Apple's Tim Cook insists it helps the police on terror

Following Saturday's London Bridge terrorist attack, Apple's Tim Cook confirmed that the company had helped with law enforcement's investigations into who was involved in helping prepare the attack on Saturday.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Cook stated Apple has been responding to all data requests from United Kingdom police and added that the United Kingdom has gone through "the lawful process" in order to obtain this data.

Apparently, as all this unfolds, Apple has introduced a host of updates, which Cook claims will enhance Apple customers' privacy. The government has said that it plans to clamp down on violent extremism, and has arrested several people with alleged ties to recent attacks on citizens, including a suicide bombing in May that killed 22 people at the Manchester Arena. Last year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation tried to get Apple to crack an iPhone password linked to the San Bernardino shooting.

However, the Open Rights Group has warned that any push to censor the internet would be a "very risky approach", and firms including Apple have opposed the government's stance of putting "backdoors" into companies' encryption for spy agencies to access, saying this would leave devices vulnerable to hackers.

"Encryption doesn't mean there's no information", Cook said, noting that metadata, which still exists despite encryption, can help authorities put together a profile for an attacker.

While he did not speak directly as to what insights Apple was able to provide, he implied that the metadata of user communications is information that could come in handy. Metadata usually refers to information describing a message, like the time it was sent for example, rather than the content of the message itself.

He added: "It wasn't about not wanting to advise on something that we thought should be heard".