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Apple Patents Remotely Disabling Jailbroken Phones
An anonymous reader writes "Apple yesterday applied for a patent to allow remotely disabling electronic devices when 'unauthorized usage' is detected. The patent application covers using the camera to take pictures of the unauthorized user and using GPS to determine location, and it involves ascertaining whether the phone has been hacked or jailbroken, using those as criteria for detecting 'suspicious behavior.' The patent would allow the carrier or any other 'authorized' party to disable or restrict the functionality of the device. Is this Apple's latest tool to thwart jailbreaking?"
...doesn't mean it's legal, right?
1) Unauthorised by whom?
2) Didn't a school district try this recently and get some bad press for it?
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Can you scream "privacy issue" so hard that blood is expelled from every single one of your orifices? DRM is pretty bad, but this is just sickfuckery.
Disagree != mod troll.
a security measure for stolen iPhones.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Just don't buy Apple products anymore. End of story.
You'll never hear their electric cars pull up to you while you're busy playing that homebrew game and four muscular guys with horn-rimmed glasses step out to beat you up with their Einstein-tatooed gigantic arms...
... to hate on Apple and never purchase any of their products on principle.
It doesn't say the countermeasures would be used BECAUSE the phone is jailbroken, just that this is one of the data it could ascertain. Right?
Wouldn't that kind of action be in violation of the recent ruling that made such actions as jailbreaking legal on personally owned devices? I understand its a warranty violation, but that shouldn't mean that it should allow apple to restrict usage, etc.
Reading this it becomes instantly apparent that "unauthorized use" is referring to users of stolen devices.
Jailbreaking is already legal. What use would it be to take a photo of a jailbroken user?
Theft is not legal. It would be VERY useful to have a photo of the user of a stolen device.
Ummm, isn't this probably intended for stolen phones?
The person you sold the phone to can be unauthorized? I think this is probably a patent on disabling stolen phones if that's the language they're using. It's basically the same feature that activesync had before iPhones came out with the addition of gps and photo data.
Using the camera to take pictures of the user ... assessing GPS to determine location ... remotely disabling device.
Apple, you've finally lived down to my expectations (and then some).
The level of control Apple wants to exert over its products has officially gotten scary. I wasn't really considering an iPhone as my next handset, but now it's entirely off the radar for me.
The wall around their garden just got a little taller...
My blood hurts...
Just about any radio system with some sort of ident signalling (5-tone, MDC, MPT1327, whatever) allows you to stun radios remotely, locking out all functions until they are either unstunned with the appropriate code or reprogrammed by the dealer. On many radios you can "kill" them by telling them to wipe their programming, requiring all the frequencies and idents to be programmed back in.
Apple's image will certainly survive a scandal resulting from the actual implementation of something in the vein of the patent application. I mean, spying on the possessor of hardware you provide because you're somehow suspicious of them has worked out well in the past.
And they're tracking the GPS location of the 'suspicious user'? What, do they plan to send the police at them as soon as they detect jail breaking? Apple really wants to open this legal can of worms?
Well, at least Google never does anything evil. Oh, wait..
That's about the size of it. This is why I never buy brand name anything if I can avoid it. Too many companies think they are just renting you their hardware, that they still own it, and that they can presume to disable it if they think you are not using it the way they want you to.
Fuck them.
Fuck them right in the ear.
I'd like to patent the use of the Apple logo as a decoration for the interior of a toilet bowl, or as a convenient target in a urinal.
Wait! This is good news: by patenting, Apple prevents HTC, Nokia, Moto and all the others from bricking your phone when you unlock it. All the more reason for buying an open phone.
I guess people really don't know what they are getting, do they?
The walled garden that people keep touting is looking more and more like a panopticon every day...perhaps now people will think twice about being bound hand-and-foot, bent over with arse presented for Mr. Jobs & Co. ?
The patent would allow the carrier or any other 'authorized' party to disable or restrict the functionality of the device.
The patent would not allow disabling. Apple already have the ability to block any device that they like to brick (which I belive is illegal, although IANAL). The patent would prevent other producers to sell similarly trapped devices without paying some "fee" to Apple. Having a patent to a method does not mean you are legally entiteled to use that method.
Now, what they need is a prediction system where they can precog your likelihood to jailbreak your iphone and remotely wipe it before you do.
'unauthorized usage' means a lot of things. It *could* mean jailbroken, but - to those with a brain - it means the ability to remote wipe your phone, find it if it is stolen, etc. Remote wipe is crucial on the enterprise. While I question the validity of the patent (how long has RIM had remote wipe?), the actions are valid. Jailbreaking is legal, there is nothing Apple can do to that, so get over it.
Macbooks suck when comparing their anti-theft features compared to Windows notebooks. Apple already has Find My iPhone for MobileMe subscribers but it's not very good. In this case if a phone is reported stolen it can take a picture of whoever finds it for easier identification by police
but imagine you're reading 1984 in iBooks and your phone suddenly starts saying "You are the dead" when Winston and his girlfriend are about to be arrested in the hotel. that would be a cool easter egg in the latest version of iBooks
Sometimes even bad ideas need to be patented. Apple patents an awful amount of stuff that really will never exist. I think that this is one of them. If it does, it may not be for a jailbreak situation. File this under... can do, shouldn't do, won't do....... but no else can - or pay up.
It makes my dumb phone look much more reliable, relatively speaking.
In soviet Russia, God creates you!
If the Copyright Office says that its legal to jailbreak an iPhone, then what right does Apple have to disable my device? I have broken no laws by jailbreaking my iPhone.
This has nothing to do with Jailbroken phones. Where did the "anonymous reader" come up with that crap? From the first sentence in the abstract "This is generally directed to identifying unauthorized users of an electronic device." And nowhere in TFA does it say anything about Jailbroken phones. This is simply a twist on lojack.
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
I remember when we used to make fun of people who thought their TV's were watching them. Now it's getting a little scary.
Is it something in a past or future version of iOS?
I learnt my lesson... bought an iPhone 2 years ago... it will be my last Apple product. Ever.
Huh? Didn't Slashdot publish a story just a couple of months ago about the same capability in the Motorola Droid? Maybe Apple's lawyers don't read Slashdot.
They already do this as is the case, as was the case with the stolen iPhone 4 prototype. Apple just likes to patent everything that is possible to patent in order to cover their bases. It doesn't mean that they are actually going to implement disabling of jailbroken iPhones. And even if they did implement this to prevent jailbreaking, then a month later the jailbreakers would have a new version that thwarts this protection.
Wasn't there an app for this? Some dumazz got caught stealing someone's droid. Is this even patentable?
That they are even attempting this only further cements my position that I will never, EVER buy anything from Apple.
Technoli
Because if they got the patent, it will make harder for the android parties to actually brick phones remotely.
Citation needed.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
make it illegal for Apple & Microsoft and any other company to shutdown or "brick" a cellphone or game console any other product...
now as far as any modded product if someone mods the hardware that is legal but they might void the warranty and apple or microsoft or whoever can block it from their online service but they can not legally sabotage the product when it trys to connect, (just block it from connecting) the owner of the modded hardware are free to use some other service (which jailbreaking and modding was intended to accomplish anyway)
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I don't know why they are bothering with the patent, they are not the first to do this. The Wave Secure (https://www.wavesecure.com/) app will already let Droid owners do this, BB has a remote wipe feature which granted doesn't get your phone back but does (if you do it quick enough) protect your data. I would guess there are a few other companies that have apps to do the same. To me this is borderline patent abuse.
Saying "all faiths are equivalent" is akin to saying "all drugs are the same".
1. make cool product that everyone likes
2. alienate an entire segment of the population who would buy cool product
3. ????
4. profit!!??
This is why we should be able to rate stories -1 Troll.
Nothing in the linked article references jailbreaking. This looks way more like remote disabling for stolen phones - the same way that OnStar customers can call to say that their car has been stolen.
The specific means of identifying whether or not the current user is the one who is supposed to be operating the device is discussed, and in that context:
So in other words, if someone steals your iPhone, they won't be able to thwart anti-theft devices by jailbreaking your phone or yanking the SIM.
If the makers of all the other phones actually have to pay a licensing fee to Apple to disable jailbroken phones, they probably won't bother to - for lack of a better metaphor - "put them in jail" in the first place.
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Who knows. Maybe if Darth Jobs' empire pushes too hard, some of his lobotomy cult will eventually get the idea.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I think a certain school district can claim "prior art"
http://yro.slashdot.org/submission/1310370/Feds-No-charges-in-Philadelphia-school-laptop-spy
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Wasn't it ruled that jailbreaking is legal?
So disabling a jailbroken phone would be 'destruction of property' or something like that.
Someone steals your phone, and you discover that it can't be remote wiped to protect your private data, because some idiot screamed "privacy issue" so hard that blood was expelled from every single one of his orifices, thus preventing (via nimby type suits) the manufacturer from implementing it?
Best Slashdot Co
when they detect that you have purchased gasoline from a non-GM approved gas station.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The article doesn't mention jailbroken phones. It mentions unauthorized users and talks of protecting personal data on the device based on various methods for detecting the right user. It also mentions multiple preferences on things like the iPad for multiple users.
That makes it sound like the patent would be some sort of legal precedent establishing law. That makes no sense. Patents don't "allow" actions, they restrict them.
No, the items you keep quoting are obviously merely members of a long list of example techniques for evaluating the likelihood that a phone has been stolen.
There's no conspiracy theory here. Imagine that you were a phone. Someone enters the wrong unlock password a dozen times? Maybe your owner forgot it. You haven't been back to your home a couple days? Maybe your owner is on vacation. But when, IN ADDITION to all that, someone starts trying to unlock you, you'd have a pretty good notion that you're about to be hawked on ebay.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
if there's a FSF campaign against Apple. Off to fsf.org
This technology sounds quite useful if you assume "unauthorised use" to mean "use of the phone by someone who has stolen it"...
After all, at least in the US jailbreaking is explicitly legal, so spying on a jailbreaker could in itself be an illegal act.
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Except they did say "and," they said "or." So you could detect the wrong password being entered too many times or you could detect that someone is trying to jailbreak.
I do not doubt that the system could be used to detect theft (in the normal sense of the word) and disable stolen phones. However, I would not be so quick to assume that the system will only be used to do that. Neither Apple nor AT&T (nor any other cell network) is particularly friendly toward consumers, so why would you doubt that they would try to disable jailbroken phones (particularly since they can no longer claim it is illegal)?
Palm trees and 8
wow as this clearly seems to describe a mechanism to deny usage of stolen devices, the conclusion to this is crazy!
either apple bashing people now are recruited where the conspiracy theoriests are planted, or this is meant as an ad coming from a company willing to control the whole net (i'd vote for the first one), while not wanting to own it. i'm a regular slashdot reader for more than 10 years now, but starting to think that opensource now is a threat to users brains as much as proprietary software, if not taken in a "healthy" amount
Misleading, inaccurate or jaded into thinking Apple is such an evil empire??? If you RTFA or the patent it has NOTHING to do with Jailbreaking...it has to do with theft recovery.
Congratulations Salshdot, you just hit a new low....
It's left blank because I have nothing to say to you punks!
I recently bought an out-of-contract iphone 3G, and have gotten around to getting it jailbroken and unlocked, and will be looking around this weekend for a carrier. Does this mean that if I say, sign up with iwireless, in a month Apple can do something to my iphone that makes it no longer usable with iwireless? (or brick it?) It would seem that once you're out of your plan and especially not even the original owner that signed away any rights, that they wouldn't have the legal right to do this? Just because you manufactured it doesn't entitle you to mess with it down the road after it's hit the open market?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Nice move Apple. This means your competitors phones will not be able to be disabled but apple phones will be.
That means people should be buying non-Apple phones to avoid the disable "feature".
Of course competitors could license the technology but it sure seems like a good selling feature for non-apple phone.
"Look we don't have the remote disable technology"
They already patented lo-jack (or whatever). My on-star can also remotely disable my car. Why is it that if you say it's for a phone an introduce the words "take a picture" suddenly a patent is granted. Fuck I hate the US patent system.
I'm very happy I went with the Android-powered HTC EVO 4G.
Apple patents getting sued by their customers.
that I bought the wifi version of iPad
Wouldn't the owner (as in the person with the iPhone) be entitled to a full refund ?
True enough apple should not be required to support jail broken iPhones but actively disabling them sounds a lot like what Sony did with the PS3 and "install linux".
It used to do something which it now doesn't thanks to the manufacturer.
This patent isn't about jailbreaking, it's about disabling a stolen devices. The point is to detect usage trends or biometrics of the intended user and if the device detects anomalies it can act upon them by locating, disabling or other things to protect the data and possible recover the device.
Allegedly Apple is also working on something like this so rather then logging in every time another user users a device.
--- Nothing To See Here ---
If you work on Wall street.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
There are two states, Maryland and Virginia, under which remote disablement of software is allowed under UCITA, the Uniform Computer Information Transaction Act. Even then, bricking, or "self-help" as UCITA calls it, has some limitations, and it's not allowed in "mass market transactions" such as those involving non-negotiated licenses. The intent was to address shrink-wrap licenses, but a cell phone contract is similarly non-negotiable. This sounds like an "invention" that can't really be used in most of the US.
UCITA and its self-help provisions have been an issue for a long time, and a lot has been written about it that's probably applicable here too.
Citation needed.
References:
[1]: The voices in my head.
[2]: 29 hours of thinking about it, without sleep, while on caffeine.
[3]: Observations made from peeking out from the blinds of my apartment and noticing all the StreetView cars passing by (no, you can't fool me, I KNOW which ones are StreetView, even the so-called "secret StreetView" cars).
[4]: The squirrels outside my apartment.
[5]: Okay, that one's actually real and not just a joke I made up to mock the paranoids.
they don't need to patent that. why use biometrics to detect the HUMAN using the device. jailroken-ness can be detected w/o biometrics. this is a measure to prevent unauthorized use (as it it's not your device to begin with)
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/08/apple-considering-identification-of-unauthorized-ios-users.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss
The patent, titled "Systems and Methods for Identifying Unauthorized Users of an Electronic Device," describes several ways a device could sense who is using an iPhone or iPad. Among the methods considered are voice print analysis, photo analysis, heartbeat analysis (!), hacking attempts, or even "noting particular activities that can indicate suspicious behavior."
If the various analyses detect someone who is not authorized to use the device, it could set off a number of automated features designed to protect the device's data, suss out the offending party, and alert the device owner. Sensitive data could be backed up to a remote server and the device could be wiped. The device could automatically snap pictures of the unauthorized user and record the GPS coordinates of the device, as well as log keystrokes, phone calls, or other activity. That information could be sent along with an alert to any useful service, such as e-mail, voicemail, Twitter, Facebook, or a "cloud service" like MobileMe.
I am so glad that I chose SE X10 over iPhone 4!!!
Why does almost every submission regarding Apple (positive or negative) have to be so incredible misleading?
The application published yesterday, but was applied for 18 months ago, in Feb. 2009.
There's a pat for that
First of all, this patent is practically a business method patent unless they intent to make the disabling automated. People need to make a decision to disable a phone otherwise. That makes the disabling part already covered by RIM patents on the Blackberry. But the detection portion is the only part I can imagine to be completely and independently patentable.
I feel sorry for the growing number of people who got iPhones. So many I meet are moving to other devices these days. It's funny but it's sad too.
if apple where to push it they may lose more then just iphone app store lockin they may even end have to let mac os x run on non apple systems as well.
Maybe this means "everybody not Apple" will be less likely to remotely disable jailbroken devices for fear of being sued by Apple.
But...
Fuck you, Steve.
I had a sucky sig.
The unauthorized usage sound like the psystar case but this time the hackers have a big law on there side and out side the usa the law says what psystar was doing is legal.
So what will apples case be if they where to sue peopel who unlock phones? people who make unlocking software? people who see pre loaded / unlocked phones?
what does this mean for windows phone 7? will that app store be locked as well and M$ will power less to stop it?
what about android carriers that lock the phone down?
What about the ps3 and xbox lock in?
The mac os x lock in?
And this makes me want to buy an iPhone for what reason? I can see it now...
Phone Rings...
Customer: "Hello?"
Apple Rep: "Hello [person's name] we've noticed that your using an iphone 4, you do realize the iphone 6 came out two years ago..."
Customer: "Yeah, but this does everything I need it to do, I'll upgrade when this one finally dies"
Apple Rep: "As a courtesy I've copied all your contacts into the iCloud just in case anything were to happen to your older model iPhone. Have great day!"
Phone then instantly bricks.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
For some reason, no-one's set up a corporate entity which exists entirely to think up and patent various ways (both legal and illegal) to be a complete dick.
Honestly, wouldn't it be great to be able to either charge or sue entities using these kind of practices? Imagine how much you could make off the RIAA and MPAA alone!
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to patent "Calling someone up and annoying the shit out of them for no other reason than to try and sell them something". Also "Making craptastic movies", and "Going sue-happy to prop up a last-century business model".
They can't get this patent because it is too simple and people have been doing it for years. The idea of having a stolen device send info back over the internet or similar from camera,mic,gps,etc has been around for ages, and software already exists for doing that. Shouldn't a patent be something that is unique, not in existence, not easy to implement or not obvious?
Good. I hope they get the patent, then hopefully no one else will do this.
In other words, Apple sees such a bright future for devices that spy on their owners, take pictures of the evidence, determine your physical location, and then call the authorities, that it decided to patent it. I and I used to think that Bill was the most evil thug on the planet. Homeland Security must be just salivating over this.
Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology. Where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths. Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!
On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like 1984.
Because Apple will wait till 2010.
Telescreens are most prominently featured in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four... They are television and security camera-like devices used by the ruling Party in Oceania to keep its subjects under constant surveillance, thus eliminating the chance of secret conspiracies against Oceania.
Replace Telescreens with "iPhone", ruling Party with "Apple", and Oceania with "AT&T". Irony at it's best.
As several people have pointed out, the headline and the patent reading are just slightly different.
That said, I can think of a few incredibly trivial ways that Apple/AT&T could have done this a long time ago:
-Compare the cell number with a list of cell numbers that AT&T has registered. When I had an iPhone, iTunes would display my cell number, even though it was dished out by T-Mobile. If they wanted to prevent the use of SIM unlocked units, that seems to be the simplest method of doing so. Substitute cell number with SIM card ID or similar.
-Block access to known Cydia repos and/or the jailbreak sites.
-Scan for programs and folders associated with jailbroken phones (SwirlyMMS, Winterboard, Icy, etc.)
All of these would have worked just fine for the past four years, but as yet none have been implemented. If Apple truly wanted to prevent users from jailbreaking and/or SIM unlocking, it's been simple to do for some time using methods that don't require a patent. I'm not saying that Apple is necessarily happy with the jailbreak scene, but I don't consider it beyond the realm of possibility that there's been some degree of unwilling aversion to an all-out war against the jailbreakers, though the hardware-level anti-jailbreak widget they added into the 3GS does put that theory on shaky ground as well.
Won't there just be an SBSettings toggle for it within minutes? Just like the apple store application remote kill 'feature?'
The patent appears to allow the user to receive an email if their phone undergoes jailbreaking. If an unauthorised user jailbroke my phone, which could be done remotely, based on the jailbreakme.com hack, I'd like to know about it as soon as possible. Otherwise, they could install malware, such as a keylogger and I'd be oblivious. If I got an email to notify me of the jailbreak, I could change my passwords and reset my phone before they emptied my bank account.
Please tell me, if you stole a smart phone, what would you do with it to make it "yours" and not identifiably someone else's?
Would you not start by "removing a SIM card" from the device to prevent tracking it, then move a goodly "distance away from a synced device" and try "entering an incorrect password" to gain access to the device? Then, would you not try "hacking of the electronic device" and "jailbreaking of the electronic device"?
Personally, I hope that Apple is granted this patent and that they VIGOROUSLY defend their "intellectual property". I hope that they unleash their lawyers upon anyone who dares to "steal" their IP and strike such terror in the industry that no one is willing to copy this brilliant innovation. Go Apple!
-This post was written on an HTC Evo 4G
Then the rhetoricians/magicians will notice where Apple cleverly palms a card
Among the methods considered are voice print analysis, photo analysis, heartbeat analysis (!), hacking attempts, or even "noting particular activities that can indicate suspicious behavior."
By including "hacking attempts" in the list of considered activities they allow themselves the ability to say 'we didn't know you were jail breaking your phone when we wiped it, we saw a hacking attempt, assumed the machine had been fully compromised and did what we thought was best'. Or even shutting down already freed phones by saying, 'we know the OS isn't supposed to work like this, its obviously been fully compromised to we wiped it'
By making jailbreaking that much of a pain in the ass (see disarming functionality from the article" while its still "legal" its more heartache than its worth apple wins....
sig loading.......
Well anonymous cause I'm bored outta my skull ...
As long as it's "consumer oriented" it should be ok. Triggered by the consumer, not apple ... and since that's like finding a microbe with a pair of sticky tape glued binoculars I would guess it would be triggered by apple as a sort of WGA (windows blah blah blah) meaning they would own my brick, meaning they would shut me down whenever I see porn ...
OMG !!!! Can you say shoot my feet please!?
This is Apple's version of LowJack for I[phone|pad|touch].
"make it illegal for Apple & Microsoft and any other company to shutdown or "brick" a cellphone or game console any other product."
I wonder, would vandalism laws apply here?
Someone will get around their detection scheme
"The Brady Bunch is back...working homicide"
It's the stupid carriers that create the need for Apple to do this. If the carriers would cooperate with people who's phones were stolen there wouldn't be a lot of need for this stuff. The fact is that the phone company (ATT) knows the device ID of your iphone. When it gets stolen and someone puts in a new SIM card and registers the phone with ATT. That registration gives the same device id ATT has previously registered. So does ATT report to the police that a stolen phone has registered for service (along with the name, address and number of the user of stolen goods)? No, they charge the new user and still continue to charge the old user, so now they are making more money. Sounds like they are a party to the crime to me.
My guess is what they are really worried about is a jailbroken phone having the phone-tower interface hacked and altered. What if you could break in on a conversation (channel) and just take it over? How about using 10x the maximum allowed transmit power? Both of these would be of benefit to the user and absolutely utterly violate any FCC licensing there might be. In today's FCC climate I believe the phone manufacturer and not the end user would be held responsible.
Do you think they might want to avoid millions of dollars in fines should someone figure out how to do this?
But tell me, what in the world do those other techniques have to do with detecting a jailbreak?
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
If they do this then iPhone owners will be able to press charges for unauthorized access to computers (the iPhone). I own an iPhone. First sale doctrine says I can do what I like with it. I jailbroke it. If Crapple remotely disables my phone I'll be taking them to court.
Having said that, I really don't think this is about jailbreaking and that the summary is just knee-jerk sensationalism. I think this is more about what the article says: protecting their customers when someone steals the device and tries to get into it, and/or remotely wiping a device if the legitimate owner requests it after reporting it lost or stolen. If this were about jailbreaking, Apple and AT&T would already have taken measures to block access to a slew of domain names.
If Apple were to remotely disable phones for the rightful owners having jailbroken them, they would be committing a felony and could be risking a loss of six and seven figure awards in each and every case the owners pursue.
So please, knock it off with the sensationalist summaries and RTFA before slamming Apple. Apple may have a stick up their ass about controlling the app marketplace, but they don't pull Microsoft-style asshattery-- Much.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
If you read the article it's about features for lost/stolen phones. Way to jump on the I hate apple bandwagon. Is it too much to read the article before choosing it's title?
There are legitimate cases for bricking a phone remotely.
Didn't a US court just recently rule that it was lawful for a user to jailbreak a phone?
So if granted, they have patent how to disable remotely ... Android devices??
Wow. So this means that I will never, ever, buy any Apple product of any kind. Ever.
Catchpa: snuffed. Hehe
An even better way to tell would be if the owner reports it as stolen....sigh
>Hello Apple, someone stole my phone...what do i do ?!?
>> There's an App for that! $4.99 please
No thanks, i don't want devices trying to GUESS if they are being stolen (or tampered with!)
That's what the guts of this paptent seem to be.
Well it's a sure thing to get the iPhone banned in a lot of countries due to privacyregulation.. Also a sure thing NOT to buy that crappy phone anyway...
This is the last straw. Compared to Apple, Microsoft is starting to look pretty benign.
Apple has already perfected their method of remotely disabling phones. Don't believe me? Let iTunes upgrade your iPhone 3G to iOS4.
I can appreciate the temptation to Apple, but alienating your users who are really trying to make the use of your platform is nothing short of completely fucking moronic. I feel so sorry for Apple's engineers. They make such wonderful everything, but their company policy continues to decay in to a festering mess of asinine sanity-phobia.
Apple, I beg you, remove your (and everyone else's) head from your massive festy asshole. My iphone is jailbroken and I've done nothing illegitimate on it. I installed SSH, iDroid, and some star trek sound effects. If that's REALLY something I need to be punished for doing, I'll even more happily switch to Android than I already am likely to do.
I'm so glad I never got any apple products, now it's extremely un tempting and no problems or worries. I did like the comment above -- if Apple gets this patent, maybe it keeps others from doing it somewhat...blessing in disguise? They are not known to license their patents cheap...or, as in the antenna debacle, license others patents even if they are cheap.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
I get it, the IPhone is cool. But it's beyond me any person or tech subject themselves to these types of restrictions and snooping. There is something inherently wrong with this mind set. Imagine if Ford, Chevy, or Dodge could disable your car because you made modifications to it that they didn't deem worthy. What would the auto industry look like now, I'm guessing much worse off and public transportation would be further along than it is now
no matter how good it is, it is human nature always wants to make things better
and after it gets its location via GPS, the iphone can probably commandeer a remote predator drone to fly in and take out him/her/them who thwart apple's idea of a perfect world
Not really flame bait. Third paragraph down on the right column: "3 . The method of claim 1, wherein determining further comprises: identifying a particular activity performed by the current user that indicates suspicious behavior. 4 . The method of claim 3, wherein the particular activity comprises one or more of hacking the electronic device, jailbreaking the electronic device, unlocking the electronic device, removing a SIM card from the electronic device, and moving at least a predetermined distance away from a synced device." So, in essence: Jailbreaking indicates suspicious activity, which triggers Apple's response. Which response is, according to the summary: "When an unauthorized user is detected, various safety measures can be taken. For example, information related to the identity of the unauthorized user, the unauthorized user's operation of the electronic device, or the current location of the electronic device can be gathered. As another example, functions of the electronic device can be restricted." Oh, and also, yes, they can watch and listen with the phone's camera and microphone, as well as record heartbeats (!) and vibration signatures, and analyze the photos to determine location and identity. All this is triggered by "suspicious activity". Methinks the Patent Office isn't qualified to decide this issue.
I find it interesting that the lower Marion school district investigation over student's laptop surveillance ended with the FBI pressing no charges, claiming that there was no criminal intent, thus no crime. Remember that surveillance at the student's home was done claiming the software was for recovering laptops that were stolen. I grew up in a time when '1984' was scary. Now, people accept more onerous control over every aspect of their lives without blinking an eye. If we intend to retain any resemblance of freedom, this trend must be reversed. (I couldn't believe people accepted supermarket loyalty cards. Think about it for a moment. You're allowing your every purchase to be logged and tracked, and the data bought and sold for a few cents off on sale items. The same items would have been on sale without the cards, but you would be purchasing them anonymously as God intended.) My fear is that all this control over devices that we purchase will spill over to general purpose computers. Oops, too late. The powers that be tell me I can't play a dvd I bought on my linux box. The scariest thing though, is that nearly all things now have a camera, a mic, and gps.
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You know where Apple and their hordes of ass lickers can stick their Nazi Phones.
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Voting up, Voting down - If I really gave a fuck about your approval or not, I'd come and ask you.
What's the bet Apple will do it anyway.
Another reason not to buy an iPhone.
So many sheep. So many iPhones.
Dave
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. --Martin Luther King Jr.
Hey, If that guy could pre-sue people for bootlegging a concert that hasn't even happened yet, can we pre-sue apple...?
Given that this kind of personalized technology appears to be one of the biggest new trends, Apple could stand to make quite a pretty penny in future patent enforcement on this invention.