Apple: OK, we tracked your every move... but let's call it a caching bug, m'kay?
It's a T&C question, not privacy invasion - Apple tells court
Apple's lawyers have asked a Californian judge to dismiss a case against the company on the basis that no harm was caused by Apple storing detailed maps of users' movements.
Apple has already redefined the case as a question of information storage rather than a privacy invasion.
The iPhone users who sued Apple can't prove that the company gave detailed user location tracking information to third parties such as apps, say Apple's attorneys. Apple is refusing to hand over certain documents which might prove this one way or the other, because that would amount to an attempt to discover harm rather than an actual investigation of harm caused.
In the latest installment of the case*, heard by Judge Lucy Koh in the Northern District of California, Apple's lawyer Ashlie Beringer filed a Declaration on 28 February saying that the plantiffs' requests for information were too broad.
Apple also wants the terms of the case reclassified as covering a "Caching Query Bug" instead of a "Location Services Issue". This reflects Apple's assertion that storing of user location was accidental.
Apple's lawyers successfully got six out of eight charges against it kicked out last June but Cupertino still faces two charges: for violations of the Consumer Legal Remedies Act and for violations of the Unfair Competition Law. The first relates to Apple's alleged failure in its promise to protect user data and the second to allegations that the vendor missold the device by including a Location Services "off" switch that didn't work.
The discovery of how iPhones stored detailed maps of their users' movements over months and years caused a media brouhaha in 2011. It was also discovered that this information was collected even if "location" was switched off on the phone. In 2011 Apple stated that the detailed location collection was accidental and tweaked its software to narrow the nature of the information collected and the time it was stored.
Apple claimed the geodata collection was an accident - due to a caching bug - but its explanations at the time were blasted for being vague and confusing. ®
* Apple Inc. iPhone/iPad Application Consumer Privacy Litigation, 11-md-02250, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose)
COMMENTS
Apple is refusing to hand over certain documents which might prove this one way or the other
So their documents show that they did...
Wilfully....
Despite being warned by the lawyers it was illegal.....
And overuled the developers who pointed out the off switch, didn't actually turn it off.
At least that's what I assume from them admitting they have documentation, but refusing to show it.
Different rules?
So Cupertino can make 'honest genuine mistake's, but everyone else is culpable of constantly breaking the law and should be punished by multi $B fines etc.?
Oh, Man up Apple!
Paris, because Apple seem to have just as much clue as she does...
Because your bribes campaign contributions are much much smaller than Apple's
Re: Easy now,
Oh, he's got a spine. He just doesn't give a shit about the little man. In ten year's time, this may well be very appropriate;
And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias Apple, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'
Hmm!
Isn't this the main reason people bash Android/Google and praise Apple because they supposedly don't track you!
