Apple: We 'must have' comprehensive user location data on you

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INFORMATION REVOLUTION

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April 23, 2011 5:35 PM EDT

Security researchers unveiled this week that Apple's iPhone was actively logging the whereabouts of users, storing location data into an easily assessable file on the device.

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But it's not just iPhones that are keeping track of their users.

Apple's iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, the iPhone 4, and iPadmodels are also keeping track of consumers whereabouts. Mac computers running Snow Leopard and even Windows computers running Safari 5 are being watched.

The question is why?

The company has remained silent after researchers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden revealed this Wednesday that the iPhone was storing logs of users' geographic coordinates in a hidden file.

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"We're not sure why Apple is gathering this data, but it's clearly intentional, as the database is being restored across backups, and even device migrations," the security experts wrote in their blogs.

While Apple has since remained tight-lipped on the matter, not responding to any media-inquires, another privacy snafu last year gives insight into what the company is doing with the information.

In June 2010, Congressmen Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., and Joe Barton, R-Texas wrote a letter to Apple CEO Steve Jobs inquiring about Apple's privacy policy and location-based services

In response the company's general counsel Bruce Sewall wrote a letter explaining its practice, and shedding light on the rationale the company uses to monitor users.

"To provide the high quality products and services that its customers demand, Apple must have access to the comprehensive location-based information," Sewall told Congress in the letter.

After emphasizing Apple's commitment to users' privacy, Sewall said that to provide these location-based services, Apple, its partners and licensees, may collect, use and share customers' precise location data, including GPS information, nearby cell towers and neighboring Wi-Fi networks.

While the security researchers Allan and Warden did not confirm whether the devices were actively sending data back to Apple, Sewall said that it was within Apple's right to do so.

"By using any location-based services on your iPhone, you agree and consent to Apple's and its partners' and licensees' transmission, collection, maintenance, processing and use of your location data to provide such products and services," Sewall's letter reads, citing Apple's End User Agreement.

But he added that the information is collected anonymously and the devices give users controls for disabling the features.

In addition to giving Apple customers the ability to turn off all location features with one "on/off" toggle switch, Apple requires applications to get explicit customer approval when it asks for location information for the first time.

Apple also stores the location information in a database only accessibly to Apple, the letter says. This may be the case for data sent to Apple, but Allan and Warden were able to create a program that accessed and mapped user locations from un-encrypted data on the iPhons they examined.

But though Apple says that its location data practices support the services its customers want, analysts and activists say the practice still raises serious questions.

Read more: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/137432/20110423/apple-we-must-have-comprehensive-user-location-data-on-you.htm#ixzz1KVcTTYHy

Hundreds of Taliban in tunnel jail escape

ChaoticFate.com by qew
INFORMATION REVOLUTION

Afghan government officials confirm that some 540 Taliban members have escaped from Kandahar prison. Last Modified: 25 Apr 2011 03:06 Email Print Share Send Feedback

In June 2008, Taliban fighters attacked the same facility in southern Afghanistan freeing nearly 1,150 prisoners [AP] Some 540 Taliban officers and commanders have escaped from Kandahar prison via a 350 metre-long tunnel, Afghan government officials have confirmed to Al Jazeera. A Taliban official on Monday also confirmed the overnight escape, boasting that the prison break had been "very well-planned" and that it was five months in the making, Al Jazeera's Qais Azimy, reporting from Kabul, said. "They started getting out of the prison at 11:00pm (1830 GMT) last night and by early morning today, 541 prisoners escaped the prison," Yousuf Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman, said. "They all have made it safe to our centres and there was no fighting." Ahmadi said that 106 were Taliban commanders while the rest were foot soldiers. Kandahar police said they have re-captured eight commanders so far. The prison in Kandahar typically holds drug dealers as well as Taliban commanders captured by NATO forces, our correspondent said. If the officials have the correct number for those who have escaped - 540 Taliban commanders and senior officers on the run - then this break will constitute a "big success" for the Taliban. It is also sure to "have a dramatic effect on the fight against the Taliban in the region," said Azimy. Security concerns There have been previous escapes from this prison. In June 2008, Taliban fighters attacked the facility in southern Afghanistan, blasting through its entrance and engaging in a gun battle with police. Nearly all of the estimated 1,150 prisoners, including some 400 Taliban, escaped, according to Afghan officials. A Taliban spokesperson said that two suicide bombers blew themselves up near the entrance of the gate to the prison before 30 Taliban fighters attacked and killed 16 policemen. Kandahar prison was the scene of a mass hunger strike by hundreds of inmates in May, 2008 during which 47 of the prisoners sewed their lips shut after complaining they had been tortured and denied fair trials. Kandahar is seen as the birthplace of the Taliban movement and the city and surrounding area is scene of some of the worst fighting in Afghanistan.

Source: Al Jazeera

Small German woman gets right in the faces of a gang of Muslim thugs

ChaoticFate.com by qew
INFORMATION REVOLUTION

“I am ashamed that he (Muslim thug) can stand here and speak like Hitler. Do you want Germany to be like all those countries from which they came? Germany, you have to rise, RISE UP GERMANY!”

Will governments confiscate gold?

ChaoticFate.com by qew
INFORMATION REVOLUTION

Alasdair Macleod
GoldMoney.com
April 24, 2011

As concerns mount that there is another financial crisis in the offing and the gold price rises, American investors worry increasingly about whether the US government will confiscate their gold. The precedent was set by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who in 1933 forced all of America’s gold owners to sell their bullion to the Federal government at the official price.

However, the situation today is very different from that of 78 years ago. At that time, gold was the primary currency, the dollar being tied to it at $20.67 per ounce. But today, the Fed and European central banks strongly deny that gold has any monetary role at all, and argue instead that it’s just a hangover from the past: “that barbarous relic” as Keynes called it. Its confiscation would be an embarrassing admission that gold, after all, is money.

Nevertheless, as paper currencies continue to lose credibility, the temptation for any government to seize its citizens’ gold to enhance official holdings must be growing. Americans today, however, are unlikely to meekly accept confiscation the way they did under Roosevelt. And nowadays, you may be American, but your gold is not necessarily held at an American bank: it is just as likely to be in London, Zurich or Hong Kong.

China Proposes To Cut Two Thirds Of Its $3 Trillion In USD Holdings

ChaoticFate.com by qew
INFORMATION REVOLUTION

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/24/2011 11:05 -0400

• Hyperinflation
 
• Monetary Policy
 

All those who were hoping global stock markets would surge tomorrow based on a ridiculous rumor that China would revalue the CNY by 10% will have to wait. Instead, China has decided to serve the world another surprise. Following last week's announcement by PBoC Governor Zhou (Where's Waldo) Xiaochuan that the country's excessive stockpile of USD reserves has to be urgently diversified, today we get a sense of just how big the upcoming Chinese defection from the "buy US debt" Nash equilibrium will be. Not surprisingly, China appears to be getting ready to cut its USD reserves by roughly the amount of dollars that was recently printed by the Fed, or $2 trilion or so. And to think that this comes just as news that the Japanese pension fund will soon be dumping who knows what. So, once again, how about that "end of QE" again?

From Xinhua:

China's foreign exchange reserves increased by 197.4 billion U.S. dollars in the first three months of this year to 3.04 trillion U.S. dollars by the end of March.

Xia Bin, a member of the monetary policy committee of the central bank, said on Tuesday that 1 trillion U.S. dollars would be sufficient. He added that China should invest its foreign exchange reserves more strategically, using them to acquire resources and technology needed for the real economy.

Advice from an Argentinian Collapse Survivor

ChaoticFate.com by qew
INFORMATION REVOLUTION

This young man is doing the work... He is living and reporting from Argentina, 10 years after THEIR collapse...
His insight and practical experience goes beyond what WE think might happen...
HERE is practical experience in our modern world.
As he says... We are preparing for a return to the 1800's way of life...
THAT HAS NO VALUE IN TODAY'S WORLD!
Go and read his blogs and website...
Let him that has ears... hear!
----------------------------------------
Anonymous said...

"I'm scared. i hate this. I don't know what i'm supposed to be doing, stocking up food or trying to buy a gun or getting what little money i have out of the bank or what!".

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

Please, don’t panic. The boogy man isn’t going to snatch you or anything, ok? :)
Don’t have much time right know but I think a lot of readers are in a somewhat similar position.

1) Don’t panic, don’t get paranoid.

Does you no good and certainly doesn’t help when trying to solve a problem. Besides, there’s nothing to panic about. Tomorrow is just going to be an ordinary day like always.
What you have to do is implement a few lifestyle changes, learn a few skill and VERY carefully spend some of that hard earned money in some gear if you don’t have it already.

Outrage follows Syria security crackdown

ChaoticFate.com by qew
INFORMATION REVOLUTION

Bloodshed in cities across the country prompts protesters to redouble calls for end to president Bashar al-Assad's rule. Hugh Macleod and a special correspondent Last Modified: 23 Apr 2011 16:44 Email Print Share Send Feedback

People have taken to the streets in cities across Syria [Reuters] Weeping over his Quran, the imam of the al-Rahman mosque in Hajjar al-Aswad, a poor neighbourhood near the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp on the southern edge of Damascus, the Syrian capital, led evening prayers for the dead. Six young men from the neighbourhood had been shot and killed by Syrian security forces, one of them Imam Abu Bilal's 22-year-old son. His eyes black with rage, the imam vowed to bring thousand of supporters on to the streets to rally against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, the president, when, like up to 100 other Syrian families on Saturday, he buries his dead. "It started with 200 to 300 young men demonstrating in front of the police station," said Omar, a shopkeeper from the neighbourhood. "Then the mosque told us the names of six people killed and within half an hour all the residents of Hajjar al-Aswad were on the street. "All the young men, all the women, all the teenagers. We are a tribal society here." The largest day of protests in a five-week uprising against the Syrian regime was also the most widespread, with the blood of citizens killed by plain clothes security and military spilled on the streets of the capital for the first time. Capping a week that saw the central industrial city of Homs become a new focus for protest, what had begun as an uprising by citizens in the north, south and west of the country became on this "Great Friday" a battle for the streets in and around Damascus itself. "I can tell you now, the situation in Maadamiya will never be calm," said a doctor from the southern suburb of the capital. "Today is an historical day for the country. There is now a new strategy to kill all protesters, not even to arrest them." Fearing to take the wounded to hospital after hearing from colleagues in neighbouring Darayya that security had shot and arrested protesters there, the doctor said he was now treating the injured inside people's homes. "But it is very hard to treat the wounds because many have been shot in the head," he said.

Japanese government censors Fukushima reports that contradict official story

ChaoticFate.com by qew
INFORMATION REVOLUTION

April 23, 2011

Print Version

Source: NaturalNews

Censorship of the truth about what is really going on at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility has been taken to a whole new level of corruption. According to a recent report from the Shingetsu News Agency, the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication (MIAC), in conjunction with the National Police Agency and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), has established a special project team to crack down on independent and freelance news agencies that criticize or otherwise scrutinize the official Japanese government position concerning Fukushima.

The Japanese government appears to be working closely with both the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and the nation's mainstream media outlets to maintain the facade that everything is just fine, and that the nuclear meltdown situation is largely mitigated and under control. But recent prodding and questioning by certain media sources outside this "good ol' boys" club have struck a nerve with authorities, sparking the new crackdown on those who oppose the official story. Authorities say such scrutiny is a threat to national security.

For the most part, the mainstream Japanese media has been the only type of media invited to most of the press conferences concerning Fukushima. And the reporters who attend these events merely reiterate what TEPCO and others are saying about the situation, without asking any hard questions or investigating the situation. But the few press conferences at which independent and freelance reporters have been permitted to attend have been rife with the tough, hardball questions that nobody else has been asking -- and this has caused quite an upset.

"Freelance journalists and foreign media are pursuing the facts, even going into theradiation exclusion zone," explained Uesugi Takashi, an independent journalist that has been pushing the Japanese government to be more forthcoming with the truth about the situation. "However, surprisingly, the Japan government continues to prevent freelance journalists and overseas media from gaining access to official press conferences at the prime minister's house and government."

One of the biggest and most obvious questions that many independent journalists, as well as Japanese citizens, are asking concerns the near-total blackout of information on the current status of Fukushima. Authorities continue to repeat that the situation is under control, but where is the actual evidence to back this claim? And if those in power have nothing to hide, then why have all the meetings between TEPCO officials and the government been private, closed-door meetings that exclude actual journalists?

Meanwhile, empty reassurances that the Fukushima situation is essential "over" have drawn many citizens who previously evacuated the Fukushima exclusion zone back into these dangerous areas. This occurs, of course, as radiation readings around the world continue to rise in response to the Fukushima disaster (http://www.naturalnews.com/032048_r...).

Sources for this story include:

http://japanfocus.org/-Makiko-Segaw...

Airport passenger screener charged in distributing child pornography

ChaoticFate.com by qew
INFORMATION REVOLUTION

April 23, 2011|By John Shiffman, Inquirer Staff Writer

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TSA officer Thomas Gordon Jr. is being held. (Image: Government Employees (AFGE)…

A passenger screener at Philadelphia International Airport is facing charges that he distributed more than 100 images of child pornography via Facebook, records show.

Federal agents also allege that Transportation Safety Administration Officer Thomas Gordon Jr. of Philadelphia, who routinely searched airline passengers, uploaded explicit pictures of young girls to an Internet site on which he also posted a photograph of himself in his TSA uniform.

Homeland Security agents arrested the TSA officer March 24, and he is being held without bail.

Although the case was unsealed Thursday, neither the indictment nor the news release mentioned Gordon's job searching airline passengers for TSA.

The arrest comes as TSA grapples with several other incidents involving screeners, including a YouTube video posted last week by parents angry about the pat-down their 6-year-old daughter received at an airport in New Orleans. TSA officials said the pat-down was proper; the parents said the girl was "groped."