Steve Jobs Is Watching You: Apple Seeking to Patent Spyware

[superconnected]

Source: Common Dreams

It looks like Apple, Inc., is exploring a new business opportunity: spyware and what we're calling "traitorware." While users were celebrating the new jailbreaking and unlocking exemptions, Apple was quietly preparing to apply for a patent on technology that, among other things, would allow Apple to identify and punish users who take advantage of those exemptions or otherwise tinker with their devices. This patent application does nothing short of providing a roadmap for how Apple can — and presumably will — spy on its customers and control the way its customers use Apple products. As Sony-BMG learned, spying on your customers is bad for business. And the kind of spying enabled here is especially creepy — it's not just spyware, it's "traitorware," since it is designed to allow Apple to retaliate against you if you do something Apple doesn't like.
.

* The system can take a picture of the user's face, "without a flash, any noise, or any indication that a picture is being taken to prevent the current user from knowing he is being photographed";
* The system can record the user's voice, whether or not a phone call is even being made;
* The system can determine the user's unique individual heartbeat "signature";
* To determine if the device has been hacked, the device can watch for "a sudden increase in memory usage of the electronic device";
* The user's "Internet activity can be monitored or any communication packets that are served to the electronic device can be recorded"; and
* The device can take a photograph of the surrounding location to determine where it is being used.

In other words, Apple will know who you are, where you are, and what you are doing and saying and even how fast your heart is beating. In some embodiments of Apple's "invention," this information "can be gathered every time the electronic device is turned on, unlocked, or used." When an "unauthorized use" is detected, Apple can contact a "responsible party." A "responsible party" may be the device's owner, it may also be "proper authorities or the police."

Apple does not explain what it will do with all of this collected information on its users, how long it will maintain this information, how it will use this information, or if it will share this information with other third parties. We know based on long experience that if Apple collects this information, law enforcement will come for it, and may even order Apple to turn it on for reasons other than simply returning a lost phone to its owner.

Read more: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/08/24-0

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1984 is here.

[mike r]

1. How ironic

[Lightning Count]

2. I want one!

Sarcasm.

[superconnected]

3. I think this is very important from the article:

"We know based on long experience that if Apple collects this information, law enforcement will come for it, and may even order Apple to turn it on for reasons other than simply returning a lost phone to its owner. "

[mike r]

5. Duct tape for all Apple products?

"The system can take a picture of the user's face without any indication that a picture is being taken... The system can record the user's voice."

[Dawson Leery]

39. Law 'enforcement' can order OnStar to

turn on the microphone and passively listen in.

[zipplewrath]

4. Legal nightmare

I'm slightly less suspcious than most on this. I worry less about what apple will do, than what a divorce lawyer will do. They may want it so they can enforce their rules on the devices. A person already hacking into a iphone probably will be able to hack their way around these features. It's the husband that buys his wife an iphone because he thinks she's cheating on him and wants to collect this data that I'd worry about. He'll get a divorce lawyer to compell the release of this information.

[Vehl]

6. Apple has been..and always will be authoritarian.....thats why im a pc/android :)

i don't want to be told what is good for me. no thank you. I can make those decisions myself, rather than be given only a few choices (or non at all) and asked to choose between them.


The iphone vs droid war will go the same way the Mac vs pc war did, in the 80s. The end result is never in doubt.

[Dawson Leery]

38. Gates is no prize package,

but at least you can install any PC programed software/apps.

[woodsprite]

7. OK, so was the township school in PA really a test site for Apple?

Maybe they got all those computers at a DEEP discount if they helped them test their 'product'.

You may think I have my tin-foil hat on too tight, but when I ran a campus computer lab for a business college, a large commercial consulting firm came to us to try to get our 'buy in' to test their keystroke-logging software on all our computers in our lab where students/profs, etc. accessed email, personal accounts, school records, etc. We actually had profs who were pushing for me to sign and install this software because of perks they were promised by the company. I got tired of the crap and their lack of concern over privacy, so I bypassed all the dept heads and Dean above me and went to the head of IT. I told them all negotiations should take place with her. If she approved it and they could guarantee me in writing that the info gleaned COULD not be abused, then I would consider it. I never heard back from them after that and I received kudos from IT for not caving to faculty pressure.

I'd have to see it to believe that it could do all they say for the prices they charge. Then I'd have to make sure I never bought an Apple again. Home built Linux systems are the answer!

[superconnected]

10. You're on to something.

[Downwinder]

18. I keep wondering if there is a malicious web site out there

or a bot running around collecting all of those kids' bedroom pictures. If there isn't, how long will it be?

[madrchsod]

8. no apple products in my world....

why buy something that controls what you watch and worse, buy something you do`t really own.

[savalez]

9. No apple products here either. Same reasons.

[onehandle]

11. Google IS spying on you. On everyone no matter what device you use. nt

[superconnected]

12. I bet the RW would support this - or at least the Tea Baggers. They're against

government but pro corporate governance so this would be something they would love.

Plus I'm certian now, that they do have a personality flaw where where if something is bad for people(but good for corporations) - they want it. I consider it a form of self loathing - they loathe themselves then project and loathe others - thinking others are as bad as they are.

[DirkGently]

13. I think people would drop Apple products like a hot rock if they

implemented something like this, no matter what excuse or rationale was offered (likely theft deterrence).

[Lightning Count]

15. Don't be so sure.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/apple-claims-new-iphone-only-visible-to-most-loyal,2772/

[DirkGently]

16. (clutching iPad angrily) I don't find that sort of thing amusing! 8)

[TBF]

14. The baddest Apple in a rotten bunch ...

The baddest Apple in a rotten bunch

Jason Farbman looks behind the hype about the world's most valuable tech company.

August 17, 2010

Apple CEO Steve JobsApple CEO Steve Jobs

"This don't-be-evil mantra. It's bullshit."
-- Steve Jobs, on Google's informal slogan

"WALL STREET has called the end of an era and the beginning of the next one," proclaimed the New York Times in late May. Apple Computer, widely perceived to be on its financial deathbed as recently as the late 1990s, had become the most valuable tech company in the world, with total outstanding stock worth $222.12 billon.

It was a stunning turnaround for Apple, especially considering that it came during a decade when the U.S. economy wasn't expanding as quickly as in other periods.

So how was this possible?

It was easy to predict how the Times would explain Apple's success. Its permanent entry for Apple on the Times Web site praises "the oracular Silicon Valley company...With its coveted gadgets, Apple has cast something of a spell on both consumers and investors." And indeed, the May article on Apple surging to the top of the high-tech industry heap quoted a number of executives and CEOs who were in unanimous agreement that Apple's rise to the top was due to nonstop innovation and hard work.

As one executive put it, summarizing the attitude of the rest: "Microsoft depends more on maintaining the status quo, while Apple is in a constant battle to one-up itself and create something new."

The narrative was simple, and as old as the free market itself: Apple, down to its last dime, lived up to its slogan to "think different," worked hard and pulled itself up by the bootstraps.

But did Apple really manage to leapfrog the mighty--and ruthless--Microsoft, becoming second only to Exxon-Mobil among all U.S. corporations on the strength of good ideas and work ethic alone?

To get an idea of the real reason why Apple has succeeded, it was only necessary to look below the May article hailing the company's success on the front page of the Times business section. A second article reported on a spate of suicides in some Chinese sweatshops that was drawing attention to working conditions there. The Taiwanese owner of the sweatshops, Foxconn, was a contractor for numerous tech companies: Sony, Nokia, Dell, Hewlett Packard... and Apple.

The Times didn't make the connection between these stories. Between three credited authors and any number of editors, no one at the "newspaper of record" thought to point out that as Apple was taking the Dow by storm, at least 12 workers who make its products have committed suicide this year.

Most of the workers had thrown themselves from the top of the tall dormitories they are forced to live in during their few hours off. As of the end of May, Foxconn had begun to deal with the issue in two cynical ways. It installed nets around the buildings. And it began refusing to pay compensation to families of those who took their own lives--on the grounds, the company said, that this might be encouraging suicides.

All of the workers who committed suicide were between 18 and 24 years old. As Labor Notes reported, the deaths were "the result of 12-hour shifts, alienation from not being allowed to speak to co-workers, and a rapid just-in-time production model that has workers putting in a phone motherboard every seven seconds to meet the global demand for high-priced gadgets."

The first suicide of this year was in January--19-year-old Ma Xiangqian, who had been working seven nights a week for 11 hours at a time "forging plastic and metal into electronic parts amid fumes and dust," the Times reported.

But there was still room for life to get worse. After a run-in with a supervisor, Ma was demoted to cleaning toilets. In the last month of his life, Ma worked 286 hours "including 112 hours of overtime, about three times the legal limit. For all of that, even with extra pay for overtime, he earned the equivalent of $1 an hour."

There are 400,000 other workers on two Foxconn campuses where Ma Xiangqian was driven to kill himself. They are unionized, but as Labor Notes reported, this is essentially meaningless. The head of the union is secretary to the Foxconn CEO.

International outrage since the news broke forced Foxconn to provide several raises, but it's difficult to imagine working conditions at the sweatshops seeing the sort of turnaround that Apple Computer's bottom line has.

Apple's skyrocketing fortunes seem to have carried CEO Steve Jobs further away from reality, too. Incredibly, he has defended conditions at the Foxconn plant. "You go in this place, and it's a factory but, my gosh, they've got restaurants and movie theatres and hospitals and swimming pools," Jobs said. "For a factory, it's pretty nice."

Much more at the link ... http://socialistworker.org/2010/08/17/baddest-apple-of-the-bunch

[woo me with science]

17. And the list of DU good guys shrinks again..... nt

[4lbs]

19. I don't use Apple products, but here's a fix that will prevent any of their devices that have a

camera or microphone to prevent them from recording you:

Masking tape




Available nearly everywhere, at about $2.50 for a 150+ foot roll.

[Edweird]

20. It's like an obsessive psycho ex. How long before Steve Jobs is boiling bunny rabbits?

[Abq_Sarah]

21. Looking at the patent here...

http://www.patentvest.com/console/reports/docs/app/20100207721.html

This is pretty well over the top, even for Apple.

[FiveGoodMen]

22. Good enough reason for me never to buy from Apple.

[Stoic]

23. I don't argue with Apple fangirls anymore (my wife).

I just point out all the evil corporate crap they do ALL THE TIME. Lately, even the apologists are having a hard time defending them. Apple is evil.

[walldude]

24. I use both a Mac and a PC. They both have their strong points...

My problem with Apple is it's creepy. I have yet to meet a "genius" at their "Genius Bar" and when I go into an Apple store I get this creepy cult vibe. Kind of like.. "Express your individuality by being exactly like the rest of us".

[onehandle]

25. Yeah. The transgender person, the girl with the blue hair, and the guy with a tattoo on his face...

...at my local Apple Store scream "Express your individuality by being exactly like the rest of us".

:eyes:

[OnyxCollie]

26. I've got tape over the camera on my MacBook.

One of my friends who has a PhD in mathematics and builds his own computers warned me years ago that the camera could be used for spying.

[cbdo2007]

27. I can't see how it's legal to take pictures randomly from people's phones.

What's stopping them from taking a picture from obama's phone while he's changing clothes, then using that against them?

I can't see any businessperson or politician seriously allowing this because they coudl all be the targets. For that reason I highly doubt the "picture taking ability" will become a reality.

[Initech]

28. That's it. I'm ditching the iPhone for an HTC Evo.

Fuck you Steve Jobs. Fuck you very much.

[ecstatic]

29. lol nt

[superconnected]

30. bump

[tinymontgomery]

31. Try to always have the camera pointed

at your crotch.

[nadinbrzezinski]

32. This SHOULD end up in US courts

that said, the age of the nation state is coming to an end... more and more signs of that.

[Confusious]

33. Wouldn't this be considered wiretapping

And illegal in quite a few states?

I guess if they put it down in the fine fine print, you'll never see it.

Oh well, so much for that passing thought of buying a Mac. Maybe they'll come out with an Android pad, if oracle doesn't take google to the cleaners.

The APad. Haha

[yawnmaster]

34. its just a patent. It doesn't mean they are going to commercialize it...

although with the patent, they can keep others from using the technology.

[guruoo]

35. Jobs is wasting his time, because Cydia will have

an app for that, like they do for everything else.

[guruoo]

36. k&r nt

[Dawson Leery]

37. I have a PC and Laptop.

Windows and Linux.
I have never cared for Apple. The cultish behavior of their customers is strange.