Sen. Schumer Reintroduces Cell Theft Deterrent Bill

Cell phones were being cloned. For those not familiar with the term, basically, you could activate the cell phone illegally, by using someone else number on your phone. That was a federal crime, too.

Not that they shouldn't try to deter, but this will not keep criminals from dong it. That's why they are criminals. They make money off of finding ways around the system.

The up side to this, it should reduce the petty juvenile crime of cell phone snatching, just because they want an iPhone.

Guess who just had their cell phone stolen and had to deal with the ace holes at Assurion..... Senator Schumer!!!

Thieves can always just unlock the phone and sell it to someone in another country.

Not buying the story that Schumer is doing this solely to benefit the consumer. How many telecom lobbyists has he met with recently?

This law seems useless because a thief can't change the IMEI until he has already stolen the phone, which is crime enough already. Why would a thief care?

Ah, but now the feds have yet another harassment tool. Did you download a phone utility? That's now a tool to commit a crime, if the feds feel like threatening you with another BS charge to bully you into pleading guilty to something else.

I don't know if the title of this bill is an accurate one. This seems incredible hard to enforce, as mentioned before few people check to see if the hardware and software match. Furthermore I think a court would have a hard time proving that the person who has the phone is the one who altered it. One other thing to add, with the increasing number of phones wihtout removable batteries, it makes it even more difficult to check the hardware to verify matching nubmers. A nobel effort by Mr. Schumer, but I think it falls short when it comes to the matters mentioned above.