Apple, Google should explore new technologies to prevent cellphone thefts

If a teenager snatched from the hands of iPhone Rosa Cha at a bus stop in the Bronx in March, she reported the theft of her career, and the police - just as she had done two more times when she was a victim of phone theft. Again, the police said they could not help her.

Phone Cha was introduced to a new national database of stolen mobile phones, which tracks the unique identification number of the phone to prevent it from activating, theoretically preventing theft. But police officials say that the database has not helped staunch the growing number of phone theft, partly because many of the stolen phones end up overseas, beyond the reach of the database, and partly because the IDs easily changed.

Some law enforcement agencies, however, say there is a big problem - that carriers and handset manufacturers have no incentive to solve the problem.

George Gascon, San Francisco's district attorney, says handset makers like Apple should be exploring new technologies that could help prevent theft. In March, he said, he met with an Apple executive, Michael Foulkes, who handles its government relations, to discuss how the company could improve its anti-theft technology. But he left the meeting, he said, with no promise that Apple was working to do so.

He added, "Unlike other types of crimes, this is a crime that could be easily fixed with a technological solution."

Apple declined to comment.

The cellphone market is hugely lucrative, with the sale of handsets bringing in $69 billion in the United States last year, according to IDC, the research firm. Yet, thefts of smartphones keep increasing, and victims keep replacing them.

In San Francisco last year, nearly half of all robberies involved a cellphone, up from 36 percent the year before; in the Washington, cellphones were taken in 42 percent of robberies, a record. In New York, theft of iPhones and iPads last year accounted for 14 percent of all crimes.

Some compare the epidemic of phone theft to car theft, which was a rampant problem more than a decade ago until auto manufacturers improved anti-theft technology.

"If you look at auto theft, it has really plummeted in this country because technology has advanced so much and the manufacturers recognize the importance of it," said Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a nonprofit group focused on improving police techniques. "The cellphone industry has for the most part been in denial. For whatever reasons, it has been slow to move."

Carriers say they have faith in the database, which they created with police departments across the country. They also say they are taking independent steps as well to address the problem. Verizon, for instance, says it has its own stolen phone database, making it impossible for devices reported as stolen to be reactivated on its network.