iPhones know where they are, so they probably know where you are, and these data have been captured and maintained by the Apple devices and have been used by police in geoForensic investigations. Crushing civil liberties? There’s an app for that!
Apple came to international attention in 1984 when the upstart computer company bought Superbowl Halftime ad space to show how they could destroy Big Brother. I’m not sure who Big Brother was at the time (it may have been a combination of IBM and Microsoft) but this was a direct reference to Orwell’s book “Nineteen Eighty-Four”
Ironically, or perhaps expectedly, there is little in the computer world more Orwellian than a widely used and much loved hand held device being distributed widely and lovingly, which secretly keeps track of your location, and secretly storing those data where they could later become available to The State. I wonder what else they are keeping track of? I wonder if we know where all the copies of these data are stored?
The Linux-based Android system also collects these data but does not send it to Big Brother unless you tell it to.
Following is a summary of recent posts and news reports on this and closely related topics to give you an idea of the nature and magnitude of this problem.
Continue reading iKnowwhatyoudidlastsummer