Working with the telephone companies to reduce mobile phone crime

Report: 07
Date: 14 February 2002
By: Commissioner

Summary

Just over 50% of current street crime in the MPS district involves the theft of a mobile phone. This paper outlines the possible causes for such figures, what measures are being undertaken by the MPS and the Home Office both with and separately from the mobile phone networks to reduce the levels of crime.

A. Recommendation

1. Members are asked to note the report;
2. Members are asked to lobby the Home Office to table legislation to outlaw the reconfiguration of handsets and the sale and manufacture of equipment to allow reconfigure; and
3. Members are asked to lobby the network providers for voluntary supply to police of information to identify repeat offenders encourage manufacturers to find ways of designing out the crime.

B. Supporting information

Reasons for the mobile phone robbery crime

1. This issue is complex and linked with background influences such as social deprivation, underachievement and other environmental risk factors that are relevant to street crime in general. However, specific to mobile phones as an item to steal are;

• The phone's desirability and pace of technological change.
• The ease of appropriation and replacement of SIM cards.
• That the identity of the phones can be altered.
• That the victim is often vulnerable/unaware of threat.
• That the opportunistic nature of the criminal action.
• That the property has a re-sale value and ready market.

2. This market for handling is being fuelled by the ease with which mobile phones can be re-programmed. Such re-configuration can be done legally and the means to achieve it are readily available on the internet for free. This makes it increasingly difficult to detect stolen phones using available technology and it makes the act of mobile phone robbery attractive and profitable for the thief and handler.

3. Appendix 1 (see Supporting material) shows the numbers of offences and judicial disposals for street crime involving mobile phones, separated to show where a mobile phone was the only property stolen, and when it was one of several items. The figures show a gradual, but steady, upward trend in both the number and proportion of street crimes involving mobile phones. There is a slight seasonal reduction in offences involving mobile phones only during school holidays.

4. Judicial disposal rates for offences involving mobile phones are lower than those for offences not involving mobile phones. This may be linked to the fact that because of the ease of changing phone identities it is very difficult to establish the lawful owners, fraudulent reports, where there is no offender to arrest, or reluctance of school-age victims to report offenders.

5. The table below shows other crime categories where mobile phones have been recorded as stolen property.

What the networks are doing ?

6. Four London Boroughs (Hackney, Southwark, Tower Hamlets and Kensington and Chelsea) are providing recent data of stolen mobile phones to the network providers. This will provide an opportunity to see if there are any trends in phones targeted, preferred networks, preferred disposal (discarded, move to other network, re-programmed).

7. All networks cancel the SIM cards upon notification of the theft or loss of a phone. Only Orange and One-to-One are able to disable a handset by targeting the IMEI number (the serial number of the handset).

8. With respect to the network's attempts to disable phones there is an impasse between the service providers and the manufacturers. Vodaphone and Cellnet have older supporting systems that would require a large amount of investment to enable the disabling of phones. Orange and One 2 One can do this because they were later entrants into the market and therefore have more up to date equipment support. However, not with standing this issue, the service providers await the manufacturers to provide hardware technology to disable their handsets and the hardware providers believe that the service providers should disable the phones by removing their airtime service. This matter has been raised by the MPS with the Home Secretary and Home Office Minister John Denham. They have asked the manufacturers and service providers to come up with a solution. However, any solution would involve a cost which no party seems willing to bear in such a competitive industry.

What the retailers are doing?

9. The retailers Carphone Warehouse, The Link and Phones 4U have agreed with the Mobile Equipment National Database to promote the registering of mobile phones onto a searchable internet site at the point of sale. This will assist with recovery.

10. BT Cellnet have now altered their insurance policies to include loss, which should lead to a visible reduction in the number of reports of mobile phone theft/robberies. It is not known how the change in policy has been communicated to educate the public.

What are the Home Office doing?

11. The Home Office are considering a new piece of legislation to create an offence of re-configuring IMEI numbers, thus making the 'handling' of phones less attractive.

12. The Home Office are exploring the possibility of extending an awareness campaign in all schools using a text messaging poster that was piloted in London schools

What the MPS is doing?

13. An internal MPS awareness campaign reinforcing the need to record IMEI numbers has been completed and is being evaluated. This will help in identifying stolen mobile phones.

14. The Education Department supported an MPS initiative that meant officers attended 600 secondary schools across London to physically property mark mobile phones. This has led to 26,000 phones being marked to date which assists in the detection of offenders but results are still being sent for collation.

15. Various intelligence activities are being undertaken across the MPS.

16. On the high mobile phone robbery crime boroughs of Hackney (north), Southwark (south), Tower Hamlets (east) and Kensington & Chelsea (west) data is being supplied to all networks for tracking.

17. A mobile UV pen marking team will be highly visible in London in February to engage the public to property mark all mobile equipment.

What can the MPA do?

18. The MPA can lobby the Home Office to outlaw the reconfiguration of handsets and the sale and manufacture of equipment to reconfigure. This gives patrol officers the power to deal with open traders and web sites that sell such equipment or services.

19. The MPA can encourage voluntary supply by the networks to police of information to identify repeat offenders. This could be similar to the requirement of financial institutions to give information about those they suspect of criminality. By doing this the MPS might be able to identify trends that may suggest fraudulent reporting.

20. The MPA can help ensure that manufacturers are encouraged to find ways of designing out the crime.

21. Ask the Home Office to impose on the manufacturers an IMEI number that cannot be altered, that is unique and has the supporting technology that will enable the IMEI to be used to disable a lost or stolen handset. The imposition of regulations by the Home Office may be needed to break the current impasse between service providers and phone manufacturers.

C. Financial implications

1. Talks are ongoing with Orange and One-to One to establish their interest in supporting a crime prevention campaign targeting secondary schools. There is no firm commitment at this stage, with no specification as to how far the support will go.

2. If the legislative changes regarding re-programming a mobile phone and selling equipment to conduct the re-configuration are to be introduced then costs to the MPS are negligible.

D. Background papers

• Mobile Phone Theft – Publicity Working Group minutes, 23 March 2001
• Mobile Phone Theft – Police/Industry Co-operation Working group minutes, 23 March 2001.
• Mobile Phone Theft – Steering Group minutes, 27 March 2001.
• Minutes of meeting with Mobile Network security leaders and the MPS project manager, 25 July 2001 and 14 September 2001.
• November & December meetings with John Cross of BT Cellnet on behalf of the network operators.
• Communications with Adrian Portlock of MEND throughout November, December and January.

E. Contact details

Report authors: DI Damian Cooper, MPS.

For information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

Send an e-mail linking to this page

Feedback