London police to Apple, Google and Samsung: ‘Make stolen phones … '

London's Metropolitan Police has urged smartphone makers like Apple, Google and Samsung to devise a technology that will render stolen phones harder to reuse. According to a report by BBC, the move is aimed at destroying the multi-million dollar international black market for stolen handsets by making the devices entirely worthless to criminals.The force revealed that it has launched a data-sharing and intelligence agreement with Apple to build a comprehensive “global picture” of what happens to devices after they are snatched, tracking whether they are being reactivated or reconnected to global networks, the report noted.“If stolen phones cannot be reactivated, their value collapses, and so does the incentive to steal them. We are driving up the risk for offenders while cutting off the reward,” said Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley.BBC report says that the international trade in stolen smartphones has evolved into an organised criminal pipeline worth millions of dollars. Handsets stolen on the streets of London often yield massive profits in foreign black markets, such as China, where they can bypass domestic network restrictions.Historically, phone snatchers have relied on black-market software to bypass existing security barriers. Commissioner Rowley explained on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that this illicit software allowed criminals to execute a hard “factory reset” on stolen devices, wiping them clean so they could be resold abroad as if they were brand-new phones.However, armed with real-world data shared by the Met, Apple believes its engineers have successfully blocked this loophole. The Met also confirmed that tech rivals Samsung and Google are also actively deploying similar advanced security upgrades across their respective operating systems to squeeze the criminal market from all sides. Despite these engineering victories, London continues to suffer from some of the highest rates of personal robbery and snatch-thefts in England and Wales, the report points out. In response, Sir Mark Rowley has written to the Home Secretary requesting formal legislation to force phone manufacturers to act.“I'd never say we're going to get down to zero crime, but this is going to make a massive difference. If they can only be broken up for parts, if you start to make it harder for criminals, they will steal fewer of them,” Rowley told the BBC.The Met is pushing for laws that would legally require tech companies to publish transparent data regarding stolen devices and attempted network reconnections.