Julie Clover
In 2023, Apple hosted a “Global Policing Summit” to help police agencies around the world better leverage the benefits of Apple products for policing, such as surveillance, Forbes reports. The meeting took place in October 2023 at Apple Park and preceded the International Chiefs of Police Conference. The events were attended by about 50 police departments from seven countries.
At the event, police agencies shared their “successes, innovations, and lessons learned,” according to an email about it, while Apple engineers gave presentations on products and features that benefit law enforcement, such as “CarPlay, collision detection, satellite SOS, Vision Pro, and more.”
LAPD Chief Information Officer John McMahon told Forbes that it was one of the most useful conferences he’s attended. “I’ve never been involved in such close collaboration,” he said. The New Zealand Police Department shared its experience of creating an application to store and access police data connected to the National Intelligence Database as one example of what was demonstrated at the conference.
While Apple has refused to unlock iPhones at law enforcement's request and has fought public battles to avoid adding backdoors to its products, Apple does respond to some legal requests from governments and law enforcement agencies, and law enforcement is a business like any other that might purchase Apple products for police work.
Electronic Frontier Foundation analyst Matthew Guariglia told Forbes that Apple doesn't disclose information about product meetings and conferences because the company knows they don't align with its pro-privacy marketing. “They want to build a reputation for protecting user data, and they’ll do that through their relationships with law enforcement, while recognizing that building technology for law enforcement is a multi-billion dollar industry,” he said.
Gary Oldham, who oversaw Apple’s global public safety and emergency services strategy until August of this year, spoke to Forbes and said he was working to increase Apple’s public safety market share in several target markets around the world. Oldham has specifically worked with police agencies in California to “deepen their use of Apple technology.” Several police departments in California are testing the use of the Vision Pro for surveillance work. In Western Australia, police are using Siri through CarPlay to access police data and send updates on incidents.
Oldham did not give a reason for leaving Apple in August, and Apple did not host a Global Policing Summit in 2024.
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