Friday's print column
My Wednesday column focused on an extraordinary story ? the heroism of a 51-year-old Northwest Side man who chased down an alleged thief near the lakefront on July 4 after he said he saw the man victimize a woman in a pedestrian tunnel.
But the event that police say started it all was depressingly, infuriatingly ordinary ? the theft of an iPhone.
In fact Gary Dailey said he?d just slapped down the hand of a young rowdy who?d tried to grab his phone when he saw another man wrestling a phone away from the woman.
Makes perfect sense from the thieves? point of view: Just about every other person they encounter on the street is carrying if not actually brandishing a small computer that can be concealed easily during the getaway and converted quickly into a couple of hundred bucks cash.
Less subtle than pickpocketing, but a quicker score. Authorities say the fences quickly clear the phones of all their identifying data and peddle them on a secondary market, often overseas.
No wonder smartphones ? iPhones, Androids and the like ? are so often involved in crime. The Federal Communications Commission says 4 in 10 robberies in major cities? involve mobile phones.
?The epidemic of violent street crime involving the theft and resale of mobile devices is a very real and growing threat in communities all across America,? said New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman? in announcing the Secure our Smartphones Initiative, a national, multiagency effort to seek a technological solution to the problem.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan is part of that effort. ?In 2012, 1.6 million Americans were victimized in incidents related to cell phone thefts,? Madigan said a statement released by her office.
?In Chicago in recent years, there has been a rise of more than 30 percent in mobile phone thefts at public transit locations . . . It is imperative that manufacturers and wireless carriers are part of the solution.?
Yes. The problem would just about go away if a stolen smartphone could be remotely turned into an essentially worthless slab of metal, plastic and glass barely worth picking up off the ground, let alone risking jail time to grab off a victim in a public place.
?We?re not saying ?here?s the code, put it in your phones,?? said Erik Jones, Madigan?s policy director. ?We?re saying it?s possible for them to make stolen cell phones inoperable and useless.?The Initiative, which includes other attorneys general, head prosecutors, police chiefs and consumer advocates, is calling for all smart phones to be enabled with a so-called ?kill switch.?
Savvy skeptics aren?t optimistic. ?They want that magic kill switch to turn the phone into a brick so that it would need to be returned to the manufacturer to be used again,? wrote Sean Kalinich at the online news site Decrypted Tech. ?The logic seems sound and the goal is certainly laudable (but) the problem is that it is also possible to unbrick a phone if you know what you are doing.?
So it?s going to require a multipronged approach:
New software, such as Apple is introducing, to make it harder to disable and reactivate a phone.
New hardware that makes it more difficult to reassign phones to new users.
New databases, such as the national registry of stolen phones going online this year.
New laws, such as the Mobile Theft Deterrence Act introduced in May by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., that calls for a five-year prison sentence for anyone caught tampering with the identification numbers of stolen phones.
New resolve on the part of police to break up the theft rings, crack the black market and make stealing a cell phone a risky crime even when there isn?t a hero nearby.
And of course a new level of public awareness that any time you expose your smartphone in public, you might as well be flashing a fat wad of bills.
evan mathis staff sgt. robert bales jason russell norfolk state st patrick s day parade duke invisible children
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.