EFF: Apple seeking to patent spyware

My point stands, and I don't think I have said anything incorrect or disingenuous, let alone facile - the patent is just a description of a possible arrangement of technologies, which could be used for good or evil purposes. Until they decide to deploy it, there's no point to leaping to conclusions about their intentions. A patent doesn't disclose intentions, just technology.

I don't like the walled garden. I believe it is better to allow people the freedom to install what they like on their devices. I used to work for a phone manufacturer (not Apple, which wasn't a phone manufacturer at the time) and I argued regularly that free devices would eventually win in the marketplace. I have an Android phone. But Apple's approach is not evil - you're free to accept the walls or go elsewhere. Evil would have been applying some of these techniques without disclosing it.

You say there's no way to see this other than in 1984 terms. I can say that I was in inventing sessions at that company that discussed, I think, every one of the points in the Apple patent, all in the context of providing things users would want, none in the context of spying on the user (car accident detection by listening to ambient noise, fitness monitoring using pulse monitoring, etc.). They were mostly rejected at that time as impractical (monitoring ambient noise costs battery life), unpatentable (pulse monitors already existed) or unmarketable (people might find it creepy, as you do).

My original point was not just rhetoric, though you apparently thought it was - the idea of weapons that work only for their owner goes back as far as fables from ancient cultures. People generally like that idea. So, if you wanted to invent a way for a phone to recognize that it had been stolen, how would you do it, without using some of these approaches? Do you think that's an evil or misdirected goal?

I don't think my complaining about direct misstatements in the EFF announcement is juvenile mocking, but you're free to. I don't believe I have said anything about your style or your comments and I won't start now.

You also haven't responded at all to the central point - Apple could do all this today, if they wanted to. The patent is completely irrelevant to that and to any plans they might have to do it.