Even if the alleged crimes allegedly abused the app (something certainly not endorsed by the app makers), the same can be said for a lot of other apps. Thieves use facebook to look for people who give details on when they are on vacation for example. Snapchat and Skype and kik and whatapp and every other social messaging and social media app and service is abused by pedo criminals grooming their victims. etc
But those alleged crimes could not have possibly helped by the app, as has been pointed out: you don't get to see individual officers' locations and it does not show areas with no police at all either, just police hotspots (and technically, most areas even in a dense city like Hong Kong are without immediate police presence most of the time, anyway).
But even if we played devil's advocate and took the allegations of criminal activity that abused the app at face value, and assumed Tim Cook is not free to share specifics as the information might be confidential, he could at least answer what local laws were allegedly violated by the app itself. Those laws certainly are not confidential information.
But those alleged crimes could not have possibly helped by the app, as has been pointed out: you don't get to see individual officers' locations and it does not show areas with no police at all either, just police hotspots (and technically, most areas even in a dense city like Hong Kong are without immediate police presence most of the time, anyway).
But even if we played devil's advocate and took the allegations of criminal activity that abused the app at face value, and assumed Tim Cook is not free to share specifics as the information might be confidential, he could at least answer what local laws were allegedly violated by the app itself. Those laws certainly are not confidential information.