Apple’s Location Tracking Is An Outrage — Where’s The Apology?

iPhone has been secretly tracking and storing everywhere you go.

Read that again.

Your iPhone has been secretly tracking and storing everywhere you go.

That's right. Apple built this feature into your iPhone without telling you. By doing so, Apple made it possible for anyone who gets ahold of your iPhone or Mac (or any other device synced with either) to figure out exactly where you were when--including police, the government, anyone who sues you, private investigators, and anyone who steals your iPhone.

That is outrageous.

If any other company had done this, America's privacy zealots would be demanding the CEO's resignation. There would be threats. There would be lawsuits. There would, at the very least, be incessant demands for the company to acknowledge the behavior, explain it, and apologize for it.

And yet, because the company is Apple, there have been none of those things.

Instead, Apple fans like have suggested that the secret feature is a "bug." And there have been mainstream media stories suggesting that it must be some kind of "mistake."

Privacy expert Marc Rotenberg, the Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington DC, says Apple's silence on this issue is startling. He suspects the company is debating whether and how to fix the problem, rather than just acknowledging and apologizing for it. (To date, Apple hasn't even acknowledged it.)

In the accompanying video, Rotenberg also explains exactly what Apple's location-tracking does, why it's a concern, and how it is different from what Google and other companies do.