Apple leapfrogs Google, seeks patent for future device that would spy on its users

It appears that Apple has aspirations to overtake Google as the number one threat to user privacy. The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:

It looks like Apple, Inc., is exploring a new business opportunity: spyware and what we're calling "traitorware." While users were celebrating the new jailbreaking and unlocking exemptions, Apple was quietly preparing to apply for a patent on technology that, among other things, would allow Apple to identify and punish users who take advantage of those exemptions or otherwise tinker with their devices.

The creepy details are as follows:

Apple's patent provides for a device to investigate a user's identity, ostensibly to determine if and when that user is "unauthorized," or, in other words, stolen. More specifically, the technology would allow Apple to record the voice of the device's user, take a photo of the device's user's current location or even detect and record the heartbeat of the device's user. Once an unauthorized user is identified, Apple could wipe the device and remotely store the user's "sensitive data." Apple's patent application suggests it may use the technology not just to limit "unauthorized" uses of its phones but also shut down the phone if and when it has been stolen.

But it doesn't end there.

However, Apple's new technology would do much more. This patented device enables Apple to secretly collect, store and potentially use sensitive biometric information about you. This is dangerous in two ways: First, it is far more than what is needed just to protect you against a lost or stolen phone. It's extremely privacy-invasive and it puts you at great risk if Apple's data on you are compromised. But it's not only the biometric data that are a concern. Second, Apple's technology includes various types of usage monitoring — also very privacy-invasive. This patented process could be used to retaliate against you if you jailbreak or tinker with your device in ways that Apple views as "unauthorized" even if it is perfectly legal under copyright law.

This isn't a joke, folks. This is from a real patent application. Specifically, United States Patent Application 20100207721.

What is Apple's objective here? Are they trying to turn the iPhone into the eyePhone? Create a zillion telescreens that they can control from Cupertino?

Words really can't describe how wrong this idea is. It's just wrong.

Apple executives apparently envision a day in the not-too-distant future when it will become feasible for them to mass-produce this technology and build it into their devices (phones, music players, computers, tablets... and whatever else they sell). Why else are they trying to patent traitorware?

Whatever happened to the company that once told us — in a memorable ad announcing the Macintosh a quarter century ago — that it wanted to save us from the kind of world depicted in George Orwell's 1984?

Like Google, Apple is turning against the very ideals espoused by its founders in its pursuit of profit. Here's what Steve Jobs said back in 1984 about the 1984 ad:

It is now 1984. It appears IBM wants it all. Apple is perceived to be the only hope to offer IBM a run for its money. Dealers initially welcoming IBM with open arms now fear an IBM-dominated and-controlled future. They are increasingly turning back to Apple as the only force that can ensure their future freedom. IBM wants it all and is aiming its guns on its last obstacle to industry control: Apple. Will Big Blue dominate the entire computer industry? The entire information age? Was George Orwell right?

How ironic that Apple is now trying to prove George Orwell right.