This is not coming. IT'S ALREADY HERE.
Apple and the Metropolitan Police have been running this quietly for months. IMEI numbers of stolen phones shared directly with Apple. Apple bricks them remotely. no reactivation without your password. ever.
the results in London are real:
reactivations of stolen iPhones dropped from 80% to under 20%. Westminster saw a 45.8% drop in phone theft. 14,000 fewer stolen phones in a single year.
It works. Nobody is arguing that.
The announcement is just Apple making it the global default. everywhere. for everyone.
now the question nobody is asking:
Apple just confirmed that a system already exists where law enforcement hands them a list of devices and Apple disables them globally. the infrastructure is live. it's proven. it scales.
today the list is stolen phones.
This is the same Apple that will probably scan UK devices on government request. the same Apple that caved to the Online Safety Act. the same Apple that is being pressured by the same government to break Signal-level encryption.
they now have a remote off button for every iPhone on earth. and we know it works because they already used it.
the kill switch is real.
the first use case is always good.
JUST IN: Apple to roll out a global iPhone “kill switch” to make stolen devices unusable.