EFF: Apple seeking to patent spyware [LWN.net]

EFF: Apple seeking to patent spyware

Posted Aug 27, 2010 0:51 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
In reply to: EFF: Apple seeking to patent spyware by sepreece
Parent article: EFF: Apple seeking to patent spyware

Even if Apple did use it, they could use it for exactly the purposes described in the patent - to protect the device owner from theft and hacking.

"Theft" and "hacking" are two completely different things. Let's take theft first:

It's trivial to protect a phone from theft without resorting to spyware and incredible privacy-violating features. Step 1: Secure the phone physically. That's up to the owner. In other words, don't do dumb things like leaving the phone unattended.

Step 2: Have a secret lock code. The owner could lock the phone (or set it up so the phone locks automatically after a certain period of inactivity.) Unless you know the lock code, the phone is a brick. If implemented properly, it could prevent the phone from being usable by a thief. You could even allow the phone's owner to borrow another phone and enter some secret thing based on the lock code that tells him/her where the phone is (using its GPS). But at least activation of the "phone home" spyware would be controlled by the phone's owner, because anyone who doesn't know the secret lock code wouldn't be able to activate it.

Preventing against hacking is just Applespeak for maintaining complete control over the phone and preventing phone owners from doing what they want with it. It doesn't actually prevent against cracking since the bad guys will always find flaws in any sufficiently-complex piece of software, where "sufficiently complex" means over 100 lines of code.

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EFF: Apple seeking to patent spyware

Posted Aug 28, 2010 3:12 UTC (Sat) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link]

I mostly agree with you - I never said it was a good idea, just that it isn't inherently evil.

As noted elsewhere, this is all possible today and the patent adds nothing other than some possibility of commercial advantage if the idea became popular.

Note, however, that the idea *could* have some commercial appeal, even if you and I might not want it. One more anecdote. The inventing session I mentioned in the other strand was specifically around things that would enhance security. We took that to include both security from theft of the phone (we considered a couple of the ideas in this patent in that context) but also personal security - car-accident and physical assault detection, survivor location after an earthquake, medical emergencies and health monitoring, etc. None of the discussion was about protecting the phone, our IP, or the carrier from the phone owner.

The point is just that you can come to these ideas without evil intent.