Big+Bro+is+watching+u+(sorta)

** Big Bro is watching u (sorta) **
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Update 5/1/11: On April 27th Apple posted an official explanation about the location tracking features and the software update.

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Two security researchers for O'Reilly, // [|Alasdair Allan] and [|Pete Warden] //claimed to have discovered that your Apple iPad and iPhone running iOS 4 operating system or higher has a secret file holding a detailed record of every location you and your favorite toy have traveled. Not only is this information stored on your mobile device, but a copy is also held on the hard drive of any computer you’ve synched it with and the file is transferred over to any newly synced iDevice. =====

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Users have the opportunity to encrypt this data on the computer but so far there is no option to encrypt the data that is stored on the device in a file called [|consolidated.db]. Also, iPhone or iPad owners do NOT have the ability to opt-out of this feature. =====

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Though Allan and Warden have claimed “discovery” of this information, Alex Levinson actually wrote a [|scholarly paper] about this year-or-soago. =====

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Apps like maps and camera use this Geolocation tracking information to run all the time. Your location is triangulated between cell towers—this enables gps software etc. to run. Users have to opt in to allow these apps to access their location information, yet disabling gps mode does not prevent your device from recording a detailed time-stamped record of all your location information. =====

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It’s clear that the harvesting of this data is intentional, since it is constantly restored over backups and device transfers—yet it is illegal under [|California state law] for Apple to collect this information. =====

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All cell phones have records of this data, but it can only be accessed by authorities with a court order. Your iPhone is holding it there, unencrypted, for the whole world to access. It seems like a few days of cached location information would be sufficient for location-based apps, yet the folder never clears. This means that a detailed record of your every move (who goes anywhere without their cell phone?) for the past year can be accessed by anyone with the know-how and access to your computer or mobile device. Actually, forget the know-how; Allan and Warden have developed an [|open-source application] that displays all the data stored in this file on a map....kinda scary. =====

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-What if the laws change and Apple CAN legally access this data?

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