Under the pretext of safety, will come tyranny.
A New York congressman is proposing legislation that would require kill switches to be installed in smart phones. The bill comes under the pretense that it would increase safety from theft, but opponents of the bill say that it could subject people to hackers or terrorists.
California and Illinois state lawmakers are considering similar legislation, proposing bills to require kill switches in phones, while mobile carriers are opposing the mandatory changes, allegedly because doing so might cut into sales of replacement phones.
New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton said “The elephant in the room is all about corporate greed, profit, that’s what this is all about – they’re making 30, 40 billion dollars a year on new phone sales,” he said.
The cell phone industry is disputing that, claiming that it has to do with security issues. Hackers could misuse the switches. And Apple has already introduced security features such as “Find my iPhone” as well as “Activation Lock,” which can make a phone useless when stolen.
The government has absolutely zero business interfering with the private property of our citizens. Smartphone kill switches have nothing to do with government security and so there is no reason for this type of legislation considering that private companies already offer this feature voluntarily. This is merely another attempt at an unconstitutional power grab by the government in our private lives and our commercial transactions.
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