Apple has been granted a patent by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) that describes a method to remotely enable and disable certain functions of a device based on certain events. The patent is titled “Apparatus and methods for enforcement of policies upon a wireless device” and was filed in June 2008.

The patent describes a system which can identify functions like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, camera etc. included in a device, and based on certain events disable these functions remotely. The action to disable certain functions can be triggered by various types of events like:

If a device is in the range of other devices

If a device connects to a certain access point

The ability to remotely disable certain functions of a device without user consent reminds one of a totalitarian state, where the government controls everything, but Apple cites some situations where such technology would actually be very useful. For example, at a movie theatre the iPhone could automatically go into “Silent” mode, or at a sensitive area it could go into “Sleep” mode, or in a locker room the camera could be disabled.

Apple also says that the user can be given a choice to approve changes being sent remotely, however one cannot rule out the possibility of some changes being applied to the device without user consent.

Certain smartphones with NFC already let users automate configuration changes in a similar fashion with the use of NFC tags, though the idea in the patent seems to be handing over control of the device to a third party rather than users themselves.