The video centers on the secretive relationship between Apple and global law enforcement, highlighting how the tech giant has hosted private summits for police agencies. This collaboration appears to contrast with Apple's public image as a staunch defender of consumer privacy, given the company's historical stance, such as in the 2015 San Bernardino case where Apple refused to unlock a suspect's iPhone. The meetings reportedly involve sharing technical knowledge and discussing how Apple's products, like iPhones and Carplay, can be integrated with police applications.

The evolution of Apple's relationship with law enforcement is explored, noting that despite public perception, Apple has maintained a functional relationship with police. The gatherings, starting in 2019, have been expanding in scope and attendance, drawing many international police agencies eager for Apple's innovative technology applications in law enforcement operations. Though Apple maintains its stance against creating backdoors for police, the engagement has drawn attention to the potential for Apple products to be used in surveillance.

Main takeaways from the video:

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. cupertino [ˌkjʊpərˈtinoʊ] - (n.) - A city in California known as the headquarters of Apple Inc. - Synonyms: (—)

...bringing cops together at the tech giants cupertino headquarters...

2. public perception [ˈpʌblɪk pərˈsɛpʃən] - (n.) - How the general public views and understands something. - Synonyms: (public opinion, social view, societal perception)

...which is at odds with how the public widely views Apple...

3. transpired [trænˈspaɪərd] - (v.) - To have happened or occurred. - Synonyms: (occurred, happened, unfolded)

It transpired after, I think it was after some months, a year...

4. fractious [ˈfrækʃəs] - (adj.) - Easily irritated or bad-tempered. - Synonyms: (irritable, quarrelsome, touchy)

...the relationship is not that fractious, as you would believe.

5. summits [ˈsʌmɪts] - (n.) - Meetings or conferences to discuss significant issues. - Synonyms: (conferences, meetings, forums)

...the moment that they decided to do summits with police.

6. pivot [ˈpɪvət] - (v.) - To turn or rotate, as if on a pivot. - Synonyms: (swivel, rotate, turn)

...to access huge intelligence databases and to pivot off the information.

7. backdoor [ˈbækˌdɔːr] - (n.) - A method, often secret, for bypassing normal authentication. - Synonyms: (loophole, bypass, security breach)

...if they do that, that shows that there's a backdoor...

8. intuitive [ɪnˈtuɪtɪv] - (adj.) - Easy to understand or operate without explicit instruction. - Synonyms: (instinctive, natural, easy to use)

...very easy to use, very intuitive, and it's what police officers want...

9. silos [ˈsaɪloʊz] - (v.) - To isolate one system, department, etc., from others. - Synonyms: (isolate, separate, confine)

...it's down to how well Apple silos their different departments.

10. controversial [ˌkɑːntrəˈvɜːrʃəl] - (adj.) - Giving rise to public disagreement or debate. - Synonyms: (contentious, debatable, disputed)

...maybe that gets a little bit more controversial for them.

Exclusive - Inside Apples Secretive Global Police Summit

Twice in the last five years, Apple hosted behind closed doors conferences for police agencies from across the world, bringing cops together at the tech giants cupertino headquarters to discuss the best ways to use its products. Forbes reporter Tom Brewster joins us to talk about what our reporting found and what it means for data privacy.

You have some exclusive reporting about Apple and its global police summit, which is at odds with how the public widely views Apple, its privacy policies, and its relationship with law enforcement. So as you point out in your reporting, take us back to 2015 when the public really saw a fracture between law enforcement and Apple.

Yes. So that was the San Bernardino terrorist shootings, which I'm sure many people will remember. Shortly after that, one of the suspect's iPhones was locked and the FBI couldn't get into it. And their way of dealing with that was go and ask Apple, hey, can you unlock this? Apple said no, because if they do that, that shows that there's a backdoor, there's some sort of vulnerability that can be exploited and, you know, hey, you might just come back to us and ask us to do that on repeat.

So Apple, and I think Apple was very well supported by the privacy community on this. They said, no, we're not going to do that. You figure out how to get into the phone yourself. And it transpired after, I think it was after some months, a year or so, the FBI did figure out how to hack into that phone. So they were able to get into it. They were able to get the information they needed.

And since then, Apple's really kind of ramped up its marketing on privacy, really. It's always been seen as very protective of its consumers. But since then, you see these huge advertisers, advertising campaigns around keeping people's data secure, entire campaigns talking about the iPhone and how it's the most privacy forward phone you can get. So that's the kind of state of play with Apple at the minute.

Yeah, I think that's kind of created a false perception maybe that they don't like working with the police and that they won't give over data when it's required. But that's not quite right. That was really a contentious point back in 2015 because some said if Apple cracked into the phone, that would be a slippery slope. Others said exceptions should be made for touristic activities.

But how did Apple and law enforcement's relationship really evolve over the past almost decade? Since then, yeah, it's funny. I remember talking to the guy who ran the FBI agency out of California, the FBI office in California, and he had always maintained that the relationship with Apple was very good. And I wrote a story some years ago essentially saying that the FBI really, the relationship is not that fractious, as you would believe.

Outside of that, though, Apple's really kind of kept its relationship with police very much under wraps. Not even under wraps. They just haven't promoted it in any kind of way. Whereas what's clear now from this public records request that we made with the Orange county sheriff is that they really are, you know, properly collaborative.

They have engineers, they have, you know, sales folks really going in deep with police agencies, both in the US and abroad to discuss, you know, how. How can you roll out simple things like iPhones and have them working with police apps, but right through to, like, Vision pro, which is really actually kind of where this story started for me.

And so then walk us through to the moment that they decided to do summits with police. What goes on there? Who's invited? What are they talking about? What does that look like? Yeah. So from the emails and what I can tell, the first event was in 2019. So it's set up by a guy who is essentially tasked with government relations, you know, working with state and local agencies, whether that's police or whoever, or it seems like his main focus was police.

2019. This guy has been a year on the job. He sets up this thing called the Global Police Summit, invites agencies from, I think, over 20 different countries. I think agencies from seven different countries turn up. So you've got Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, and then a bunch of agencies from the US as well.

So the 2019 event happens. Apparently it's a big success. Police love it. You know, they can't quite believe that Apple has invited them in to talk about this stuff. Hugely beneficial, according to an LAPD deputy chief that I spoke to. Then Covid hits, obviously. So no events take place for the next three years, and then 2023 comes around. And here we go again.

It goes from a two day event to a three day event. So, you know, clearly there was a successful, original event that led them to believe that more cops would want to come, and they do. More cops come along. You get talks by the LAPD, New Zealand police, German police, and they talk about how they're using iPhones, Carplay, all this different technology for a variety of reasons.

You notice obvious things like communications, but also, like, in the case of the New Zealand police, who just gave us the slides from their talk. They're using it to access huge intelligence databases and to pivot off the information that's in there so they can chase down leads, so they can get information on where they are in a certain locale. So it's really, you know, complex apps, really interesting apps that are being run off of iOS.

And what's clear is that when police are going to cupertino, going to Apple park, they are meeting with Apple engineers on these different projects, on these different products. And they're being, the police are saying, hey, this is what we want. Apple engineers, maybe a bit quiet from what I heard, but they will work on these projects and they'll say, yeah, we can make Carplay into a usable system for your cars, so you don't need to have a laptop in your car, which is clunky and probably old and almost certainly not running off of macOS.

Plus, the other crazy thing I heard was that those old laptops are actually kind of really dangerous because they're in this kind of metal case. If you crash, they go into you. And that was one of the Californian agencies told me, is that like a, you know, having all this Apple technology working together is like. Like it is for a consumer, you know, very easy to use, very intuitive, and it's what police officers want because they all have iPhones anyway.

So, yeah, we're at that point now, wherever you've got a bunch of police agencies who love Apple technology and they want to use more of it, the kind of contention, I guess, comes is whether Apple wants to be a platform on which surveillance applications can be based. And that's where you get into kind of slightly stickier situation for Apple.

Yeah, and that's the big question here. So when the law enforcement officials are at this global summit, they're talking to international agencies, they're collaborating. Are they saying, hey, these are best practices. This is the tech we want to use. This will help us be better at our job.

Does it ever cross the line of, hey, we're going to have, this is a better way to hack into private citizens devices? Anything like that? Probably not in those words, but in reality, I would say Apple would be way too cautious about anything like that. And I think even, even sales people, you know, overexcited salespeople who maybe, you know, want to sell some Apple technology to please, wouldn't be pushing something like that because they know that, you know, Apple really is pretty tough on that.

You know, they are not going to put a backdoor in their product. They're not going to, you know, just give over information to police without proper legal requests. So. Yeah, and Apple has that reputation to protect. Right. You know, if they get seen doing anything going too far with police, then, yeah, they're going to lose some customers, obviously. So, no, I think, you know, Apple's always been very strong on that point.

This is really just about. There's a big market out there. Police spend billions and billions every year. Of course, tech companies want to get involved in that. And of course, a lot of this stuff is really beneficial for public safety.

That's kind of hard to deny if you have police who can use vision Pro , wherever they are to access any kind of surveillance screens or databases that they need, and it becomes quicker and more intuitive and that helps police on the ground be safer. I think a lot of people would be behind that.

But again, for me, it's, you know, if there are surveillance products that police are making and they're building them on top of iOS or macOS or whatever Apple product there is, you know, maybe that's where things get. Yeah, not so easy to get behind. Because even though, if you've got a mass surveillance system, which is essentially kind of what New Zealand is running with this national database that they use, and it's the Apple technology, it's the Apple app that New Zealand's built that accesses that. Yeah.

It becomes, you know, a bit more interesting and a bit more complicated for Apple at least, to sort of continue along this line that they have, which is, hey, we are the most privacy focused tech provider you can think of. Apple is walking a really tight line here.

It's developing cutting edge technology. If you have an Apple device, anything from an iPad, a computer, to your phone, your entire life is on there. Everything from photos for the past ten years to your credit card information. It's also a company that touts privacy and protecting customers data.

So how does Apple square this away? What's the benefit of collaborating with law enforcement and what are critics saying? Yeah, also, I think, again, it's down to how well Apple silos their different departments. Right. You've got a sales team who wants to. Who wants to sell to police and. And take advantage of that market. You've got what is actually a kind of profit losing department, which is the law enforcement response team, who are the guys who take in the legal requests and say, yes, we can give you that data because maybe there's someone who's been kidnapped or there's a child in danger, of course you can have that information.

So as long as Apple, I think, keeps those two departments split. It can go out and say, hey, look, yes, we're going to sell technology to police. They're just another customer. You know, of course we are. We sell to lots and lots of different businesses and state and local government organizations, federal agencies, you know, use our technology because it's, hey, it's the best technology in the world according to Apple.

But they, they can't really get away from the fact that, well, a, they, they can't get away from the fact that they haven't ever told the public that they're doing these global police summits, that they're welcoming police in to talk about this stuff. So there's a perception issue there, I think.

But like I said, the other problem is if you know Apple. Okay, let me give you an example. So Apple's been fighting this Israeli company, NSO Group, which creates malware. It's a surveillance system that goes and collects information from iPhones, hacks into the. That is a very problematic piece of software, but it is a legal piece of software that police agencies use.

So if you think about maybe other surveillance products that police are creating, if they become problematic. And yet Apple in some way, at some point has either supported or given engineering advice that helps police set up that surveillance project. Yeah, maybe that gets a little bit more controversial for them.

So I think critics are really kind of. I think they're, they're not, you know, aghast or going crazy about this. I think they're more just a little bit anxious about Apple getting too close to the police, especially those creating, you know, some of these gnarlier surveillance technologies.

And you've covered this relationship over the past nine years. What does the future of the relationship between Apple and law enforcement look like? Yeah, it gets interesting because in the public records that we got back, essentially it looks like they've kind of canned this police summit. And the guy who was running it is now no longer at the company as of August.

So it's hard to say. Maybe they're going to set up other events. Maybe they're just going to go more local, more, you know, stick to Californian agencies who really seem to be the ones using a lot of this, or, you know, maybe they'll just go quieter on it and just, you know, maybe not do emails that journalists like me can go and get.

I think that, you know, their relationship will still exist. They will continue to sell products to police. You know, they've, you know, vision pro is a really good example of a technology that I think a lot of police agencies can make use of, for instance.

So a lot of police departments across America are setting up these things called real time crime centers, which are basically kind of hubs for surveillance data that make it super easy and super fast to get all the surveillance information that you want and access to all the kind of, you know, police records, arrest records, everything else. And, you know, usually you have to go to, like, a center to sit there in front of a whole bunch of screens, you know, kind of minority report style.

But to make it even more minority report, though, you can put one of the vision pro headsets on and you can be sat at home or wherever you are. You can sat in your police car and you can suddenly access all this stuff, or you can use, you know, the virtual reality stuff, and you can look over there and the headset's going to tell you, oh, that's a building where there was domestic abuse. That was a building where a robbery occurred, whatever.

So those kinds of technologies are, you know, it's very kind of robocop and futuristic and, you know, on that side of things, I think people are maybe a little bit scared about, know, what policing looks like in the future, but they are obviously very incredibly useful technologies for police.

So, yeah, I can't see any other way forward other than Apple continuing to sell. Whether they'll do things like the global police summit, which, you know, cost money, maybe don't make as much money as Apple wants in return for setting those up, I don't know. But, yeah, they'll carry on working with police control.

Well, Tom, certainly a lot of things to weigh here as you give us the exclusive look inside this relationship. Thank you so much for your reporting. I appreciate the conversation. No problem. Good to chat again.

Innovation, Technology, Global, Data Privacy, Law Enforcement, Apple Collaboration, Forbes