iPhone into iSpy
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are labelling Apple's latest
patent application "traitorware" ...
Ostensibly designed to respond to the loss of a phone it will give them the ability to;
The EFF are calling it "downright creepy and invasive". "Spyware, and its new cousin traitorware, will hurt customers and companies alike — Apple should shelve this idea before it backfires on both it and its customers," they say.
The patent's here.
| 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. |
Ostensibly designed to respond to the loss of a phone it will give them the ability to;
- Take a picture of your 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".
- Record your voice, whether or not you're even making a call.
- Determine your individual heartbeat "signature"(!)
- Monitor all internet activity and record "any communication packets that are served to the electronic device".
The EFF are calling it "downright creepy and invasive". "Spyware, and its new cousin traitorware, will hurt customers and companies alike — Apple should shelve this idea before it backfires on both it and its customers," they say.
The patent's here.
PC World is New Zealand’s top selling computing and technology magazine.
Comments
The issue is not the patent or Apple's future software, it's the hardware - the iPhone itself. Does anybody think that Apple will start implementing the 'new' features into iPhone 6 or 7? No, all the back doors are already in-built in the millions of phones already sold and used. And the phones cannot be really turned off because the batteries cannot be removed.
The only safe solution, as when dealing with old hard drives, is to use a hammer.
Posted by: Tim | August 31, 2010 2:17 PM
How many other phones or hardware have this capacity and even worse, is it being implemented already? imagine this being used for spying on governments, officials or even some pervert taking photos in locker rooms. Don't say it can't happen, look at Googles escapade with wifi.
Posted by: Mike | August 31, 2010 1:07 PM
The real issue is not what Apple can do, it is what others (CIA, NSA, KGB, Al-Qaeda and everybody else) can do using the inbuilt weaknesses in the phone. Would anybody be safe while handling a iPhone?
Posted by: Tim | August 31, 2010 12:08 PM
More bigbrotherware from Apple.
I bet there are human rights lawyers just waiting for this to backfire and for the chance to their teeth into Apple :)
Posted by: chris | August 30, 2010 5:30 PM
Terrifying. Thank you for that information.
It seems my plan to buy iPhone to develop apps for it, will turn to plan to _only_ develop apps for it and for the rest keeping it somewhere deep in the drawer. And for normal usage it is better to have dumb-phone instead of one of those smart-phones which can barely live through one day (battery).
You can never be sure when this smart piece of plastic start spying on you :-((
Posted by: macias | August 29, 2010 7:38 PM