The iPhone LocationGate scandal continues to escalate.
Senator Al Franken has summoned Apple and Google to appear before a Senate judiciary hearing on mobile privacy in May.
“This hearing is the first step in making certain that federal laws protecting consumers’ privacy — particularly when it comes to mobile devices — keep pace with advances in technology,”
said Sen. Franken in a statement.
As well as Apple and Google, the Senate hearing will feature Justin Brookman, Director of the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Project on Consumer Privacy; Ashkan Soltani, an independent privacy researcher; and officials from the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission.
The hearing is the latest development in the snowballing scandal, which is a massive non-issue and appears to be a fairly harmless programming mistake or oversight.
But while Steve Jobs says the issue has been misrepresented, it’s already the subject of class-action lawsuits; government investigations in several countries in Europe and Asia; and an investigation by the Illinois Attorney General.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
21 responses to “iPhone LocationGate Prompts Senate Hearing (Google Too)”
There’s a “gate?”
Why do you sometimes add the suffix “gate?”
Do things like this occur at hotels?
It is very illogical to add the suffix “gate” to words.
Google “Watergate scandal”.
From wikipedia: “The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. Effects of the scandal ultimately led to the resignation of the President of the United States, Richard Nixon, on August 9, 1974, the first and only resignation of any U.S. President. It also resulted in the indictment, trial, conviction and incarceration of several Nixon administration officials.”
So now, anytime something scandalous happens, we americans put the suffix “gate” after it, kinda as a catch phrase, kinda making light of our culture’s frenzy over a big newsworthy scandal.
oh wait, maybe you were being sarcastic. I can’t tell! haha.
Those political morons really need to find something constructive to do.
How about summoning Syrian security forces before the Congress for human rights violations?
I wish I had a filter to get rid of all articles with the words al franken in it. He is an idiot.
What a huge waste of public money just for a little grandstanding and column inches.
Everybody shhhhhhhh, if they’re tracking your location through your iPhone they could be also tracking everything you post on your Macs. For all you know you could be making love to your wife and Jobs and Wozniak could be sitting at home eating popcorn watching you through your Mac camera. Time for everyone to break out the tinfoil hats before the Apple mother ship comes down and assimilates you into the Borg continuum.
Franken is a complete and utter MORON!!!
Senator Goof is finally given something to do. Our government is broke and this is what they are doing.
I love how government is oh soooo concerned about protecting our privacy from private companies we VOLUNTARILY associate, while aggressively and ever-increasingly violating our rights and privacy themselves on a daily basis – subjecting its own citizens to warrentless wiretapping, random body-scans and pat-downs, DUI and seatbelt checkpoints, and even claiming the right to assassinate us at the say-so of the President alone.
Al Franken and the rest of the Imperial Senate can choke on it!