U.S. Reps. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, and G.K. Butterfield, a North Carolina Democrat, wrote a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook Wednesday regarding the privacy rights of iPhone users.
Mr. Waxman and Mr. Butterfield are ranking members of the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade.
Their letter is regarding the smartphone social networking application ”Path,” which made headlines earlier this month for accessing and uploading iPhone users’ address books to their servers without asking for consent.
“Path” is a social networking app that allows smartphone users to essentially keep a personal smartphone based journal of where they travel to and what activities they engage in, similar to the popular “four square” app.
The San Franscisco based “Path” launched the app in 2010, and since then it has seen over 2 million downloads of the app.
After a number of complaints from users over their “Add Friends” feature accessing and uploading smartphone address books without consent, the company released a blog post on their website apologizing for the privacy invasion last week.
“We’ve deleted the entire collection of user uploaded contact information from our servers. Your trust matters to us and we want you to feel completely in control of your information on Path,” wrote “Path” CEO Dave Morin.
They also notified smartphone users that they updated and modified the app with a new version allowing users to either opt in or out of using the “Add Friends” feature.
The two congressman are concerned that Apple’s smartphone application developer standards of conduct do not protect the private information contained in the address books of iPhone users.
The letter cites claims from Internet bloggers stating that Apple is openly allowing application developers to create iPhone apps that obtain and upload the address books of individual iPhone users.
“The fact that the previous version of Path was able to gain approval for distribution through the Apple iTunes Store, despite taking the contents of users’ address books without their permission suggests that there could be some truth to these claims,” wrote the two members 0f Congress in the letter.
The two lawmakers are asking Mr. Cook to respond to a set of detailed questions regarding Apple’s application developer policies.
The questions focus specifically on whether or not Apple determines the invasive aspects of smartphone applications prior to releasing them to be purchased on its U.S. iTunes store.
“How many iOS apps in the U.S. iTunes Store transmit ‘data about a user’? Do you consider the contents of the address book to be ‘data about a user?’ Do you consider the contents of the address book to be data of the contact? If not, please explain why not,” wrote the two lawmakers.
The letter from Mr. Waxman and Mr. Butterfield marks the first time members of Congress have expressed concerned over the invasive aspect of social networking smartphone applications.
They have asked for Mr. Cook to respond to the questions by February 29th.
The Apple CEO has not commented on the letter or stated whether or not he has received the letter from the two congressman yet.
