cryptogon.com news – analysis – conspiracies

August 24th, 2010

Via: Electronic Frontier Foundation:

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.

…

Here’s a sample of the kinds of information Apple plans to collect:

* 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.”

Surveillance, Technology | Posted in Dictatorship Top Of Page