US Congress Probes iOS App Developers On Privacy

hypnosec writes with the arguably welcome news that "[The U.S.] Congress is gathering further information on iOS developers and how they deal with and implement privacy policies. The Next Web got hold of a letter from Congress which had been sent out to Tapbots, along with some 32 other iOS developers, including both Twitter and Facebook, and the devs of Path, SoundCloud, Foodspotting and Turntable.fm. The apps were picked because they come under the social networking umbrella in the 'essentials' area of the App Store. The letter begins: 'We are writing to you because we want to better understand the information collection and use policies and practices of apps for Apple's mobile devices with a social element.' What follows is a series of eight questions designed to gather more details regarding the popularity of the app in question, and the privacy policy to which it holds (and how it's made known to users)."

If I got a letter

[alvinrod]

If I got a letter like that, I'd tell the government that as long as they support the actions of groups like the TSA, they have no business at all asking anyone else about their privacy policies or trying legislate privacy rights. They probably won't like being told to pound sand, or having the truth thrown in their faces, but those assholes deserve it.

Re:Government regulated apps.

[artor3]

Nothing, if the regulation is simply making sure that they have reasonable, human-readable privacy policies.

Stop drinking the all-regulation-is-evil koolaid. Haven't you ever noticed that the same people pushing it are the ones who make billions by abusing unregulated markets?

Re:If I got a letter

[kthreadd]

Since no one has flown a plane into a building under their watch it's hard to say that they are ineffective, for all we know it's possible that they have stopped several such attempts. There are other reasons why TSA is a bit suboptimal. We can't prove that they make us safer, we can only disprove it once they don't.