London Mayor Boris Johnson has signed on to a smartphone anti-theft initiative recently launched by top law enforcement officials in New York and San Francisco. He is the first official outside of the U.S. to join the effort pushing for major smartphone makers to include technology that would render a smartphone useless if it's lost or stolen.
Like New York and San Francisco, smartphone thefts are a major problem in London and account for a large portion of serious street crime: Around 10,000 phones are stolen each month in the U.K. capital, while roughly half of all robberies in New York and San Francisco involve smartphones.
In an effort to curb the thefts, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón formed the "Secure Our Smartphones" initiative.
It is pushing Apple, Samsung, Google and Microsoft to design systems into their phones that permanently disable a phone, or "brick" it, so that stolen handsets cannot be re-used and thus removing the incentive to steal them.
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