Jun 14, 2013 03:38 PM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

Lawmakers are urging cell phone makers to develop a "kill switch" for mobile devices in an effort to stop a growing epidemic of smartphone thefts, CNET.com reported.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon organized a press conference Thursday in New York to address this issue.

The "Secure Our Smartphones" initiative is a group of law enforcement officials, consumer advocated and other politicians whose main goal is the mandatory development of a "kill switch" on mobile devices.

The kill switch would make a phone useless when triggered and would greatly slow the market for thieved smartphones, which can be easily erased of digital data and resold. If a law were passed, smartphone makers would have to develop such a switch for their products.

"It would brick the phone, as the kids say today," Schneiderman said. "Thieves have to know that there's no point of stealing a phone."

He believes a kill switch feature could be on many phones as early as next year. Apple, Google/Motorola, Samsung and Microsoft are all in on discussing how to make such a switch work.

Thursday's press conference was the beginning of a smartphone summit that will bring together the mobile device developers to agree on a standard method and make it free for consumers to opt into it.

Apple Inc. announced a feature called "activation lock" as part of its new iOS 7 mobile operating system at its Worldwide Developers Conference last week. While the new feature encouraged Gascon, he said it needed to be taken further.

"There are very few things that can be fixed by a technological solution," he said. "This is one of them."

Smartphone makers have not developed a concrete solution to this problem and have not really tried either. While they are cooperating now, Schneiderman said he is not afraid to use more force to finish the job.

"We intend to pursue this with every tool in our toolbox," he said.

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