Proposed California Law Would Mandate Smartphone Kill Switch 252
Posted
by
timothy
from the kill-kill-kill dept.
from the kill-kill-kill dept.
alphadogg writes "Kill-switch technology that can render a lost or stolen smartphone useless would become mandatory in California under a new bill that will be proposed to the state legislature in January. The bill will be introduced by Senator Mark Leno, a Democrat representing San Francisco and neighboring towns, and George Gascón, the district attorney for San Francisco. Gascón has been spearheading a push by major law-enforcement agencies across the U.S. for more to be done to prevent smartphone theft. The proposed law could reach well beyond the borders of California. Because of the difficulty and added cost of producing handsets solely for sale in California, it could serve to make kill-switch technology a standard feature on phones sold across the U.S."
California (Score:2, Insightful)
It's amazing how these retards affect everything that is sold the in the US.
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Texas determines about half the school books used in the USA. California determines the other half.
Potential of misuse of the Kill Switch (Score:5, Insightful)
The law, as I understand it, is to allow the authority, to issue a command to render a particular smartphone totally unusable.
However, the same law could be misused by the authority as well (think of what NSA is doing, for example) - instead of killing a smartphone that has been reported stolen, the authority could issue a kill command to smartphones that are being used by "dissidents", cutting off their communication lines.
Do not ever forget that inside the NSA datacenter they have all the information of who is using what phone, who calls whom and when and how often and where they call from, etc.
Right now, without the KILL SWITCH, all they could do is to LISTEN IN to the communications of people. With KILL SWITCH, they could kill off all the communication channels of the anti-NSA people, and render them totally unable to communicate with the world.
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It's amazing how these retards affect everything that is sold the in the US.
A small group in Miami determine whether you can buy Havana Club Rum or legally lie in the beach in Varadero.
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No Americans is a feature of laying on the beach in Varadero. If the US let it's citizens go, Cuba would lose that edge. ;-)
No... (Score:5, Insightful)
On the surface one might thing âoeThatâ(TM)s a great idea, it would make stolen phone useless!â
But beyond the idea that eventually hackers would find a path around such measures, it also opens the door to abuse by âoeLaw Enforcementâ, who are notoriously unable to police themselves from both breaking the law and abusing the privileges they have been given.
Re:No... (Score:5, Funny)
On the surface one might thing âoeThatâ(TM)s a great idea, it would make stolen phone useless!â
But beyond the idea that eventually hackers would find a path around such measures, it also opens the door to abuse by âoeLaw Enforcementâ, who are notoriously unable to police themselves from both breaking the law and abusing the privileges they have been given.
"Oh, you found your missing phone, which you thought was stolen, so we bricked it. Certainly we can unbrick it - for a modest fee of $85 - MUAH HA HA HA HAAAAAAH! Oh, pardon I dribbled a bit at the thought of extracting this fee for 5 seconds work. Excuse me while I get a mop and a bucket."
Nah, it wouldn't be abused.
Re:No... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm getting sick of CA putting out rules and "standards" that spread to other states that don't want/need them.
Re:No... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now you know how the rest of the planet feels about the US...
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More importantly...
I'm getting sick of CA putting out rules and "standards" that spread to other states that don't want/need them.
California has a big enough market that they can mostly get away with it. It would be interesting to see what
would happen if companies called their bluff and just skipped the california market. I'm assuming in certain
areas there are already a lot of items that are not being sold in California but what if the big companies like
Nokia, Samsung, etc... just decided not to comply and skipped the California market. One of these days they
are going to pass a law that's too hard to comply with and companies are g
Re:No... (Score:4, Insightful)
So you're for "State's Rights", but only for the states you like.
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What in the world would make you think that outside of ignorance of state's rights. The feds are constitutionally empowered to regulate commerce between the states. State's rights is about keeping the feds out of areas they are not constitutionally supposed to be in, not empowering states above the constitution.
California is more than capable of placing restrictions and requirements on commerce conducted withing its borders as long as it doesn't favor local companies over other US companies. The problem of
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/sarcasm Yeah! damn California and their emissions rules. If they hadn't passed regulations in cali, the auto manufacturers wouldn't have had to change, and my car would still get 15m/gal! Etc etc etc... Damn California! Not to mention all those things that cause cancer in California... but not in other states.
There's a lot wrong with Cali, but all the rules and regulations that have come out of there have been to everyone's benefit. Why do people keep criticizing the very people who are helping them?
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I was on a website and they just basically said everything they sold contained substances known to cause cancer to the state of California.
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What happens if, for example, Kansas proposes law which mandates NO kill switch on smartfones?
Re:No... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Oh, you found your missing phone, which you thought was stolen, so we bricked it. Certainly we can unbrick it - for a modest fee of $85 - MUAH HA HA HA HAAAAAAH! Oh, pardon I dribbled a bit at the thought of extracting this fee for 5 seconds work. Excuse me while I get a mop and a bucket.""
That might be their ideal intent, but it ain't gonna happen.
The reason is this: the only way to do a "kill switch" reliably, which can't be bypassed, is to truly brick the phone, beyond repair. Anything else, and hack solutions to un-brick would be available for free in 2 weeks.
Aaaaaannnddd... to illustrate the true idiocy of this idea: if they do implement "remote kill", hacks to do THAT will also be available soon for free. So thousands if not millions will be able to kiss their phones goodbye because someone who doesn't like them pulls a malicious prank.
Re:No... (Score:5, Interesting)
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"You don't have to brick it. Other countries use a blacklist of IMEI numbers. Phone theft has decreased because stolen phones won't be able to connect to any mobile networks. Yeah, there are various workarounds and hacks but it's not intended to stop smart people."
But that's a completely different subject. Blocking an IMEI number has nothing to do with a "remotely programmable" device.
Re:No... (Score:5, Insightful)
Each phone has an IMEI burned into it's hardware. This IMEI and the phone number are transmitted to the cell tower every time you communicate. All IMEIs for a given carrier are whitelisted. What the system does is remove the IMEI of stolen phones from the whitelist. A hacker would have to change the IMEI of the phone to another one on the whitelist. This may be trivial or hard based on the hardware, but such systems have been active in Australia for 20 years now, and the market for stolen phones is still non existent.
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So your IMEI database has every GSM network in the world? Or do tourists have to register their phones before they can roam? What about tourists who want a prepaid SIM for the duration of their stay - do they now need to register their physical phone too? If you drop your phone and break the screen, you can't just take the SIM out and put it in another GSM phone, you need a different working phone to call your carrier and have that phone added to this white list?
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If the source of the list is all the IMEI numbers issued to manufacturers, then probably yes, they do have all the numbers in the world.
Anyway, if a tourist roams onto a foreign GSM network, the phone calls home to authenticate on its home telco's Home Location Register.
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"... the phone calls home to authenticate on its home telco's Home Location Register."
Unless it's an unlocked phone, in which case it can be made to show anywhere as it's "home location".
GSM phones were intended to be international in nature. All you need is a local SIM card and some service software for the phone, which is available online.
Re:No... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or do tourists have to register their phones before they can roam? What about tourists who want a prepaid SIM for the duration of their stay - do they now need to register their physical phone too?
Yes. That's what the IMEI is for. When you connect to a new network, the phone registers its IMEI with that network. That allows the network to connect the handset-identity to your sim-identity. Without that, the network would be unable to connect your phone across cells.
You've got it backwards. The IMEI list is black, not white. If you report your phone stolen, the IMEI for that phone goes on the blacklist. When a phone connects to any network, it reports its IMEI. The network can then check against a black-list of stolen phones and if it's on the list either refuse to connect the handset, or report information to the police who track down the phone. The former is what happens in my country, which slashed the rates of stolen phones. The latter seems more useful in the US, where phones have mandatory GPS.
[BTW, phone networks opposed the black-list idea in this country, so I presume that's why California introduced the kill-switch plan, to push the burden onto international manufacturers rather than domestic networks.]
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No, I did not get it backwards. the post I replied to said:
I would have expected a blacklist, but the poster said they used a whitelist (wherever that poster is) and hence I asked about the implications of that given what I perceive to be the many benefits inherent to GSM.
Even scarier than hackers (Score:2)
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Depends. the iOS 7 kill switch seems fairly effective - though it has an interesting side effect -some people have "found" lost phones and being locked out, gives them no way to actually return the phone.
And why would law enforcement want
Watch (Score:5, Insightful)
The crackers will figure out how to trigger the remote kill switch without your authorization, bricking thousands if not millions of phones.
Or the goobernmint will...
Re:Watch (Score:5, Insightful)
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They aren't going to kill cell phones for such an event.
First they would have to know the phone number of each participant, and if they had that information they would learn more by simply tapping the phone.
If they wanted to shut it down, they would do what the Secret Service does.
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-02-01/news/36806310_1_jam-signals-cellantenna-federal-agencies [washingtonpost.com]
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Well, jamming is not an option in occupy Wall Street. Just imagine the damage to the economy if the spongers inside couldn't make phone calls.
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Well, considering the cost incurred, the ones inside were much worse.
And no, I put the police on the bill of the people "inside". It's not like the ones "outside" asked for them.
Re:Watch (Score:4, Insightful)
The crackers will figure out how to trigger the remote kill switch without your authorization, bricking thousands if not millions of phones.
Or the goobernmint will...
Incoming text: Send me $100 dollars or I'll freeze your phone.
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all the government has to do is turn off the cell towers. A kill switch is a mute point.
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all the government has to do is turn off the cell towers. A kill switch is a mute point.
I see what you did there.
Re:Watch (Score:5, Interesting)
except the kill switch could also disable video recording and picture taking. quickly followed by loud yells in the background "stop resisting stop resisting"
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Pessimist! You mean other governments could learn from the Arab spring?
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The crackers will figure out how to trigger the remote kill switch without your authorization, bricking thousands if not millions of phones.
Or the goobernmint will...
The government wants to track you, and record your calls, and your cell phone makes that easy.
Why would they decide to kill that when it is worth so much more to them when its working?
Re:Watch (Score:5, Informative)
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Counter question: Why should they turn down the opportunity for even more control?
There are times when you not being able to make a call is more valuable than tracking you and listening to you. If I know where you are, and if I know that you will most likely just call for support, my primary goal turns to you not being able to do that.
So, (Score:2, Funny)
It has come to this.
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It has come to this.
Quite so. Quite so.
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Oh c'mon, xkcd killed that phrase. Here's a new one for you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qYbVQu7YAQ [youtube.com]
Bookmark it. It's incredibly valuable in any kind of geek discussion. Not only does it fit nearly any time, people will for some odd reason think that you actually got something to say.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZfU9olGiiE&t=12m20s [youtube.com]
And the other uses for this are? (Score:5, Interesting)
Very uaseful for law enforcement to kill the smartphones of anyone they consider problematic, like leaders of streets protests or occupy movements.
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Re:And the other uses for this are? (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny how the propaganda machine skews things. I bet you never visited a camp and actually talked to the people... naa. You probably just listened to a bunch of phony reporters on TV talking shit, combined with cherry-picked sound bites. I spent two weeks sleeping on the sidewalk of Manhattan starting on September 17th, while working full time over in Jersey. I'll be the first to tell you, there was a share of people who are a little bit loony, but you'll find them at any protest. On the other hand, I've never met so many people who were in touch with what is going on in our country and in our world. Compared to the average American slob who does nothing but work, shop, and watch TV, these people actually saw the world for what it was, were disgusted, and were willing to make sacrifices to get out and find concensus among their fellow citizens and discuss the real problems our society faces and try to improve things. If you think that is counter-productive, I hope you like what you get for sitting on your ass and doing nothing until election day when you get to choose which lying bastard you want to get blamed for all the bad things that happen to you while the real crooks get away with murder behind the veil.
Re:And the other uses for this are? (Score:5, Interesting)
From my perspective it was mostly about finding consensus. It was a great opportunity to talk to completely random people from a variety of demographics about the issues we care about as individuals, which are different for each person (as opposed to issues the media wants to push, or use as a distraction). A lot of people made a point about what our demands were, or what our direction was. The truth is, it was never about demands, and our only universal goal really was to reach out to our fellow citizens and establish that if you are worried about the direction our nation is heading in, you are not alone! I think our biggest problem as a nation is apathy. The government can kill American citizens with drone strikes, covertly archive all our personal communication, take natural resources and allow corrupt monopolies to form around them, waste trillions of dollars, preserve crooked business institutions, incarcerate more people than any other country in the world, and flat out lie to it's people, and we just shrug our shoulders and say, "Oh well..." The Occupy Movement was one of our biggest opportunities in a while to get together and affirm that we do care, and that if things head south, the people do have the power to change things. I think that was our greatest accomplishment. As far as government policy goes, I don't think the movement changed all too much, but if you look back, the womens' suffrage and civil rights movement didn't reach their goals overnight either. People have been fighting for gay marraige for years. These things take a long time. One day, the government will behave and listen to it's people again, but it won't happen overnight.
Another thing I noticed is that the camp also served as a training ground for the next generation of activists. A lot of the young people came out to participate (possibly because of the Anonymous affiliation) who had never participated in political activism in person before. If you are not familiar with the environment of a political protest that the local and federal institutions dread, you can find yourself in serious trouble very quick. First of all, where there are crowds, there are thieves. On top of that there are hundreds of cops that will not lift a finger for you if you are in need of help. There are spies, undercovers and sometimes agent provocateurs. People get very connected to their cause and are willing to make extreme choices, sometimes en-masse. You need to be aware of the groupthink, and look out for potential problems, because riots or stampedes can occur almost spontaneously. All it takes is an idiot cop to start pepper spraying (or in NY, for the police to pull out the orange mass-arrest nets) or a riot squad to start shoving a large crowd of people, or some idiot to attack the cops and give them an excuse for an all out brawl. I think a lot of people joined in thinking it would be all fun and games, and came out ready to handle themselves in the next political uprising.
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dumbass
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As opposed to you which did nothing but bitch about somebody else doing something?
They helped raised awareness which is more then what you have done.
Canada has similar (Score:5, Informative)
We went a similar but different direction in Canada, rather than killing the phone there's a list of IMEIs for stolen phones, and all carriers will honour not allowing phones in the database on to their networks. Which this solution sounds little less onerous than re-engineering every handset OS to have this kill ability.
Also the phone doesn't actually have to be turned on to be blacklisted, how often will you send the "kill" pings out when stolen? Would a thief simply have to wait a few weeks until the heat dies down?
We have devices that register with networks when activated, isn't it far easier to wait for that event than to try and push a command to a phone that may never be turned on again?
Reference:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/stolen-phones-blacklist-launches-in-canada-1.1873674 [www.cbc.ca]
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Right, exactly, which makes me wonder if there isn't some other purpose to this bill.
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Like extending the government's Internet Kill Switch to cell phones...
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Well, yeah.
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What surprises me is - this same IMEI blacklist is already in use in the USA. At the very least, AT&T uses it.
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I think they may only use this to blacklist phones with overdue bills, and also there would be nothing stopping someone from putting a T-Mobile SIM in.
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You can use another carriers SIM if all you want is voice, text and edge. 2G and newer are generally frequency locked to your carrier. The exception are multi-band phones, which you never get from a carrier.
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They blacklist the SIM if your account is overdue, or is a pre-pay account with no credit on it.
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How widely are those lists shared (hint: not much)? I don't mean between carriers in a given country, but internationally.
So I report my brand new XYZ as stolen to my carrier... even if 100% blocked here, there are still ~190 other countries where it can be sold & used.
Too bad it isn't honoured by all carriers (Score:3)
http://www.iphoneincanada.ca/news/iphone-thief-off-the-hook-due-to-privacy-laws/ [iphoneincanada.ca]
Telus seems to ignore the blacklist, at least at this time.
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Stolen phones are often shipped out of the country.
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Stolen phones are often shipped out of the country
Exactly right. The company I work for recently recovered a stolen S4 in the Dominican Republic.
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I think a lot of the stolen handsets end up overseas.
Better to track (Score:2)
Person who got phone stolen gets their phone back.
Person who stole it gets arrested, and often with other stolen items.
Th
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Personally, I think the police have far more important things to do than track your cell phone and recover it. If not, then you need less cops. I mean, they didn't care about the thousands of dollars worth of stuff robbed from my apartment, or expensive tools stole from my truck, why should they care about your cheaper cell phone?
Get insurance on your phone, fuck the police.
What worries me... (Score:2)
I mean, is this a thing? Is cell phone theft so rampant and costly that mandatory kill switches are a viable solution?
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No surprise there. Take someone's wallet and you get what? 20? 50? Maybe if you're really, really lucky, 100 bucks.
Take his smartphone and you got at least 100 bucks worth of loot to sell.
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I just wonder if kill switches will help the matter, or if iPhones will just be parted out. Just the screen is $175, and that is on eBay because Apple doesn't have replacements yet. The other components will also be useful, be it the rest of the case, speaker, battery, etc.
Even if the device is completely and utterly bricked, either by a remote erase command (and not able to be activated due to needing the AppleID), or via the GSM/LTE network, the fence who gets the phone will be able to make at least $20
Federal Communication Commision (Score:5, Interesting)
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Federal Communication Commision regulates cell phones. Federal law preempts state law. Any California law could be nulified by the FCC.
Federal Law only pre-empts state law when there is a contradiction. Is there a federal law that specifically says cell phones must not have a remote killswitch?
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Federal Communication Commision regulates cell phones. Federal law preempts state law. Any California law could be nulified by the FCC.
Federal Law only pre-empts state law when there is a contradiction. Is there a federal law that specifically says cell phones must not have a remote killswitch?
The endgame of this legislation for totalitarian-loving legislators is that ultimately that's what will happen - they propose onerous conditions on the manufacturers and carriers who can't say no to the 12th largest market [1] in the world (probably even more important for cell phones), who then complain and ask the Feds to step in and propose their own laws that supersede the CA law, which then requires their client states and treaty members to follow along (for those nice economic treaties mandating match
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Riiiight.
So every state based EPA is nullified by the existence of the federal EPA?
No... California can (and often does say) "in order to sell X within this state, you must meet the following requirements..."
More often than not you hear of "California emissions" compliance, or even a label on a laptop charger that says "this product contains lead, a substance that is known to the government of California to cause birth defects".
Alas, many states do the same... and so long as they don't run counter federal l
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Does the FCC know? Sometimes it seems they only have a very hazy idea where their boundaries are and when they overstep them...
No Go (Score:3)
So, who has control over this "kill switch?"
Because if the answer is anything other than "you, the person who owns the device, and nobody else," then you can go ahead and shove that kill-switch up your corn-shooter.
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I don't know who's supposed to have that control, but I sure will find how to hack it via bluetooth or Wifi!
Just enough reach for the cars around mine.
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You own a cellphone? Really? Please inform me of the magical phone and carrier where this is possible!
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T-Mobile. They dropped subsidized contracts entirely. It's all month-to-month, at lower rates than before at that.
Now, you can finance a phone through them too. But it's handled as just that: you're financing your phone. The financing's separate from the service and broken out separately on your bill, the only connection being that if you cancel service you have to pay off the balance of the loan for your phone. You don't have to finance, you can pay for your new phone in full up-front or pop the new SIM in
Oh great, now what am I going to do? (Score:2)
I had millions of "KILL YOUR SMARTPHONE" bumper stickers ready to ship. Now what?
Business (Score:2)
This is going to put all those "Cash for Your Stolen Phone" places out of business. I guess we'll just have to make due with the "Cash for Your Stolen Gold" places.
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If it was stolen from you, then how is it that you have it to sell?
Big ol' Whoo-
Hey! That fucker stole the rest of my whoosh!
Damn you, Princeofcups!
We are very sorry... (Score:4, Insightful)
...but the foo cell phone contains a component, which violates one of our patents. Therefore we demand, that all foo cell phones are disabled immediately.
Imagine! (Score:2)
Imagine!
Not needed. (Score:3)
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In Australia they just have a list of stolen phones distributed to the carriers, and they block the phone from network access based on the phone's IMEI.
Yes but that would make logical sense. There's a couple drawbacks to that solution, to be honest, but they are far more minor than the obvious problems with the kill-switch approach. For one, phones can still be sold out of country (although I suspect that's a VERY small market for stolen phones). For another, many phones currently don't have a built-in ID, it's contained on a removable chip so a thief could just swap it out or remove it entirely. So if anything, maybe we should mandate a non-removable unique ID for each phone, a government registry of phones which have been reported lost/stolen, and a law mandating carriers NOT allow listed phones to be activated.
BTW, I understand the theft of mobile phones in Australia dropped dramatically after this system was introduced, so while there may be ways around the law, they are probably beyond the capabilities of your average street thug.
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It's already illegal to change the IMEI number of a phone. It's not supposed to be able to be changed. If you remove the number from a phone, it won't be be able to register on the network anyway.
In USA it can give you 5 years in jail.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:S.3186.IS [loc.gov]:
It's illegal just to possess hardware or software that is capable of doing it.
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For another, many phones currently don't have a built-in ID,
Every handset has a mandatory IMEI. If a thief has the ability to change the IMEI on a handset, then they can avoid being bricked anyway. (How else does the carrier know which handset to brick if not the IMEI?) So a system based on an IMEI blacklist is precisely as useful as an system based on an IMEI brick list, but without the potential for irreversible mistakes.
Did we already forget... (Score:5, Interesting)
There was an article about this less than a month ago in the huffington post... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/20/iphone-kill-switch_n_4308924.html [huffingtonpost.com]
Too easy to kill all (Score:3)
UPDATE PhoneList
SET KillPhoneIndicator = "Y"
Oops. Forgot the WHERE clause
Ulterior motivation? (Score:4, Insightful)
Dare I hope that this law will contain specific text prohibiting service providers from abusing this for contract issues or nonpayment? Naaaah, that would be asking too much of our corporate overlords and their paid^H^H^H^Helected cronies....
wait 3 years 'til the phones cost nothing (Score:2, Insightful)
Plain stupid
In 3 years the phones will cost nothing so there will be no reason to steal a phone [*]
What will matters would be data on those phone.
Kill switch will be the perfect target for hackers/terrorists.
[*] Of course there still will be phone with a fruit logo on it that would still cost $$$$. But who cares ? If that matters we could force all vendors to adopt the same logo to confuse the thieves.
Really? (Score:2)
Is cell phone theft so rampant in california so they HAVE to step in with legislation? I don't get this.
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Half of all muggings apparently. Probably not any higher than other places though.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Informative)
Pretty much. There's a lot of muggings and thefts (I believe the majority) done solely to grab the victim's cel phone. The thieves don't care about cash (not enough of it these days to be worth it) or credit cards (too easily traced), but ditch the SIM card and a modern smartphone's worth several hundred dollars in a package that fits conveniently in a pocket. They're also hard for the police to trace quickly: most people don't know their phone's IMEI, and by the time they go to the carrier and have the carrier report it the phone's probably in the hands of an unwitting phone-store customer who has no clue it was stolen.
The only way to stop this is to make it so that a stolen phone's useless and the fences and phone stores know it. Right now the phone stores don't worry too much about questionable merchandise because the cops can't prove the store knew it was stolen and the phones are still usable so they won't suffer any backlash from customers. Fences will take the phones because they know they can launder them and sell them. The kill switch changes the calculus: phone stores and other resellers know they're the ones who'll catch the flak when phones they sold start getting bricked because they were stolen, that'll make it too costly for them to take a chance on questionable merchandise. Fences won't take them if there's no market for the fence to sell them off to. And the muggers will quickly stop targeting stuff once their fences won't give them any money for it.
another thing to consider (Score:2)
A mechanism that can kill cell phones, known to local police forces, and presumably to cellular service providers and probably others, might be very interesting to criminals and foreign powers, as a way to increase chaos and reduce response during a major crime or terrorist event. And you know that eventually the code or technique or whatever will eventually fall into criminal or enemy hands. It's too good a secret not to sell to someone. So, never mind trusting our government not to use this for nefario
Why are you so behind USA? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why not just mandate the carriers participate in international IMEI black lists?
It doesn't stop the phone working, just means it can't connect to the network.
Still has the effect of lowering the value of a stolen phone.
A switch isn't needed (Score:3)
Every single cell phone has a unique ID code associated with it. Simply require the cell phone provider industry to create a shared database that would contain the this ID code of all stolen phones and make it illegal to activate a phone on this list.
The cell phone provider industry doesn't want to do this because a stolen phone means they might get a new service contract with the thief while selling the victim a new phone (which almost always extends the existing contract). Doing anything about stolen cell phones is lost revenue to them.
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Agreed! Add to the list car, laptop, stereo, television, tablet, shoe and cheeseburger manufacturers!
Demand a kill switch for any purchasable device which can be stolen... now where did I put my pen so I can write my Congressperson... wait it's gone! If only it had a kill switch!