Playing cat and mouse with Apple security

Daniel Ferro

26 March 2013

Playing cat and mouse with security has been a bit of a pattern for me of late. 

After lining the road to Samsung HQ with placards and customising murals at Samsung-sponsored Chelsea Football Club, the tech giant finally agreed to meet us to talk about the impact of its products.

With this in mind, we decided to turn up the heat on its rival Apple.

So last Thursday I took five staff and volunteers to the launch of a brand new Apple store in Leeds. Our mission: to attach small paper cards to iPhones and iPads.

Our aim was to create a stir on this important day that would get reported up the chain to Apple bosses.

We knew we were bound to get caught. We wondered, would we a) be asked to leave? Or b) escorted to a small dark room in the bowels of the new Trinity shopping centre while we called our lawyers back in the office?

Everyone felt the adrenaline pumping through their veins as started attaching labels, which felt like a brazen act. There seemed to be hundreds of staff on hand in blue T-shirts ready to have excited, straight-out-of-Apple-training conversations with shoppers about how fantastic the products were.

Rachel was spotted immediately and staff followed her around, curious as to how more labels were still appearing. As time went on we could see some shoppers picking up the labels, looking bemused and intrigued.

The rest of us became increasingly more daring at attaching the labels under staff's noses. One by one, we were approached by security.We could see the dozen or so staff with covert ear pieces' eyes darting towards us as our description was relayed over the comms.

Eventually a booming voice from behind us said: "Can you come with me please?" It was a Jason Bourne type security guard.

Fearing the dark room, we were instead taken to one side of the shop. We explained we were asking Apple to say if its products contain from Indonesia's Bangka island, where tin mining is destroying forests. The guard agreed to let us talk to the store managers, who took our press release to raise the issue with their superiors.

With our mission accomplished and adrenaline still pumping, we left.

We're still waiting for both Apple and Samsung to publically come clean about the tin in their smartphones. Who's going to move first?

Samsung currently has the slight edge. It replied to some of the 15,000 emails sent by concerned customers, although so far failed to answer the key question about where its tin is from. 

But until both companies publically take responsibility for problems in their supply chains, we'll continue to keep up the pressure.

Until then, we have a lot more labels and a list of 30 European Apple stores opening soon....

Daniel Ferro, Events team