This post was on the RenounceUScitizenship blog.
The Most Ridiculous Law of 2013 (So Far): It Is Now a Crime to Unlock Your Smartphone – Derek Khanna – The Atlantic theatlantic.com/business/archi…
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) January 28, 2013
When I first read this article I thought it was a joke. This is so crazy that I still can’t decide. Has the US gone completely out of its mind? This reminds me of Mr. FBAR.
What do you think?
According to the article:
This is now the law of the land:
ADVISORY
BY DECREE OF THE LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS
IT SHALL HENCEFORCE BE ORDERED THAT AMERICANS SHALL NOT UNLOCK THEIR OWN SMARTPHONES.
PENALTY: In some situations, first time offenders may be fined up to $500,000, imprisoned for five years, or both. For repeat offenders, the maximum penalty increases to a fine of $1,000,000, imprisonment for up to ten years, or both.*
That’s right, starting this weekend it is illegal to unlock new phones to make them available on other carriers.
I have deep sympathy for any individual who happens to get jail time for this offense. I am sure that other offenders would not take kindly to smartphone un-lockers.
But seriously: It’s embarrassing and unacceptable that we are at the mercy of prosecutorial and judicial discretion** to avoid the implementation of draconian laws that could implicate average Americans in a crime subject to up to a $500,000 fine and up to five years in prison.
If people see this and respond, well no one is really going to get those types of penalties, my response is: Why is that acceptable? While people’s worst fears may be a bit unfounded, why do we accept a system where we allow such discretionary authority? If you or your child were arrested for this, would it comfort you to know that the prosecutor and judge could technically throw the book at you? Would you relax assuming that they probably wouldn’t make an example out of you or your kid? When as a society did we learn to accept the federal government having such Orwellian power? And is this the same country that used jury nullification against laws that it found to be unjust as an additional check upon excessive government power? [The only silver lining is that realistically it’s more likely that violators would be subject to civil liability under Section 1203 of the DMCA, instead of the fine and jail penalties, but this is still unacceptable (but anyone who accepts payments to help others unlock their phones would clearly be subject to the fine of up to $500,000 and up to five years in jail).]
Forget FBAR, FATCA, and citizenship-based taxation without representation. Would anybody in their right mind even imagine that such a law exists? Would anybody imagine that the penalties could be so draconian?
You would have to “brave” indeed and sacrifice your freedom to live in the “land of the free and the home of the brave”. Maybe this was the reason that Tina Turner realized that U.S. citizenship was not NOT “simply the best” or NOT “better than all the rest“.
I thought it only applied to phones under contract aka phones that you really don’t own but are renting. If you buy a phone and then find a carrier, you should be able to do what you want in terms of rooting it.
Rooting/unlocking a phone simply allows you to dispense with apps that a carrier pushes on you b/c the phone really belongs to them. Of course, it makes it easier to steal and prevents a carrier from bricking it in case of theft.
*They could use these new draconian laws to ensnare people they’re trying to catch for something else. Another question I have is whether such a law could be enforced on a U.S. citizen living abroad. Is it a law based on the law of the land or based on the mere fact that the suspect was a U.S. citizen??
Where I live, there are loads of second-hand cell phone dealers who’ll routinely unlock your mobile for a small fee. In fact, I’m sure people can download special codes online. Caveat Emptor!!
From the bible (Exodus 21:24) “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot”
The US seems to have lost track of this ancient principle of justice that the punishment should be proportional to the offence. Look at what they did to Aaron Swartz.
@Johnson, Exactly.
The most distinguishing characteristic of the United States is not the clichés freedom, opportunity or diversity, but a culture of excessive punishment mixed with unusually high patriotism. I think this culture originates from the Puritans but it inexplicably persists in modern secular society. This explains, for example, the monstrous strength of the IRS, taxation based on citizenship, frequent lawsuits, draconian penalties for various offenses, surreal fines, civil forfeiture, highest incarceration rate in the world by far, tight control of legal drugs, the war on illegal drugs, the war on terror, the disproportional military. None of these things exist in other countries, or at least not nearly with the same intensity as in the US.
Monalisa, it only applies to customers of US carriers. Even so, the only way your carrier would know you performed a jailbreak on your phone is if you had to show it to them again for some reason – repair or upgrading to a newer phone. If you hold onto it for the life of the contract, the phone is then yours anyway.
It’s dumb legislation. Most people never do more with their phones than install pointless apps. Even though it’s relatively easy to root a phone, who actually goes to the trouble? But it is evidence of how govt caters to businesses who enjoy monopolies and want to increase their stranglehold.
@ShadowRaider, what would make you think it is Puritanism that would lead to such laws? Honestly, I’d like to see your justification for that notion.
I have another idea. Have you ever heard of putting a fence around the Torah? This is the idea that one puts many small rules in place in order to avoid violating the big law. Doesn’t that explain Form 8938, FBAR and FATCA? And what crime is someone committing if they unlock a telephone? None really. But it is the behaviors that come after owning an unlocked phone that one wishes to prevent.
Obviously, the USA is a very diverse country and there is unlikely going to be a single over-arching cause but rather many causes together which result in the prevailing use of law to try to manipulate behavior.
I own a phone that I unlocked a few years ago. My question is if this crime is extra-territorially applied to US persons and whether it has an unlimited statute of limitations.
Are you hearing this Fed lurkers? I defy you. I HAVE AN UNLOCKED PHONE WHICH I UNLOCKED WHILE STILL A US PERSON.
Now, everyone, if I get droned or kidnapped at night, you know why.
*I was thinking that they could try to use such draconian laws as a means of catching people out so they could more easily arrested on a technicality.
Yeah. Land of the free, indeed. (sigh)
Well, chalk that up to another little reason why they can just take my passport and kiss my ass.
And north of the 49th the idea is that consumers should be able to unlock cell phones on reasonable terms.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/crtc-unveils-new-draft-code-for-wireless-carriers/article7910199/
When laws have punishments that don’t fit the crime when breaking them (either way) people will flout them.
@Bubblebustin
You are correct.
But there is a second problem. There are so many laws that every person is in violation of something. “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime”. Point is that crossing into the US makes one an “instant criminal”
Conclusions:
1. The best way for the government to reduce crime would be to reduce the number of laws.
2. The best way to ensure compliance with the laws would be for the laws to be reasonable and necessary.
3. The best way to ensure respect for the law would be to have penalties that actually fit the the “so called” crime.
@Petros, I don’t know if it’s because of the Puritans, it was just my guess. I have a perception that Puritans were self-righteous, but this may be an incorrect stereotype. Perhaps you can explain it to me.
I know very well the concept of building a fence around the Torah. But the smaller rules always carry lower penalties than the main law around which they are built, and they are subject to more lenient exceptions. The concept of punishment proportional to the offense is fundamental in Jewish law, and ignorance of the law is indeed accepted as a valid excuse. You know how the FBAR penalties can be tens of times the unpaid tax, and how US courts interpret willfulness. If FBAR and other forms are based on the idea of a fence, it is a gross corruption of the concept.
In any case, the overwhelming majority of Jewish law, including all of the smaller rules, only applies to Jews, all of it has been unenforceable for almost 2000 years, and even before that Jewish courts had a tradition of being very careful before applying any punishment. Jews have always been a minority in the US, and religious Jews a minority among them, so I can’t see how concepts of Jewish law could have influenced US law other than through Christianity.
But maybe it has nothing to do with religion, and it’s a combination of factors as you wrote. I don’t really know why US society is so punitive.
*Copyright is actually one of the few areas historically member of Congress have been willing to complain to Canadian MP’s faces about. It is not as if Canada doesn’t have copyright laws(that in some cases are stricter than the US)its the Canada has not gone along with all of this DMCA crap.
I can just see the poor dipshit who is the first to get caught on this asinine law:
Inmate 1: I got 25 to life for 2nd degree murder.
Inmate 2: I got 25 for embezzling 530 million dollars.
Inmate 1 & 2 look at Inmate 3: So, freshie, what’d you get nailed for?
Inmate 3: I got 5 because I unlocked my cell phone.
Shadow Raider –
I’ll leave the etiological hashout of your aperçu to you and Petros. It’s enough for me to riff your notion into the powerful peepee phrase Punishment Patriotism and then sit back hoping for absolute virality.
I’d love to see someone over there actually get 25 years for embezzling $530 million dollars. Did any of the bankers ever get charged with a crime when they ran the economy into the ditch in 2008? No, us suckers, er, I mean taxpayers, got soaked to the tune of around $700 billion dollars instead. They never charged anyone with a crime, and they never fixed the regulatory problems that caused that mess in the first place.
Now someone explain this to me: Why in the hell should I ever put money into an American bank after all that? Indeed, after I got screwed over by one of the last American banks I did business with before I emigrated, I opened up a joint account with my wife (girlfriend at the time) in Canada. Between that, and the bailout still fresh in my mind, I was that fed up. It just amazes me all the more that the attitude of the politicians there, is that there is no good reason why US persons should have a foreign bank account in light of all that bullshit.
Wireless fee, contract guidelines proposed by CRTCCarriers would be required to unlock phones, cap monthly bills
Some of the proposals in the draft code, based partly on 3,500 comments submitted by Canadians to the commission in writing and 600 posted in an online discussion forum, include requiring that:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2013/01/28/tech-wireless-code-of-conduct-draft-crtc.html?cmp=
First reasonable term I can think of is that once the phone is paid off, they should unlock it, no questions asked.
Second one off my head would be that prepaid phones should be sold unlocked. If you’re buying the phone outright, then why does it need to be locked in the first place?
*When I read the article, I thought of FBARs as well. Basically you have huge possbile penalities which are suppoed to be used only against the bad guys, but are clubs which the government can use whenever it wants. This kind of discretion goes against the very purpose of the rule of law.
This crap is ridiculous. But irrespective of the law, let’s remember to put our money toward supporting those companies that offer and value freedom and removing support from those that don’t support our values. There is one notable phone sold totally unlocked for any GSM carrier, Google’s Nexus 4. Now, Google isn’t a bastion of good by any means. But on this, they get it and are doing well specifically trying to shake up the U.S. carrier situation and trying to make us more like SIM-swapping, competitive Europe with cheaper phone plans. So I think it’s worth mentioning it and supporting them. The cell carrier situation in the US is dismal because of too many people locked into contracts creating less competition among carriers.
We need more people in the US buying phones outright without contract and that are unlocked by default (thus supporting manufacturers who sell unlocked devices) and ideally more people running the numbers and waking up that they can save enormously by buying their phone outright and then using prepaid carriers as well (StraightTalk, PagePlus, Tmobile prepaid, etc etc).
This example of making it illegal for Americans to unlock their phones is yet another example of ridiculous government policy, I’m glad you posted it. But just want to remind people that we can support or pull our support from companies by where we choose to shop–that’s how we make real change irrespective of bad laws. Just as I’ve pulled all my money out of big banks, so as not to support their shenanigans (anything withdrawn which makes a big difference in terms of what they can loan out given how fractional reserve banking works). Similarly, I want to see more freedom in the phone market and so I will never own a locked phone on contract ever again and haven’t for years now. I buy the device outright and use prepaid. Saved a lot of money too!
BTW, this is a great opportunity to mention for Americans abroad, try jitsi.org as an open source, encrypted Skype alternative. If anyone wants help, I can help you figure it out. Download the app, then signup for a free XMPP account anywhere–jitsi.org, jabber.org, etc. Voip XMPP accounts like this are the future of phone service. I believe in a few years, we’ll all just have data connections on our phones and use XMPP voip for all calls since it’s secure, decentralized, cheaper, and you can travel to any country and keep the same ‘number’.