Idea alert

NDP MP Mike Sullivan proposes a stolen cellphone registry.

A local MP and police in northwest Toronto are calling for a national stolen cellphone registry to stop an epidemic of thefts in their area and across the city. Mike Sullivan, MP for York South-Weston, says the CRTC must act quickly to create a registry of identification numbers from stolen cellphones and ask providers not to reactivate phones on that list...

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission, along with major wireless carriers AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, announced in April they would create a national database of identification numbers that are unique to each phone. Cellular carriers will use the list to permanently disable stolen phones. Until now, U.S. carriers have only been disabling SIM cards, which can be swapped in and out of phones to turn them on for service.