A former UK Metropolitan Police chief has backed plans aimed at forcing Apple and Google to disable stolen smartphones, reports The Telegraph.
Lord Hogan-Howe, who was head of the Met from 2011 to 2017, has sponsored an amendment to crime legislation in the House of Lords that would require the US tech giants to cut phones off from key services after they are reported stolen.
His support for the move comes amid mounting pressure on Apple and Google to help crack down on phone theft.
The amendment to the crime and policing bill – proposed by Lord Jackson of Peterborough, a Conservative peer – would mean that the companies have to block stolen phones from accessing services like app stores and cloud storage, making them effectively unusable. The Telegraph notes that it would also require companies that receive reports of stolen phones from users to pass on the information to the police and the National Crime Agency.
In June UK MPs (Members of Parliament) accused 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, reported 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,” said 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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