U.S. Senator Asks FTC to Investigate Apple and Google Over Photo Uploads to Appmakers [Updated]

[SkippyThorson]

Looks like somebody wants folks to know their name and face during an election year.

Our tax dollars hard....I mean hardly at work.
Seriously....go solve poverty or the economy or something that really matters.
Steve

Just Friday I thought to myself, "I wonder where that media whore Schumer disappeared to?" Well, guess this answers that question.

Having solved all other enormous fiscal and international problems, yeah great use of US Congress time to worry about Apple and Google. With idiots like this in office, it's no wonder we are faltering.

Ask Chuck Shumer if he could spend that time making a (1000 days overdue) budget for the Senate.

So let's all blame ONLY Chuck Schumer. That seems like a logical attack. Get real folks. He brought up a genuine issue that no company really seems to be too concerned about. Like I said, if ANYONE ELSE had brought this up today, the hate-posts would be directed toward them - whether it be Al Gore, Ghandi, Tom Cruise, my cat, etc...

Interesting how everyone only hates in one direction at a time. There's more than just Chuck Schumer here, people.

-----

How quickly can Apple push out a bug fix for a product? Pretty speedy, huh? Now let's think about how quickly Apple's acted on a remedy to privacy issues such as this. I can't even come up with a timeframe because there isn't one.

Let's consider Google! When I think Google, do I think about my data being safe and secure? No. I think about Google sucking off all of the info that it can get its hands on, collecting and compiling it, and using it for its own personal gain - all the while without me directly telling them to.

Now, when third party Apps can do the same thing - scummy little free Apps made by everyone from Zynga to the nerd up the block - that's a bit much. No App NEEDS access to my address book, or photos I've taken of my nephew's birthday party. That's just too absurd.

For instance, if I wanted to let Google know my street address to mail me something important, I'd tell them. Instead, they already have it logged - so that there's a StreetView of my house, available for virtual-drive-bys, and a top down Google Earth shot of how many cars I have in my driveway... Both online for everyone to see. That's just what I've always wanted! /Sarcasm...

 

[Rodimus Prime]

Personally I saw this as a more non issue and the media and congress made it an issue.

How is it people are not up in arms about the fact that programs can see every file you have on your desktop computer. Android is more like a desktop in that sense that it has access to everything in the file system like a desktop.

The NYT started this mess.

 

[jca24]

******* schmuck shumer, another left wing whack job. he sucks and is a horrible senator along with the rest of the left wing socialist idiots.

 

[Undecided]

I've never understood how Congress can choose to get involved with these super nitty-gritty issues of life, yet the American public doesn't think they should be allowed to get involved with basic things Americans need like healthcare or investment in future industries to create jobs.

The federal government should not be involved with any of that as none of those things are supported by the constitutional authority granted in the constitution to the federal government.

 

[Lennholm]

Our tax dollars hard....I mean hardly at work.

Seriously....go solve poverty or the economy or something that really matters.

Steve

Oh so now all of a sudden you're concerned with poverty in your country but if someone would talk about a tax increase, that might help solve that problem, or the mere mentioning the word "welfare" you americans scream "COMMUNISM!" and start gather with burning stakes

-----------------------------

******* schmuck shumer, another left wing whack job. he sucks and is a horrible senator along with the rest of the left wing socialist idiots.

You prefer fundamentalist right wing bible bashers?

 

[SkippyThorson]

He is "for the people" yet he voted for legislation which required every private citizen to use private money to buy a private product for personal use from a private sector company or face jail time.

He called a flight attendant a 'bitch' for doing her job.

Sounds like an upstanding Senator.......

I can't speak for your first generally-broad comment because I don't know which piece of legislation you're referring to, when it came up between now and 1998, and specifically law or bill you're referring to that contained that.

As for your second part, no one seems to care that Alec Baldwin is rude to flight attendants and calls his own daughter a pig. That didn't seem to hurt his career. I'm not saying its ok, but if it can't hurt Alec Baldwin, why should that hurt Senator Chuck Schumer?

Frankly, I wouldn't want you fired if you had called a flight attendant a b**ch. Maybe you had a bad day, but whatever, that doesn't stop you from doing your job.

I've been overly rude to people and haven't been fired because frankly, that doesn't stop him from doing his job. That unwritten rule seems to apply to many major or influential people - politicians, actors, musical artists, sports "athletes", etc...

 

[Jonny Skyves]

That's ridiculous. Get real. No application has the right to my data without my permission. Applications already violate our privacy more than I would like (in my opinion, apps should only be permitted to read cookies that they create, not the cookes from other apps). But taking my address book data or photos is beyond anything reasonable. Congress is only involved because Apple/Google were too stupid to recognize this flaw themselves. While bugs happen, I suspect this is more about everyone working so fast, there's no time to fully evaluate whether these kinds of flaws exist, although I think this particular violation is so outrageous, I never would have thought that any app would even attempt it, which is probably why whatever tools Apple uses to test apps probably didn't test for it.

Congress will never bother passing any laws on this, but it won't be necessary anyway because I believe Apple/Google will rectify this quite soon. Having said that, I certainly wouldn't mind if there was legislation in this area, but the downside of legislation is that it can't address technology changes in the future. But you know the EU is going to address this - they're much more paranoid about privacy than the U.S. is.

Great post.. Spot on. How can anyone disagree??
I would be peeved as well if some random app accessed my pics (mainly of my kids), and loaded em anywhere.

 

[econgeek]

Oh so now all of a sudden you're concerned with poverty in your country but if someone would talk about a tax increase, that might help solve that problem, or the mere mentioning the word "welfare" you americans scream "COMMUNISM!" and start gather with burning stakes

Wow. Just Wow. You have absolutely no clue how economics works, do you? Let me guess-- you were educated in government indoctrination centers, right?

You raise taxes, you create poverty. Think about it-- how are poor people made less poor by taking more of their money? It really is that simple.

Oh, you want to raise taxes on the "Rich" right? Well, that's always the claim but its BS because the reality is even if you do this, you're just increasing the cost of living for the poor, or decreasing the jobs created for them.

All these "programs" designed to "help people" generally hurt people. The president spend hundreds of billions of dollars in handouts to his political cronies, and called it "Stimulus". He said if he didn't spend the money, the unemployment rate might hit %9. Well he spent the money and the unemployment rate went over %10. (If we did honest accounting it hit closer to %25 but we can't even trust the government to do that job right.)

All those dollars handed out to democratic contributors to "create jobs" -- like solyndra, which is now bankrupt after getting $500M in handouts-- came out of the economy. When that money comes out of the economy, it isn't there to be invested in growth... thus taking that money in the first place destroys jobs.

I *wish* americans were anti-communist. But we have a president (and the immediate prior president) who both support most of Marx's 10 tenants.

But Americans, like you, are educated in government "schools" because "an education is a right!" and thus are completely ignorant of economics.

About as ignorant as Schumer is about computers.

----------

Great post.. Spot on. How can anyone disagree??
I would be peeved as well if some random app accessed my pics (mainly of my kids), and loaded em anywhere.

Do you have spreadsheets on your Mac?

How about your taxes?

Every App installed on your mac has access to these files.

The idea that Apps should be segregated from data is brand new.

To have a douchebag criminal (Shumer's paycheck is stolen money, after all) pontificating about how apps shouldn't have access to data is beyond asinine.

 

[ThisIsNotMe]

I can't speak for your first generally-broad comment because I don't know which piece of legislation you're referring to, when it came up between now and 1998, and specifically law or bill you're referring to that contained that.

:facepalm:

What piece of legislation passed in the last 3 years requires a private citizen to use private money to buy a private produce for private use from a private company or face possible jail time?

(Hint: Obamacare)

The fact that he voted for the destruction of personal freedom and for instantly huge expansion of federal authority over the individual tells me all I need to know about him. He isn't 'for the people' as you claim, which was the main premise of your original post. If he was 'for the people' he would have voted for individual freedom. He didn't.

But back on topic. This guy is doing nothing more than grandstanding. Period.

 

[Lennholm]

Wow. Just Wow. You have absolutely no clue how economics works, do you? Let me guess-- you were educated in government indoctrination centers, right?

You raise taxes, you create poverty. Think about it-- how are poor people made less poor by taking more of their money? It really is that simple.

Oh, you want to raise taxes on the "Rich" right? Well, that's always the claim but its BS because the reality is even if you do this, you're just increasing the cost of living for the poor, or decreasing the jobs created for them.

All these "programs" designed to "help people" generally hurt people. The president spend hundreds of billions of dollars in handouts to his political cronies, and called it "Stimulus". He said if he didn't spend the money, the unemployment rate might hit %9. Well he spent the money and the unemployment rate went over %10. (If we did honest accounting it hit closer to %25 but we can't even trust the government to do that job right.)

All those dollars handed out to democratic contributors to "create jobs" -- like solyndra, which is now bankrupt after getting $500M in handouts-- came out of the economy. When that money comes out of the economy, it isn't there to be invested in growth... thus taking that money in the first place destroys jobs.

I *wish* americans were anti-communist. But we have a president (and the immediate prior president) who both support most of Marx's 10 tenants.

But Americans, like you, are educated in government "schools" because "an education is a right!" and thus are completely ignorant of economics.

About as ignorant as Schumer is about computers.

Lol, the us anti-communism dogma is the biggest case of indoctrination in the history of politics. I'm not communist, but I'm certainly left-wing, I believe in humanism and solidarity.
You have to get rid of the belief that everyone is working unless they're lazy. Most unemployed are so not because they're lazy but because there simply is no work for them to do. And these people are what it's all about, they have no income and wouldn't get hurt by higher taxes.
They're dependent on tax funded handouts, it's tragic but it's the reality.
I understand economics, I understand that the current system isn't working any longer in this modern world. Something you aparently fail to do.

 

[vrDrew]

Sorry, Reichwingers, but this is what a democratically elected Government in a capitalist society is supposed to do.

Is this a terrible thing for Apple or Google? Of course not. If anything, its publicly-funded market research.

What is going to happen is they'll hold hearings, at which executives from the tech industry will come and give testimony. So will legal scholars, people from the ACLU, and "privacy experts", along with a few everyday Apple and Google customers. People will talk about all sides of the issue, explaining what the benefits - and costs - of data-sharing are.

Apple and Google, along with the rest of the tech industry, will come away with a very clear idea of how much personal data their customers are prepared to share. And what the minimum-standard for privacy controls ought to be. And because the US is still the go-to country for policies of this kind - companies in other countries will probably follow suit.

At the end of the day, its extremely unlikely anyone is going to prison over this. Its only slightly more likely that Congress will pass any kind of legislation. But Congress will have used its subpoena power to shed some light on an important area of privacy for billions of people, and persuaded the leading tech companies in the world to come up with a mutually agreeable set of standards that will let App makers continue to create programs we love, while making sure our vacation snaps don't get sold to Ukranian porn directors.

 

[grockk]

BREAKING NEWS: Every Mac OS X app can view all your photos! twitpic.com/8qok8b

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

Three things are necessary for better protection of private photos:
1. Auto-encrypt all picture data & meta data with AES-128 and a device specific key.
2. Use a 3 step system which allows the user of a device (via different options) to decrypt the photo(s).
3. Make sure, an app sees nothing, per default.

----------

BREAKING NEWS: Every Mac OS X app can view all your photos! twitpic.com/8qok8b

I store some pictures on a AES-128 encrypted disk image, and i use a very long key.

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

Is this software made in India?

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

(Hint: Obamacare)

You are obviously misinformed, ignorant and not able to stay on-topic. And that is not a problem of this forum, it is YOUR PROBLEM. Please solve it first, then come back!

Thank you very much!

 

[iBookG4user]

Simple fix: Make a private photo mode for the camera app.

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

Let me guess-- you were educated in government indoctrination centers, right?

Please post your troll comments somewhere else!

Thank you very much!

 

[gnasher729]

In other words: "I don't want those photos of me doing things I shouldn't have been doing to go public. And, if they do go public. . . that's not my weenus."

Don't know why this was rated up by anyone. I don't want any photos that I take to go anywhere except to the places where I want them to go. At the very least, all my photos are copyrighted, so anyone making copies without my permission is on the hook for that.

Personally I saw this as a more non issue and the media and congress made it an issue.

How is it people are not up in arms about the fact that programs can see every file you have on your desktop computer. Android is more like a desktop in that sense that it has access to everything in the file system like a desktop.

There are two completely different aspects of this: One is whether the operating system allows apps to do naughty things. The other is whether apps _do_ naughty things. It seems rather clear that the intent was that an iPhone wouldn't allow any app access to your photos (either not at all, or only if the application asked). Since that was the intent, we have a bug that needs to be fixed so that the iPhone behaves as intended. And on the desktop, yes I think that Microsoft Word should have permission to include a photo in a Word document, and it should have the permission to send that Word document with the photo to some e-mail address; but if the application were to use these permissions to send my photo library to Microsoft, then I would be very annoyed. I trust them not to do that. On the iPhone people trust Apple not to allow this.

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

Oh what shock when I open up MacRumors and I see a photo of New York's own Chuck Schumer. Here comes a flood of political debate posts.

A flood of troll posts, is probably more correct.

 

[Noctilux.95]

What a tool!
This guy should call for the same on Wall Street, but won't, since he's a NY Senator and they line his filthy pockets.

 

[tylerk36]

The Senator said "Samsu um I would like to investigate Apple and Google for Violations yada yada yada". Obviously he has some rich company paying him to do this.

 

[David G.]

"Back home that's what we call an overcooked ham."

 

[Rocketman]

Sen. Schumer-D is a politician using a cheap trick to front-run a known bug which has been widely reported and is on schedule for fixing anyway. He is simply trying to get on the side of privacy in time for the elections, which is clearly opposite his position most of the time. He selected an issue he knows with certainty Apple will fix, so he can claim victory. His only goal here.

The senate largely with his leadership is currently holding up a bunch of legislation passed by the house and has been for three years, ever since the budget with stimulus was passed. By refusing to conference on House Budget bills (and others), the Democrats in the Senate have effectively extended the "one time 2009 stimulus" through 2010, 2011, and 2012 (budget years). The $866B stimulus has thus become about $3464B, all with no employment benefits, in fact the employment base has declined several percent overall, and with reduced GDP growth as compared to any past recession "recovery".

This is the guy who is misdirecting ("look over there") with this made-up issue on privacy. Consider the source and your own knowledge of how bug reports work when considering whether to vote for this guy or his D collegues in the Senate this year.

Somebody smarter than me knows how to propagate this message to like minded folks on other venues. With my permission.

Rocketman

 

[SkippyThorson]

:facepalm:

What piece of legislation passed in the last 3 years requires a private citizen to use private money to buy a private produce for private use from a private company or face possible jail time?

(Hint: Obamacare)

The fact that he voted for the destruction of personal freedom and for instantly huge expansion of federal authority over the individual tells me all I need to know about him. He isn't 'for the people' as you claim, which was the main premise of your original post. If he was 'for the people' he would have voted for individual freedom. He didn't.

But back on topic. This guy is doing nothing more than grandstanding. Period.

Well when you put it like that... Now I understand what you meant. See, I wasn't for Obamacare in the least. I think it's a terrible idea - and still do - but I can't blame a single voter for it. If Schumer had been on either side of the fence about Obamacare, that doesn't impact how I feel about any of his other (unrelated) decisions or stances on anything else.

A flood of troll posts, is probably more correct.

Well said. I was very much looking forward to some constructive discussion and new developments regarding tomorrow's iPad event. Instead, boom, politics. Oh boy.

 

[Jetson]

Not surprised to find a fanboy-fest in full swing.