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As noted by All Things Digital, the U.S. Senate has posted a hearing notice for a Judiciary Committee meeting on mobile privacy scheduled for May 10th at 10:00 AM in Washington, DC. According to the witness list included in the notice, Apple's Bud Tribble will be providing testimony during the session, which is entitled "Protecting Mobile Privacy: Your Smartphones, Tablets, Cell Phones and Your Privacy".
The session will begin with a panel featuring representatives from the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice, presumably to give background and set the stage for testimony as the legislators attempt to learn more about how consumer privacy is handled with mobile devices. Tribble will be joined on a second panel by Google's public policy director, Alan Davidson, as well as several other witnesses from public interest groups and trade association/lobbying groups.
Tribble serves as vice president of software technology at Apple and has a long history with the company. He served as manager of the Macintosh development team and oversaw the development of Mac OS, and later joined Steve Jobs to found NeXT. Tribble returned to Apple in early 2002.
The Senate hearing was sparked by concerns over location tracking information publicized for being stored on users' iPhones and Android-based handsets. The hearing was initiated by Senator Al Franken, and Jobs reported soon after that Apple intended to participate in the discussions as requested. Senate officials confirmed last week that both Apple and Google would be sending representatives to the hearing.
Top Rated Comments
Did it ever occur to you that he may be the most qualified person from Apple to testify?
Good point. Let's ask for the long form birth certificate.
ah, nevermind.
So...
This title:
"Apple's Bud Tribble to Testify in Senate Hearing on Mobile Privacy"
... could in essence be changed to this:
"Apple to Teach Senate on Geolocation Services"
The government has removed the concept of privacy as a basic right, which, by the way, the constitution doesn't allow them to do.
There's supreme court rulings on this-- believe it or not, one of they key ones was Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion by finding that anti-abortion laws violated women's right to privacy.
I trust Apple to do the right thing, because they've always done right by me.
I trust the federal government to do the wrong thing, because they've never done right by me, and they've constantly lied about it. (Even the Privacy Act of the 1970s reduced privacy, and the few protections it did provide are routinely violated by the federal government now.)
Oh, right, they can get PR for themselves by going after Apple and %90 of the people never bothered to read the bills I referred to earlier and so have no clue that the government has put privacy violations into law.