Midnight Musings

vruz:

by Julie Samuels, EFF

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.

Essentially, Apple’s patent provides for a device to investigate a user’s identity, ostensibly to determine if and when that user is “unauthorized,” or, in other words, stolen. More specifically, the technology would allow Apple to record the voice of the device’s user, take a photo of the device’s user’s current location or even detect and record the heartbeat of the device’s user. Once an unauthorized user is identified, Apple could wipe the device and remotely store the user’s “sensitive data.” Apple’s patent application suggests it may use the technology not just to limit “unauthorized” uses of its phones but also shut down the phone if and when it has been stolen.

However, Apple’s new technology would do much more. This patented device enables Apple to secretly collect, store and potentially use sensitive biometric information about you. This is dangerous in two ways: First, it is far more than what is needed just to protect you against a lost or stolen phone. It’s extremely privacy-invasive and it puts you at great risk if Apple’s data on you are compromised. But it’s not only the biometric data that are a concern. Second, Apple’s technology includes various types of usage monitoring — also very privacy-invasive. This patented process could be used to retaliate against you if you jailbreak or tinker with your device in ways that Apple views as “unauthorized” even if it is perfectly legal under copyright law.

— read more —

vruz: hey, do you still think I’ve been too harsh? is the EFF a bunch of paranoids? is this misleading evidence?  it’s none of that: fascism is alive and kicking, and it adopts the most unexpected forms.

remember that saying about eternal vigilance?

(via ryking)

vruz:

Owners of iPhones and other smartphones are one step closer towards taking complete control of their gadgets, thanks to a new government ruling Monday on the practice of “jailbreaking.”   

This weekend has seen a flurry of activity about digital rights, but the biggest news dropped Monday morning, when the FCC announced that it had made the controversial practice of “jailbreaking” your iPhone — or any other cell phone — legal.

Jailbreaking — the practice of unlocking a phone (and particularly an iPhone) so it can be used on another network and/or run other applications than those approved by Apple — has technically been illegal for years. Most jailbroken phones are used on the U.S. T-Mobile network or on overseas carriers, or are used to run applications that Apple refuses to sell, such as Safari ad-blocking apps, alternate keyboard layouts, or programs that change the interface to the iPhone’s SMS system and the way its icons are laid out.

vruz: of course, you won’t hear this bit of news from the faithfull fanbois.

keeping things competitive, nicely done FCC.

SEATTLE — Apple Inc shot past Microsoft Corp as the world’s biggest tech company as measured by market value on Wednesday, the latest milestone in the resurgence of the maker of the iPhone, which nearly went out of business in the 1990s.

Apple’s shares rose 1 percent on Nasdaq on Wednesday, pushing its market value up to $225.1 billion and ahead of Microsoft’s $222.7 billion, according to Reuters data. Apple shares were up 1 percent above $247 in late afternoon trading. Microsoft shares were down 2.2 percent to $25.50.