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Monday, April 25, 2011, 08:10 pm
Apple, Google called to U.S. Senate hearing on mobile privacy
As the controversy over persistent location tracking in the iPhone and Google Android devices continues to surge, representatives from Apple and Google have been summoned to a Senate judiciary hearing on mobile technology privacy in May.Democratic Senator Al Franken, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, will hold the hearing, titled "Protecting Mobile Privacy: Your Smartphones, Tablets, Cell Phones and Your Privacy," on May 10.
Alongside the requested representatives from Apple and Google, witnesses at the hearing would include officials from the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission; Ashkan Soltani, independent privacy researcher and consultant and Justin Brookman, Director of the Center for Democracy and Technology's Project on Consumer Privacy.
“Recent advances in mobile technology have allowed Americans to stay connected like never before and put an astonishing number of resources at our fingertips,” Franken said in a statement. “But the same technology that has given us smartphones, tablets, and cell phones has also allowed these devices to gather extremely sensitive information about users, including detailed records of their daily movements and location. This hearing is the first step in making certain that federal laws protecting consumers’ privacy—particularly when it comes to mobile devices—keep pace with advances in technology."
After security researchers revealed last week that Apple's iOS 4 operating system stores a detailed log of user's locations, Franken and other government officials sent concerned letters to Apple.
Last week, two customers filed a class-action lawsuit against Apple, seeking refunds for their iPhones. The plaintiffs claimed they would never have bought the devices if they had known of the location tracking.
A report from The Wall Street Journal on Monday further ignited the issue when it revealed that location tracking appears to continue on the iPhone even when location services are disabled on the device.
South Korea, France, Germany and Italy have all reportedly initiated investigations into the practice.
Also on Monday, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan called for a meeting with Apple and Google in a letter to the companies addressing concerns over the storing of user location data.
“I want to know whether consumers have been informed of what is being tracked and stored by Apple and Google and whether those tracking and storage features can be disabled,” said Madigan. “It’s important that these companies ensure that their users’ private information is protected.”
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Previous Comments View All
Apple can easily avoid all of this fuss by coming out and explaining why they're doing what they're doing, and more important, allowing users the option to not sync the location data with iTunes (just as they do with calendar, contacts etc.) It's not such a big deal.
Otherwise, this story is going to get much worse before it gets better.
Apple and Google will be there to help the US Senate craft new legislation that clarifies what is legitimate and what is not.
In the end, Apple's application Localization services will be the legitimate version as it's designed to make your 3rd party apps experience that much more rich and seamless.
I look forward to Google having to curb their usages for the data they actually encrypt and then collection back to corporate.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer 
Apple and Google will be there to help the US Senate craft new legislation that clarifies what is legitimate and what is not.
Apple and Google will be there to help the US Senate craft new legislation that clarifies what is legitimate and what is not.
I am not sure that I want Google to have anything to do with 'crafting' legislation that affects me.
About Apple, I worry less.
Quote:
Originally Posted by anantksundaram
I am not sure that I want Google to have anything to do with 'crafting' legislation that affects me.
About Apple, I worry less.
I am not sure that I want Google to have anything to do with 'crafting' legislation that affects me.
About Apple, I worry less.
I would be just as worried about apple...they are in the ad game too, and their goal as with any business is to make as much as possible, if they could get some bad stuff in law to protect the location features that they may want to use for iAds, they would be obligated to do so by the shareholders.
Quote:
Originally Posted by anantksundaram
...allowing users the option to not sync the location data with iTunes (just as they do with calendar, contacts etc.) It's not such a big deal.
...allowing users the option to not sync the location data with iTunes (just as they do with calendar, contacts etc.) It's not such a big deal.
1) Would that make a difference? The data will still be on your device. The problem seems to be with the amount of cache of locations not the fact that the information is cached at all, coupled with the people blowing it out of proportion and ignoring actual sensitive data that is on the device, in the backups, and in your user accounts on your Mac/PC.
2) Where can you exclude iCal and Address Book from the backups? I only see the option to prevent them from syncing from your user account and the device via iTunes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by magicj
Glad to see they're bringing Google in as well.
Glad to see they're bringing Google in as well.
Seems to me that those they arent bringing in have no mindshare. No RiM and no MS yet they both record location data, too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism
1) Would that make a difference? The data will still be on your device. The problem seems to be with the amount of cache of locations not the fact that the information is cached at all, coupled with the people blowing it out of proportion and ignoring actual sensitive data that is on the device, in the backups, and in your user accounts on your Mac/PC.
2) Where can you exclude iCal and Address Book from the backups? I only see the option to prevent them from syncing from your user account and the device via iTunes.
1) Would that make a difference? The data will still be on your device. The problem seems to be with the amount of cache of locations not the fact that the information is cached at all, coupled with the people blowing it out of proportion and ignoring actual sensitive data that is on the device, in the backups, and in your user accounts on your Mac/PC.
2) Where can you exclude iCal and Address Book from the backups? I only see the option to prevent them from syncing from your user account and the device via iTunes.
1) I can easily wipe the device clean, in the event.
2) Yeah, that option.
Perhaps you could tell me, since I am genuinely puzzled by your stance on this: why is it such a big deal to you that Apple have the right to collect information about you that you do not control? (Apple has admitted to collecting it twice a day, without your consent).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrontojPWEE
I wholeheartedly believe that Google is an untrustworthy entity. I just recently attempted to cancel my Google voice number only to discover that there is no way to do so. I've written to them(not easy to do), only to receive a curt response confirming. So they said to the effect, " we care about privacy, we're working on it" / end rant.
On topic. I'm with Anant on this one. I tend to believe that Apple will do the right thing here, or at least I'll put my faith in their hands over Google any day. Its all a bit unnerving.
This is an important read: http://www.theatlantic.com/technolog...-think/237786/
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I understand this is bad, but with all the crap going on in the world, it seems like a waste of teh senate's valuable time - why not look into things like the dirty money going from the Fed to Goldman Sachs or the fact that the year after a massive bailout, GE made 10s of billions in PROFITS and ended up getting a multibillion dollar TAX REFUND when mom and pop shops struggle to pay their 35%. And why are we still in 2 wars and starting a third?
Its good to know our Senators want to pretend to grill the shills from Google and apple before they all go for cocktails and exchange campaign donations for thank yous, but sheesh, we have more important fake shows of outrage to fill the hours on CSPAN.
Now that I have my cynical rant out of my system, let me say that Al Frankin is a great Senator and appears to be one of the few in DC working for the people.