by The deputies have accused Apple and Google of benefiting from millions of pound telephone snatching operations, which the police say that they are dominated by organized crime gangs in Great Britain, Algeria and China.
In 2024, 80,000 telephone devices of all kinds were stolen in London alone, a quarter of 64,000 in 2023.
As proof of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee on Tuesday, the Metropolitan Police said that they wanted smartphone companies to prevent stolen devices from accessing their cloud services so that they were no longer “intelligent”, which therefore reduces their resale value dramatically.
So far, however, despite the views, they have not agreed that Darren Scates, the Chief Digital Data and Technology Officer of Met, of Met.
Martin Wrigley, a liberal democratic member of the committee, said: “Apple and Google continue to make a profit and continue to sell more telephones because these telephones are not removed from the system. [the companies] Obtain the customer all over the world to implement this immediately. No, no, no, just do it. “
When asked why they had not done this, representatives of the companies referred to other security functions, especially those who protect customer data.
Simon Wingrove, a software engineer at Google, said his system was “robust and works very well”.
Gary Davis, Senior Director in Regulatory and Legal at Apple, said that interruptions are used for fraud, with poor actors receiving data and the authority to delete accounts for extortion.
Kit Malthouse, the conservative former Minister of Police, said it felt that Apple was “dragging her feet and sitting behind it, was a very strong commercial incentive”.
He said: “The fact that 50 million pounds of telephones are stolen every year in London – if that was stopped, this would be 50 million GBP in sales, which would be depressed.”
He also suggested that Apple benefits from the sale of services to the users of millions of stolen telephones around the world.
Davis replied: “I don’t think we will benefit. It is necessary to refute the proposal that we benefit from our users who stole the traumatic event from their phone and are separated from their lives. We have invested many hundreds of million millions in this protection.”
The Met said that all types of theft went by 15% in April and May and about two thirds of theft in connection with mobile phones. Commander James Conway warned that it was a “preliminary reduction” and said that it was probably a result of increased prioritization of the police and the telephone user who have more caution. Scotland Yard recently bought a fleet of high-speed bikes for chase snatchers.
Conway said theft and robbery were “slight crimes” in London, and he described “teenagers [high-powered ebikes] Ride along the A10, in which 10, 20 thefts or robberies are on the road, quickly packed these phones in silver foil or Faraday bags to make it more difficult for us to identify the location, and then quickly pass it on to a Middle Market handler and finally from Great Britain. “
Most of the stolen phones are the most expensive Apple versions, of which the police believe they are expressly targeted and sold on the street for between 300 and £ 400. Part of the trade is powered by the relatively high costs for phones in countries with lower incomes. It is estimated that more than 90% of the stolen phones are reused, while the rest is touched on for parts, whereby the screens are particularly valuable.
The hearing began with Malthouse that on Tuesday morning he saw an attempted phone theft of two young masked men on the bicycles when he drove to parliament.
