Yesterday Google and Apple were both in front of US Senate commitee to answer questions on the "Locationgate" controversy.
The hearing which is titled “Protecting Mobile Privacy: Your Smartphones, Tablets, Cell Phones and Your Privacy” saw Guy L. "Bud" Tribble Apple's Vice President of Software Technology and Alan Davidson Google's Director of Public Policy be grilled on why iOS and Android collect location data and where this data is stored.
The hearing can be heard in full on the US Senate website and contains very little that wasn't answered in Apple's Q&A, the most telling extract is below.
Frankin: Mr. Tribble, last month I asked Apple in a letter why it was building a comprehensive location database on iPhones and iPads and storing it on peoples' computers -- when they synced up, of course. Apple's reply to my letter will be added to the record. But this is what Apple CEO Steve Jobs said to the press: "We build a crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi and cell tower hot spots but those can be over 100 miles away from where you are. Those are not telling you anything about your location."
Yet in a written statement issued that same week, Apple explained that this very same data will "help your iPhone rapidly and accurately calculate its location." Or as the Associated Press summarized it "the data help the phone figure out its location, Apple said."
But Steve Jobs that same week said "those are not telling you anything about your location."
Mr. Tribble, it does not appear to me that both these statements could be true at the same time. Does this data indicate anything about your location or doesn't it?
Tribble: Senator, the data that's stored in the database is the location of as many Wi-Fi hotspots and cellphone towers as we can have. That data does not actually contain -- in our databases -- any customer information at all. It's completely anonymous. It's only about the cellphone towers and the Wi-Fi hotspots. However, when a portion of that database is downloaded onto your phone, you phone also knows which hotspots and cellphone towers it can receive right now. So the combination of the database of "where are those towers and hotspots" plus your phone knowing which ones it can receive right now is how the phone figures out where it is without the GPS.