UK MPs (Members of Parliament) are accusing Apple and Google of profiting from multimillion-pound phone-snatching operations that police say are masterminded by organized crime gangs in Britain, Algeria and China, reports The Guardian.
In 2024, 80,000 phone devices of all kinds were stolen in London alone, up a quarter from 64,000 in 2023. The devices had a street value of about £20m, and iPhones made up the majority.
In evidence to the House of Commons science and technology committee, the Metropolitan police said they wanted smartphone companies to start preventing stolen devices from accessing their cloud services so that they were no longer “smart,” which reduces their resale value, according to The Guardian.
“Apple and Google continue to make profit and continue to sell more phones because these phones are not removed from the system,” says Martin Wrigley, a Liberal Democrat member of the committee. “You [the companies] owe it to the customers around the world to implement this immediately. No ifs, no buts, just do it.”
Of course, such “orders” are common from politicians who apparently don’t understand technology. Apple and Google reps say their systems work just fine the way they are.
Gary Davis, a senior director in regulatory and legal at Apple, said it was concerned about disconnections being used for fraud, with bad actors wanting to get data and the power to delete accounts for blackmail.
Another (apparently) Big Tech hating politician, Kit Malthouse, the Conservative former policing minister, said it felt as if Apple was “dragging your feet and sitting behind this is a very strong commercial incentive” claimed the iPhone maker was benefiting from selling services to the users of millions of stolen phones around the world.
“I don’t believe we are profiting. It is necessary to refute the suggestion that we benefit from our users somehow suffering the traumatic event of having their phone stolen and being disconnected from their lives,” Davis said. “We have invested many hundreds of millions in designing in these protections.”
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