The Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, has asked the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, to force all phone companies to make stolen devices “unusable bricks” in order to make them harder to sell on and less desirable to steal.
The Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, has asked the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, to force all phone companies to make stolen devices “unusable bricks” in order to make them harder to sell on and less desirable to steal.
When you create the ability to brick phones you create the ability to mass-brick phones. Imagine a totalitarian regime seeing an uprising on the horizon and bricking the phones of protesters that attended some protest. Imagine hackers or three -letter agencies getting this ability wanting to disrupt the economy of a town, city, or country. I wouldn’t be opposed to someone having software on their phone to remote brick it. I’d be surprised if something like that didn’t already exist. It’s government mandating a backdoor that’s the problem.