Apple and Google clash with police and MPs over phone thefts

Senior figures at Apple and Google have clashed with the police over its recommendations for how best to deal with phone theft in the UK.

The Met’s James Conway told the Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee – which is considering the question – that two-thirds of thefts in London now relate to mobile phones.

With up to 70% of knife crime linked to robbery, he told MPs that meant phone theft was “significantly driving parts of our violence problem”.

The Met wants phone companies to use the unique identifying number – known as an IMEI – that each device has to block any that are reported as stolen.

But Apple and Google – who dominate the market – raised concerns about the idea.

“Focusing on IMEI blocking might miss some of the problems,” Apple’s head of law enforcement requests, Gary Davis, told the committee.

“We worry that there is a vector for fraud… we are concerned about a world where it would be a person who claims to be the owner who’s asking.”

Stolen devices are blocked from being used in the UK by phone networks by using its IMEI, but this is not the case globally.

This means a stolen phone can still be used in some other countries if a criminal is able to bypass the device’s security.

But Mr Davis said he was concerned that phone owners already face “extensive fraud attempts”, which he estimated at more than a thousand people trying to access devices each month.

“They do it for malicious purposes, they do it to maybe blackmail you,” he said.

“I would like to think in an area such as this our expertise built up over time in relation to attack vectors would mean something.”

The firms pointed out they have implemented several new safety features in the past 12 months to help combat phone theft.

Apple has introduced Stolen Device Protection while Android – which is owned by Google – has brought in Theft Detection Lock.

Police officers said they were looking for action from phone providers to help prevent further thefts.

The Met’s chief technology officer Darren Scates said 75% of phones which were stolen are moved abroad, with 28% ending up in either China or Hong Kong.

“We’re asking the cloud providers specifically to prevent a lost or stolen device from connecting to their cloud services,” he said.

“This doesn’t even need to involve the police.”

He said they had been asking for this since October 2023, but had not yet been able to convince the firms to take action.

Some MPs accused the two tech firms of lacking the will to take action.

“You could tomorrow stop phones that are on the IMEI blacklist connecting back to your services if you so wished, both of you, and you won’t do it,” Lib Dem MP Martin Wrigley said.

“I’m not saying that we won’t do it,” Google software engineering manager Simon Wingrove replied, adding the issue needed an industry-wide approach.

He said the global database of IMEI numbers is built, maintained, populated, read and used by network carriers.

“If we want to change that so that it becomes a database that is used by other actors to do other things to devices to block them in other ways, that is an industry-wide discussion that is not in my power as an engineer at Google,” he said.

“I think we need to decide as industry that is a safe and sensible thing to do.”

He pointed to Android’s factory reset protection as an area it was continuing to work on to improve security and make it harder for thieves to reset stolen devices.

“The most recent changes that we’ve announced we made in the most recent version of Android,” he said.

“We’re really hopeful that we will see a significant impact – we haven’t stopped investing in that.”

But one of the main threads of the day was a clash between MPs and Mr Davis over the market for second-hand parts.

“I worry if we focus on IMEI blocking only you are going to miss the market for parts,” he told the committee, to frustrations from those in attendance.

“It’s clear from the mood of the committee that we don’t feel that either Google or Apple have a road plan to effective phone protection which does not involve IMEIs,” Labour MP Chi Onwurah said.

Apple is concerned that when devices are stolen, rather than being reused elsewhere they are instead being chopped up into component parts – like screens, processors and batteries – which can then be sold on for repairs.

“Our best protection is Activation Lock,” he said.

“I understand you will take the view that it obviously mustn’t be working because there are still devices being stolen. But that is the best protection.”

Activation Lock is a feature which links certain iPhone or iPad components to a person’s Apple ID – meaning a person must use their password to allow these parts of their device to be used in repairs.

The feature was well-received when it was announced in September as a way to deal with thieves.

But the committee wanted to focus on blocking the IMEI of a stolen phone being used elsewhere.

“It feels to a lot of people that you’re dragging your feet,” Conservative MP Kit Malthouse said.

But Mr Davis said he felt Activation Lock was “a major step” in disrupting the second-hand market.

“It could well be that IMEI blocking is a natural next step,” he said.

“However I would want to make sure that as part of all of that the Met police continues to do traditional policing, which means sending requests to us for stolen devices, and Apple responding to those requests.

“We’re not seeing that, and I think it’s very important.”