Big brother on the iPhone 4... but really?

[strredwolf]

So the alarm has been raised over the iPhone 4 tracking your movement.  If you're on a Mac with an iPhone 4, you can check what it recorded, plotted out here: petewarden/iPhoneTracker @ GitHub

But it's inaccurate, because of two things:

First, it doesn't have all the data. I picked up my phone on the Thursday before Anthrocon 2010.  It didn't record that -- earliest it has was July 7th.

Second, and most importantly: it's only location of the nearest cell phone towers!  It can narrow a search by law enforcement, but a lawyer can probably tell you that needs a court order to access it, since it's on your Mac.  Besides, doesn't your cell phone service provider have that on their end?

Comments

[oby.livejournal.com]

Well, there are other concerns than just what Apple is doing with the information (apparently nothing so far). The information is stored and unencrypted, so pretty much anyone (P.I., friends, family, enemies, viruses (rare with Apple, but they do exist) ) could potentially gain access to it. It's also unclear exactly how detailed the information can be. Which is one reason Al Franken sent an open letter to Apple asking for more specifics as to why, and how this tracking works.

I liked how a news site (I think it was CNN) stated this. If it were Microsoft or Google that was collecting this information without consent, they would immediately have a backlash regarding what's being done with it and who they're selling the information to. But since it's Apple very few are yet willing to see this company as doing anything nefarious.

[kazriko.livejournal.com]

They've basically implied recently that they need no warrant for searching your phone if you're carrying it outside of your home, so even if there is a copy on your mac, there's also one that can be extracted from your phone. Not only that, but police now have equipment where they can slurp the data off your phone without even taking it from you for more than the traffic stop. Grab the phone, plug it in, data pulled off, hand it back to you...

All of this applies to android as well.