> Maybe I'm misunderstanding this. Do we have data on changing the battery of a stolen phone having any meaningful impact on people/society?
At least we know one boundary - in London, about 91k phones were stolen in 2022, of which a lot are expected to end up shipped to China [1] to be either parted out or its identifiers reflashed so that they can be re-sold. The true number is likely to be significantly higher, as not everyone is willing to go to the police and deal with the paperwork when someone snatched their older-issue phone on the subway when the police doesn't do shit anyway.
And the latter part is the problem. The UK could impose inspections on outgoing parcels, say to listen for Find My BTLE beacons, and China could impose the same kind of inspections on incoming parcels or shut down the companies buying up clearly stolen property. But UK politics are too busy embroiling themselves in bullshit scandals and China most likely actively wants to contribute to the growing sense of destabilisation in Western societies, so here we are.
Assume an average value of 300 € per stolen phone, and alone London's citizens and visitors experience 30 million € in damage from stolen phones alone. It's utter madness.
Parent was about "EU's 2027 requirement for user-replaceable batteries" and changing batteries on stolen phones. To be it still doesn't make sense.
Sure, stuff are stolen and resold, sometimes as part. I'm not denying it. Not sure how user-replaceable batteries will impact that in any meaningful way, especially if the world already has "Chinese criminal city for stolen phones". Do we really see an important amount of stolen batteries in lawfully owned and maintained phones to the point a DRM on batteries would benefit legit users?
Let's not assume DRM will reduce theft and criminal activities.
> Do we really see an important amount of stolen batteries in lawfully owned and maintained phones to the point a DRM on batteries would benefit legit users?
The stolen batteries have to end up somewhere and official spare part supplies are really expensive (unless you are a certified partner shop of a specific manufacturer of course), so it's most likely they end up distributed into the grey market.
If I were to decide upon a global regulation, I'd say that spare parts have to be made available under FRAND terms (so, no more preferential pricing) and all valuable components have to be reasonably e-marked, that there be a public global registry between device identifiers and associated component identifiers, and that when someone presents a proof-of-purchase plus a police report, all components get denylisted... and when a device recognizes a change in its parts, the component's identifier is checked against the global denylist. If there is a match, the device's user gets a warning, and the owner of the original device who made the theft entry gets a notification, let police do their job then.
I wonder if in the near future we all just share phones like you would a phone booth. Have devices everywhere or the capability on any device or anything electronic since it will be all wireless and connected anyway. You'd sign in via bio-metrics or some way to securely and uniquely identify yourself quickly.
How much data is on your phone? How much sensitive data is on there? Do you really want to wait to download all that crap, and run the risk of picking up a public phone that’s been set up to clone it all somewhere?
Maybe I'm misunderstanding this. Do we have data on changing the battery of a stolen phone having any meaningful impact on people/society?