Twice in the last five years, Apple has hosted a conference for police agencies to teach them how to utilize its products in operations, a new report has revealed.
Forbes has claimed the Global Police Summits were held behind closed doors, once in 2019 and once in 2023, and reportedly involved officers from up to 50 departments from seven different countries.
The event contradicts the reports that suggest Apple has been at odds with law enforcement agencies over the protection of user privacy.
Mixed signals
Most of us use tech on an everyday basis, and as technology becomes increasingly integrated in our daily lives, the capability for tech to violate users’ privacy expands. In 2022, Meta received over 400,000 data requests from law enforcement, and disclosed at least some information 75% of the time.
The discussions and talks held at the convention were on a number of topics, including surveillance and basic communications. The platform reportedly allowed collaboration and discussion between agencies across the world, sharing successes and lessons from their technology mobilization.
Amongst the popular products at the convention was the Vision Pro headsets for surveillance work – as well as Apple CarPlay for police vehicles. “The Apple ecosystem all works very nicely together”, commented Orange County police CIO Dave Fontneau.
As technology has developed in recent years, new concerns about privacy have been introduced, such as with AI facial recognition services, which Microsoft have banned Law Enforcement from using. The summit suggests Apple is trying to sit the fence between helping law enforcement and protecting customer privacy.
“These companies want to have their cake and eat it.” explained Electronic Frontier Foundation senior policy analyst Matthew Guariglia. “They want to get the reputation that they protect users’ data and they will do so at the expense of their relationship with law enforcement, and at the same time recognizing that creating tech for law enforcement is a multi-billion-dollar industry.”
