Security Industry Association Lobbies States for Exemptions from Right to Repair.

Holly Borgmann, vice president of government affairs for ADT, Boca Raton, Fla., said that while these types of laws may make sense for some industries, tools and manuals that could enable someone to disarm an alarm or reroute an emergency signal should remain proprietary. Borgmann is an SIA board member and vice chair of the SIA government affairs committee.

A security system that can be repaired without notifying the monitoring service, nor sending any suspicious signals, is a security system that can be defeated independent of right to repair legislation. Likewise, if the monitoring service can’t verify repairs to be authorized by the customer, they can’t handle response to an ordinary alarm.

The site specific data of an alarm panel is generally uploaded remotely by the monitoring service using the communication system through which the panel is monitored. That data is retained by the monitoring service in the event it needs restored, or for use as a template should it need modified. This is a trivial operation if there are any doubts regarding the integrity of the programming.