Clarence Williams and Cecilia Kang,
WashPost
Published: February 10

Police chiefs everywhere say that smartphone robberies are rocketing. They’ve offered cash rewards, set up decoy crews in subway stations and urged iPhone owners to be wary.

But the robberies keep coming. Now, police in the Washington area and elsewhere are expressing their frustration in plain terms, publicly asking regulators and wireless-network operators to allow stolen devices to be shut down remotely through unique identification numbers within them.

That could make it less likely that robbers would point a gun at a victim, knock someone down or grab a smartphone from a Metro rider, officials say, because the device’s resale value would plummet. “This is a national issue,” D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said Friday at a news conference. “We have done all we can at the local level.”

Lanier — who says electronics-related crimes has “clobbered” her department — wants wireless companies to use existing technology to let people who report stolen phones ask their service providers to shut them down using IMEI numbers, a unique registration akin to a fingerprint.

(More here.)