Almaty prosecutors invent cell phone theft prevention system

Almaty prosecutors have come up with a system that can render stolen cell phones useless and thus prevent the mobile phones stealing, Tengrinews.kz reports citing press-service of Almaly region’s prosecutor’s office. The authority is cooperating with all the major cellular operators in Kazakhstan: Kcell, Altel, Beeline and Tele-2. The new development allows to fully switch off and block stolen cell phones from operating in any of the networks. “That means that this phone will not be functional and it will be impossible to use it to make calls, thus, it will not have any value. Why one would need a cell phone of doubtful origin, even at an affordable price, if it doesn’t work?” the prosecutors said. Besides, the persons who try to connect to a cell operator using a blocked stolen phone will be immediately reported to the police. The law-enforcement authorities, in their turn, will check these persons for implication in the theft. Thus, the police want to exclude cell phones from the list of criminal offense objects. The authority stated that 150 phones have already been fully blocked using identification codes of the stolen phones. The total of 833 thefts were registered in Almaly region in September 2012, 912 thefts in October. Raids and explanatory works helped decrease the number of thefts to 671 in November (26.5 percent decrease), 587 thefts in December (35 percent) and 525 thefts in January 2013 (42.4 percent). Besides, the prosecutors noted that thefts constituted the majority of crimes in Almaty in 2012: 34,514 thefts (66.3 percent of the total number of crimes). Every fourth theft was a residential burglary. Cell phones are the objects of almost every fifth crime. Meanwhile, 25 percent of all the crimes in Almaty and registered in Almaly region.