The DEA Quietly Turned Apple’s AirTag Into A Surveillance Tool

Apple AirTags might be useful as a police surveillance device, according to a DEA warrant.

Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Apple’s quarter-size location tracker was hidden in a pill press by the DEA to conduct surveillance. The AirTag’s small size and reliability could make it an attractive tool for cops.

In May last year, border agents intercepted two packages from Shanghai, China. Inside one was a pill press, a machine used to compress powders into tablets, in the other some pill dyes. Believing that they were destined for an illegal narcotics manufacturer, the Drug Enforcement Agency was called in. DEA investigators inspected the devices but rather than cancel the shipment or pay a visit to the intended recipient, they tried something they’d never been known to try before: they hid an Apple AirTag inside the pill press so they could track its movements.

Revealed in a search warrant obtained by Forbes, it appears to be the first known case of a federal agency turning Apple’s location-tracking device into a surveillance technology. It shows how the tech giant’s miniature tracker has gone from giving consumers a handy way to keep tabs on luggage and other valuables, to a remote spy tool. Since their launch in April 2021, the quarter-sized AirTags have seen both positive and nefarious use cases, from tracking stolen items like baggage and political campaigning signs, to stalkers using them to follow women.

Why use an AirTag?

The DEA didn’t say why it opted to use an AirTag over any other kind of GPS tracker. In the search warrant, an agent simply noted that “precise location information for the [pill press] will allow investigators to obtain evidence about where such individuals store drugs and/or drug proceeds, where they obtain controlled substances, and where else they distribute them.”

Brady Wilkins, a recently retired detective in Arizona with the attorney general’s office, said the DEA may have been testing the AirTag out due to failures in the kinds of GPS devices currently available to police, which “sometimes worked, sometimes didn’t.” An AirTag “can be hidden easier and is less likely to be found by suspects,” Wilkins told Forbes. “Suspects are getting better at countersurveillance techniques,” he added, and often uncovered heftier, more noticeable devices than the Apple tech. AirTags also appear to have more reliable connectivity than other devices.

But it may not be as useful as cops would hope. Apple has long built in protections against surreptitious use of AirTags. After numerous cases where stalkers abused the technology to track women, which culminated in a class action suit against Apple in December 2022, the company issued an update so iPhones would warn users when an unknown tracking device was detected, via Bluetooth, on their person. AirTags will also make a beeping sound when not near their owner for a long period of time.

“The DEA investigation is another extension of AirTags being used for purposes that were presumably unintended by Apple.”

—Jerome Greco, supervising attorney at the Legal Aid Society

Such mitigations made it an “unusual choice” for the DEA, noted Jerome Greco, a supervising attorney at the Legal Aid Society, specializing in digital forensics. But if something was technologically possible, “we should always assume that the police are going to take advantage of it.”

“AirTags and competing products continue to raise concern because of the ease of their ability to be abused and the potential significant consequences of those abuses,” Greco added. “The DEA investigation is another extension of AirTags being used for purposes that were presumably unintended by Apple.”

Neither the DEA nor Apple had commented on the case at the time of publication.

It’s unclear how successful the AirTag was in helping the DEA uncover criminality. The warrant gave the agency permission to monitor the tracking device for 45 days both within the District of Massachusetts, where the parcel was due to be delivered, and across any other state in the U.S. According to court records the intended recipient of the pill press was not charged in federal court. The DOJ, however, confirmed that he had been charged by the state.