Apple wants the iPhone, Apple Watch to offer better, more secure, emergency response data

Apple wants the iPhone and Apple Watch to offer better, more secure, emergency response data as evidenced by a newly granted patent (US 11973859 B2) for “Data Encryption for Emergency Response.”

About the patent

The patent relates generally to cryptographic techniques to secure user data and, more specifically, to techniques that enable the delivery of encrypted user data to emergency responders.

When a user of a mobile device calls emergency services, the emergency services dispatcher may not be able to determine the specific location of the mobile device. Some emergency service providers may be able to query a wireless carrier associated with the mobile device to determine a location for the device. 

However, Apple says that the location determined by the wireless carrier may be a cell tower-based location, which is a coarse location determination with significant margin for error. The newly granted patent involves techniques that enable the delivery of encrypted user data to emergency responders. 

Summary of the patent

Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent: “Embodiments described herein provide a method on a mobile electronic device to facilitate the transmission of encrypted user data to a service provider, such as an emergency service provider. An encrypted data repository stores user data to be transmitted to the service provider. A key to decrypt the encrypted data repository is wrapped using a key associated with a publicly trusted certificate for the service provider. In response a request received at the mobile device to initiate an emergency services request, the mobile device can transmit the encrypted data repository and wrapped cryptographic material to a server that is accessible by the service provider.”