New York asks wireless carriers why they oppose antitheft switch: NYT

[Wireless News]

(Reuters) - New York State attorney general is investigating why American cellphone carriers are yet to support antitheft software on Samsung smartphones, raising questions about possible coordination among the biggest carriers, the New York Times reported. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sent letters to top executives of AT&T Inc, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, T-Mobile US Inc and U.S. Cellular, seeking information about their decision to prevent Samsung from featuring a "kill switch" in carrier-approved smartphones, the newspaper said. "If carriers are colluding to prevent theft-deterrent features from being pre-installed on devices as means to sell more insurance products, they are doing so at the expense of public safety and putting their customers in danger," Schneiderman said in a statement, the New York Times reported. (http://r.reuters.com/xux35v) Schneiderman's office and the five carriers could not be reached for comment by Reuters outside of regular U.S. business hours.



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[elisa191]

The big reason why is MONEY!

Its the reason that Samsung invests no money in developing a security feature for changing the meid like Motorola does.

MONEY!

If they add the KILL SWITCH it does 3 things

1 - Costs more money which makes it harder for the carriers to sell

2 - Gives Samsung something to advertise as a full proof way to protect your phone killing revenue for existing security apps (I know sprint and Verizon both have one)

3 - How long would it last before there was a workaround for it anyhow

Apple has this for all iDevices but the big difference is that the USER implements it - It isn't mandated by apple or the state

On android phones there are plenty of encryption apps that "Kill" the phone and wipe all user data so the state has no claim that it harms the user

The state is way over reaching

Whats new

elisa191