Apple hosts ‘Global Police Summit’ to teach law enforcement officers how to use their products
In the past five years, Apple has hosted two conferences for law enforcement to teach them how to use its products during operations, a new report shows.
Forbes has claimed that the Global Police Summits were held behind closed doors, once in 2019 and once in 2023, and reportedly involved officers from as many as 50 departments from seven different countries.
The event contradicts reports suggesting that Apple has been in conflict with law enforcement agencies over the protection of user privacy.
Mixed signals
Most of us use technology every day, and as technology becomes more integrated into our daily lives, the potential for technology to invade users’ privacy increases. In 2022, Meta received more than 400,000 data requests from law enforcement and disclosed at least some information 75% of the time.
The discussions and lectures held at the convention covered a number of topics, including surveillance and basic communications. The platform reportedly enabled collaboration and discussion among agencies around the world, sharing successes and lessons learned from their technology mobilization.
Popular products at the convention included the Vision Pro headsets for surveillance work, as well as Apple CarPlay for police vehicles. “The Apple ecosystem all works very well together,” said Dave Fontneau, CIO of the Orange County Police Department.
As technology has developed in recent years, new privacy concerns have arisen, such as with AI facial recognition services, which Microsoft has banned from being used by law enforcement. The summit suggests that Apple is trying to walk the fence between helping law enforcement and protecting customer privacy.
“These companies want to have their cake and eat it too.” explained Matthew Guariglia, senior policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “They want to gain a reputation for protecting users’ data at the expense of their relationship with law enforcement, while at the same time recognizing that creating technology for law enforcement is a multi-billion dollar industry.”
