Tuesday, August 26, 2014

The law of universal lock: Android smartphones can provide the function of remote shutdown – RBC Daily

California Governor Jerry Brown signed a law that from July 1, 2015, in this state you can only sell smartphones with remote tripping. Operating system developers will not make a separate service for California – they run it for the world, experts say.

«California drew attention to thieves smartphones” – quoted by Time magazine’s one of the authors of the law, State Senator Mark Leno. He believes that the function of remote shutdown smartphones deprives thieves steal their stimulus, and the law will reduce street crime. Leno expects that in 2015, remote shutdown appears in all smartphones in the United States, not just in California.

The remote shutdown is in many modern smartphones, but users usually have to do it to connect and register your phone system. The law requires manufacturers to make sure that this function is forced to work on all smartphones, and record buyers in the sale, and additional efforts will now have to make to anyone who wants to take his smartphone remote system shutdown.

According to the organization Consumer Reports, in the United States in 2013 was 3.1 million theft of smartphones, down from 1.6 million the year before. According to the mayor of Oakland Jean Quan, smartphones – the purpose of 75% of all armed robberies and burglaries in the city.

For the second quarter 2014 smartphone makers put on the market 301.3 million units, of which almost 85% – model on Google’s Android, and almost 12% – iPhone from Apple. Headquarters and Google, and Apple are in California, but the new California law is addressed to manufacturers of Android-smartphone: Apple has built-in remote off all their new phones in the fall of 2013. Any iPhone, released since the site can be blocked via Apple. And after you reset the iPhone to factory settings (the first thing that makes a hypothetical thief) must be registered in the system to enter the username and password, otherwise the phone refuses to work.

A new feature in the iPhone drastically reduced the number of thefts of these gadgets. In London, during the first five months of 2014 it fell by 24% compared to the same period last year, in San Francisco – 38%, in New York – 19%, according to the office of Attorney General of New York State.

Google introduced a similar application “Remote Control Android» (Android Device Manager) before Apple, in August of 2013 – with its help you can find the location of your device if you have it somewhere forgotten. However, the user must download and install it.

Human rights activists oppose the new function. Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in an open letter criticized the California law: according to the lawyers of the organization, it is not expressly stated, is exactly who has the right to activate the remote access feature. It can take advantage of and criminals and law enforcement agencies, warned EFF.

For the sake of one of California Google is not going to do a separate version of the system with a pre-”remote control Anroid» – most likely this feature built into the system all over the world, said Mikhail Nikolaev, founder Just5. This company started with the production of phones with big buttons, and last year released a smartphone. With Nikolayev agree and lead analyst Mobile Research Group Eldar Murtazin. He says that with the help of auto-update function Smartphone through the online store Google Play will be to establish a system to remotely disable smartphones six weeks.

A Google representative in Russia has not responded to a request to RBC.

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