It's not Steve Jobs, but Apple will have a presence at next week's congressional hearing on cell phone location tracking.
The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law announced Friday that Guy L. "Bud" Tribble, vice president of software technology at Apple, will represent Cupertino at a May 10 hearing titled "Protecting Mobile Privacy: Your Smartphones, Tablets, Cell Phones and Your Privacy."
At issue is the location-based data collected by smartphones. Last month, researchers said that iOS 4 location information was stored in an insecure manner and accessible to anyone who stumbled upon your iPhone, iPad, or the computer with which you synced your iOS device. That prompted concerns that Apple, and anyone who looked at that data, could track your whereabouts.
Apple later said iOS 4 devices captured so much data due to a "bug." That bug was fixed this week via iOS 4.3.3, but members of Congress still have questions for Apple, and Google.
Google has also been asked to testify about the location services provided by its Android operating system. Alan Davidson, director of public policy for the Americas at Google, will be in attendance.
Tribble has testified on behalf of Apple before. He appeared at a July 2010 Senate Commerce Committee hearing about online privacy, during which he was also questioned about location services. "There's a master on-off switch for location-based data [on Apple products] so that the user always has the option from completely opting out from any location data at all," Tribble said at the time.
Turns out some iOS 4 devices still captured location information even when location services were turned off, but iOS 4.3.3 also fixed that problem, as PCMag found out.
Tribble's testimony at the 2010 Senate hearing was similar to the letter that Bruce Sewell, general counsel and senior vice president of legal and government affairs at Apple, wrote to Reps. Edward Markey and Joe Barton that same month in response to the congressmen's questions about Apple location-based services. In the wake of the iPhone tracking controversy, before Apple spoke publicly about the issue, Sewell's letter was repeatedly used as a reference about Apple's location-based policies.
Tribble's prepared testimony will likely echo the statement Apple has posted online. The Q&A session between the senators and executives will likely yield more interesting nuggets.
The hearing kicks off at 10am Eastern and will feature two panels, the first of which will include testimony from the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice. Tribble and Davidson will then appear in panel two, along with Justin Brookman from the Center for Democracy and Technology, researcher Ashkan Soltani, and Jonathan Zuck, president of the Association for Competitive Technology.
The event will be webcast on the committee's Web site.
For more, see Apple's iPhone Tracking: What You Need to Know.