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Apple: Privacy for You, Surveillance Tools for Them?
Folks, you wouldn’t believe this. Apple, the company that sells itself as the guardian of your digital privacy, the company that practically built its brand on fighting the FBI over unlocking iPhones, is apparently holding secret meetings with police around the world. That’s right, according to Forbes, Apple hosted a “Global Police Summit” in 2023, a cozy little get-together at their fancy Apple Park headquarters where they showed off how cops can use Apple products for, shall we say, keeping an eye on things.
We’re talking CarPlay, Crash Detection, even the Vision Pro headset – all being presented as tools for law enforcement. And apparently, the police loved it! One LAPD bigwig called it one of the most “collaborative” conferences he’d ever attended. Collaborative, you see, because when you’re building a surveillance state, teamwork makes the dream work.
Now, Apple hasn’t exactly been shouting about these meetings from the rooftops. Maybe they realized that bragging about helping police doesn’t quite fit with their whole “privacy is a fundamental human right” marketing campaign. But as the Electronic Frontier Foundation pointed out, there’s big money to be made in selling tech to law enforcement, even if it means quietly undermining the very privacy you claim to champion.
So, the next time you see a shiny Apple ad talking about how they protect your data, just remember this little police summit. It seems like Apple’s commitment to privacy might have an asterisk next to it. An asterisk that says, “except when it’s inconvenient for business.”
From the sales floor to the critic's corner, I'm a former Apple Sales Specialist who's not afraid to tell it like it is. Get my honest takes on the iPhone, Mac, and everything Apple. | Los Angeles, California.
