Was the iPhone a prop in Minority Report?

The recent controversies regarding Apple’s iPhone tracking make it seem like we are getting closer and closer to a reality similar to the movie Minority Report. Are we shifting to a culture where little “precogs” track everything we do? Maybe not yet, but our phones do have the capabilities to track, log and transmit our every move.

There have been concerns about Apple’s location history database which is built into iOS. The company says that it is not tracking the location of each iPhone. However, it is collecting data of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell phone towers. This data is sent to Apple in encrypted and anonymous form.

Apple did admit to two “bugs.” One is that the iPhone continued to update its Wi-Fi and cell tower data even when users turn off the Location Service tool. Also, “the reason the iPhone stores so much data is a bug we uncovered and plan to fix shortly… We don’t think the iPhone needs to store more than seven days of this data” (finance.yahoo.com).

Smart phone users should be aware if their phone’s advanced competence. If your phone is lost or stolen, the new user would have access to the tracking data and has the ability to download it to their computer. Also even though Apple isn’t sending this data to any 3^rd party companies, they are allowed to. The government permits “telephone companies [to share] customer data, including location information, with outside parties without first getting the customer’s consent but those rules don’t apply to Apple and other phone makers.” (technolog.msnbc.msn.com).