Major wireless service companies have agreed to disable cellphones after they are reported stolen under a strategy intended to deter the theft and resale of wireless devices.
The system announced Tuesday relies on a centralized database that officials hope to be operating within six months. The database will record smartphones’ unique identifying numbers. That way, wireless carriers that receive a report of a stolen smartphone will be able to recognize the device and block it from being used again.
“We’re sending a message to consumers that we’ve got your back and a message to criminals that we’re cracking down on the stolen phone” market, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said in announcing the new strategy with several big-city police chiefs and a wireless industry representative.
Officials say more than 40 percent of robberies in New York City involve phones. Many of the robberies are violent, resulting in either serious injury or sometimes death, police say.
Cellphone carriers covering roughly 90 percent of U.S. subscribers are participating, the FCC said.
The goal is to render stolen cellphones useless, drying up the market for them and removing the incentive to steal them.
“What we’re announcing here today will make a stolen cellphone about as worthless as an empty wallet,” said Sen. Charles Schumer, who called smartphones “catnip for criminals” because they’re valuable, exposed and easy to steal.
Schumer is sponsoring legislation that would make it a federal crime to tamper with smartphones’ unique identifying numbers.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said cellphone thefts have been a persistent problem in the city even as other crime has dropped in the last decade. He likened the new approach to “draining the swamp to fight malaria.”
The FCC said smartphone manufacturers will also implement automatic prompts that encourage users to lock their devices with a password. The industry has also agreed to create a campaign educating consumers about how to protect their cellphones and to release quarterly updates on their progress.
Officials wouldn’t say how much the initiative would cost.
Christopher Guttman-McCabe of CTIA-The Wireless Association, an organization representing the wireless communications industry, said, “It certainly won’t be without costs, but we don’t think about cost in this context.”
“This is about safety and security,” he added.
(Source: NBC New York)
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4 Responses
This should have been done 15 years ago whats the big deal to disable the ESN of a stolen phone
They have done this in Western Europe for over 10 years. I had my phone stolen and blocked immediately. In West Europe it is illegal to change an Imei number; however they are stolen and go to eastern Europe, Ukraine, Romania, Poland etc
They can ONLY do this with CDMA phones, and NOT with GSM phones. CDMA has an ESN that can blocked. GSM uses a interchangeable SIM card. So the thief just needs a new, cheap, SIM card to reuse the phone. There is no technical means to block the GSM phone itself.
Actually, verizon and sprint use cdma technology, and each phone registers with a esn (or meid) number. And there was always such a thing as a “bad” esn number. (Which happened when reported stolen.)
But at&t and t-mobile use gsm technology, and just because the sim card was deactivated, you can just insert another sim card. But there is an IMEI number, which it also registers along with the sim card, which phone carriers pretty much ignored until now. The fcc’s database will be filled with IMEI numbers.