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Comment by tjogin | Hacker News Reader

8. What other location data is Apple collecting from the iPhone besides crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data? Apple is now collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service in the next couple of years.

Interesting. Apple generally does not pre-release information about upcoming products, at all. They must have felt their hand forced in this, or Jobs is not at the helm of this press release (which I'm sure he is).

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Excuse me if I'm just being naive, but how could the above point 8 ever be reconciled with

1. Why is Apple tracking the location of my iPhone? Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone. Apple has never done so and has no plans to ever do so.

If you are "collecting anonymous traffic data" that means that you have to collect a phone's position and velocity, as well as time. That sounds like tracking to me.

Sure, it is probably anonymized and encrypted and aggregated into some probabilistic model, but it's still tracking the users' movements. I wouldn't be surprised if it's all stored somewhere server-side, that we only will find out about when something happens to Apple like happened to Sony's PSN network a few days ago.

This was already public knowledge. See this article about Apple dropping Skyhook for its own thing:

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2010/08/04/apple-drops...

"Apple apparently has its own Wi-Fi location information, presumably culled from the daily movements of iPhones around the country, that it thinks is good enough for its own devices."

That sounds exactly like what is described in the press release.

IMO the most interesting thing -- I was just daydreaming on the way to work of a mapping app that basically tracked your route, and compared timestamps of movement against expected times to generate an accurate realtime traffic map when shared with a central server.

The problem with traffic info right now is that it's always either laughably late (see sirius/xm traffic info) or it's based on eyes-in-the-sky style updates from radio, which you can only get every period of time.

Google Maps on Android does exactly that, it's great. especially in the summer time, makes it easy to find ways around construction.

Traffic data from sensors in the road has always seemed fairly accurate to me.

I also like the idea of using millions of iPhones' locations to get comprehensive traffic data.

However it's vaguely reminiscent of the cell phone sonar surveillance system in The Dark Knight.

For getting angry at Android privacy, Jobs certainly seems to be missing out on the fact that this isn't an opt-in service, whereas it is in Google. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/bright-side-of-sittin... Apple is GOING to get your traffic data, whether you want them to or not. With Google, I have the option.

The government got involved and there were going to be congressional hearings with Apple and Google representatives over this.

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