The Hill reports that the Senate Judiciary Committee voted in favor of Franken’s bill on Thursday. Now the bill can be brought up in the senate for a vote later this month before the current Congress ends at the beginning of January. Franken argues that the bill is not only important to protect an individual’s privacy, but also to protect the privacy of children who are increasingly using connected mobile devices:

“I believe that Americans have the fundamental right to control who can track their location, and whether or not that information can be given to third parties. But right now, companies – some legitimate, some sleazy – are collecting your or your child’s location and selling it to ad companies or who knows who else.”

Franken’s bill appears to have made it through committee without much change from its original text. Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa introduced an amendment that would have required state attorneys general to be transparent about hiring outside counsels, but it was defeated by committee democrats. Still, Grassley approved the bill, but remains concerned that its limits on tracking could hurt “commercial innovations.”

Other members on the committee expressed some concern with language in the bill, but have said that they’re willing to work with Franken to improve the bill before it goes up for vote in the Senate. Franken will also have to work with his colleagues in the House if he wants to ensure passage this year, but the current negotiations over the “Fiscal Cliff” will most likely push Franken’s bill to next year.

Regardless, it’s an encouraging sign to at least see a committee forward a digital privacy bill. There’s not enough legislation that addresses the current privacy concerns that have crept up with the advent of the Internet and mobile devices. Franken’s bill doesn’t address all of the concerns, but it’s a good start.

This is an issue that Archify is trying to solve. It’s a browser plug-in aimed at being your archive for the web. It’s pretty simple really.

“Have you ever wondered how you can have all your online content in one single place?” Archify asks in its pitch. “All your Facebook and Twitter updates, your email conversations, the websites you’ve recently seen…every day, you use different devices and different browsers to access your online content. The footprints of your online journey are scattered and lost over time. Wouldn’t it be great to have your own personal archive of things which matter most to you?”

Launched in limited beta earlier this year, Archify is now available to all.

With the tool, you can search your archive from your Gmail account, from the browser plug-in, from archify.com, or even from Google itself, as the plug-in will add archive results to the Google search page.

It even comes with an analytics suite, so you can learn more about your Internet browsing behavior, and see stats like what sites you visit most often, where you spend most of your time, and what time of day/week you’re most active.

Users can add and update their own tags anytime. It’s not limited to Google-specific tags. It includes asynchronous tag loading, so “tags can fire faster without getting in each other’s way,” as Google puts it. It comes with tag templates for marketers to quickly add tags with Google’s interface, and supports custom tags. It also has error prevention tools like Preview Mode, a Debug Console, and Version History “to ensure new tags won’t break your site.”

There are user permissions and multi-account functionality, and Google says it will be adding more features over the coming months.

Google Tag Manager is launching globally in English, but it will come to other languages soon.

Google has also announced the Tag Vendor Program, which enables tag providers to get templates within Tag Manager.

IBM envisions customers downloading the app as they enter a store, then creating a profile based on their phone number or store loyalty card. The app will then allow customers to enter some personal information, such as whether they have specific food allergies, whether they care about biodegradable packaging, or whether they have other dietary needs, such as kosher foods. From there, as customers point the camera of their smartphone at various products, an overlay on the screen will provide informantion about price, ingredients, and possible discounts. Also, social networks can be integrated into results, in case customers want to know what types of food their friends and family “Like.”

“In the age of social media, consumer expectations are soaring and people want information and advice about the products they’re going to buy,” said Sima Nadler, retail lead at IBM Research. “By closing the gap between the online and in-store shopping experience, marketers can appeal to the individual needs of consumers and keep them coming back.”

IBM is promising to increase retailers’ in-store traffic with the technology, stating that the targeted marketing the app provides could help retailers retain customers. IBM even suggests that the app could be used to up-sell or cross-sell products to customers right as they are shopping.

The researchers at IBM have provided the infographic below that shows exactly how the app will work, why they believe retailers should be excited about it, and what they envision the app’s effect will be:

So far, at least Googlers themselves are running some interesting surveys. We already reported on one Matt Cutts ran, finding that only one in five Americans have heard of SEO.

Now Google’s Justin Cutroni has posted the results of a survey where he asked if businesses should be able to anonymously track your actions on their website. The results? 84.7% said no.

“I was a bit surprised!” exclaimed Cutroni in a Google+ post. “I did not think the percentage would be that high. It also tells me that there is strong opposition to all tracking, even anonymous tracking. There were no demographic segments, based on location, age or income that agreed. Nobody wants to be tracked.”

“We in the analytics industry really need to explain what we do and why we do it,” he added. “This is a great opportunity for the Digital Analytics Association to help spread information about what we do and why we do it.”

Since the Federal Trade Commission issued its final report for how companies should handle consumer privacy, Google has indicated it will include a “Do Not Track” in Chrome.

Gnip describes the serve on their blog and offers this as an example of a handy use for the service;

“Imagine you run a consumer electronics company. You just launched a game-changing new smartphone that will make or break your company. Two weeks after the launch, you’re hearing stories about your new phone burning users while they’re using it. You see the odd Tweet here and there but aren’t sure what the scale of this problem is or how you should respond. You make a panicked call to the company who monitors social media for you and they tell you that they can start tracking for this going forward but since they only get a realtime stream of Twitter data, there’s nothing they can do to get the last 14 days worth of Tweets.”

Gnip offers services that help companies build social media tracking tools. Their pricing depends on the complexity of how you want to filter the results you take away from the Twitter “fire hose”. They also offer access to data from Google Plus, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube and other sites.

According to Australian hacker and writer Nik Cubrilovic, Facebook could know that you are reading this article, simply because we, like most sites nowadays, have a Facebook share button.

Cubrilovic ran a little test involving cookies and found that logging out of Facebook does not mean that Facebook can’t still know every page you visit on the same browser.

Is it possible to be both private and social? Is privacy a long lost cause because of social networking like Facebook? Let us know what you think.

On his blog post on Sunday, he shows what cookies are sent during a logged-in Facebook user’s visit to Facebook.com compared to a logged-out user’s visit to Facebook.com. Logging out is apparently supposed to prompt the deletion of certain identifiers, but that doesn’t happen, says Cubrilovic.

The primary cookies that identify me as a user are still there (act is my account number), even though I am looking at a logged out page. Logged out requests still send nine different cookies, including the most important cookies that identify you as a user

This is not what ‘logout’ is supposed to mean – Facebook are only altering the state of the cookies instead of removing all of them when a user logs out.

This means that whenever you visit a page online that has a Facebook share button, like button or any other related widget, all of this pertinent information is being sent to Facebook. That’s how they can know where you are going on the web.

This shouldn’t be news to anyone. It’s right there in the Facebook Privacy terms -

We receive data whenever you visit a game, application, or website that uses Facebook Platform or visit a site with a Facebook feature (such as a social plugin). This may include the date and time you visit the site; the web address, or URL, you’re on; technical information about the IP address, browser and the operating system you use; and, if you are logged in to Facebook, your User ID.

But the revelation here is that this information is available even when you are logged out, as the cookie experiment notes. And people might wonder what all of this data does for Facebook -

The advice is to log out of Facebook. But logging out of Facebook only de-authorizes your browser from the web application, a number of cookies (including your account number) are still sent along to all requests to facebook.com. Even if you are logged out, Facebook still knows and can track every page you visit. The only solution is to delete every Facebook cookie in your browser, or to use a separate browser for Facebook interactions.

Apparently, Cubrilovic has been sitting on this information for a while, and has reached out to Facebook without any substantial response. He says that he was prompted to share this information due to the renewed privacy discussions happening across the internet regarding all of Facebook’s upcoming Open Graph changes and “frictionless sharing.”

That “frictionless sharing” phrase is one that Mark Zuckerberg used quite a bit in his f8 keynote. He explained that it meant users can share their activities across the web to Facebook without having to really think about it. The melding of Facebook and everything else, per say.

Some have privacy concerns, fearing that since applications will be allowed to post things to Facebook regarding your actions without explicit opt-in authorization, users might share stuff on Facebook that they really don’t want to share.

ZDNet has obtained a response from Facebook. They explicitly state that Facebook does not track users’ web activity. They also explain the purpose of logged out cookies -

Facebook does not track users across the web. Instead, we use cookies on social plugins to personalize content (e.g. Show you what your friends liked), to help maintain and improve what we do (e.g. Measure click-through rate), or for safety and security (e.g. Keeping underage kids from trying to signup with a different age). No information we receive when you see a social plugins is used to target ads, we delete or anonymize this information within 90 days, and we never sell your information.

Specific to logged out cookies, they are used for safety and protection, including identifying spammers and phishers, detecting when somebody unauthorized is trying to access your account, helping you get back into your account if you get hacked, disabling registration for a under-age users who try to re-register with a different birthdate, powering account security features such as 2nd factor login approvals and notification, and identifying shared computers to discourage the use of ‘keep me logged in’.

Facebook has responded in an additional way as well. As of today, the so called “a_user” cookie, the one which contains the user’s ID, is now destroyed upon logging out. Facebook said that “there is a bug where a_user was not cleared on logout, we will be fixing that today.”

Cubrilovic has updated his blog to discuss this change. He still warns about privacy, saying that the remaining post-logout cookies will still be there, and as a Facebook user, you just have to trust that they are using them for what they say they are using them for (see above).

Facebook has changed as much as they can change with the logout issue. They want to retain the ability to track browsers after logout for safety and spam purposes, and they want to be able to log page requests for performance reasons etc. I would still recommend that users clear cookies or use a separate browser, though. I believe Facebook when they describe what these cookies are used for, but that is not a reason to be complacent on privacy issues and to take initiative in remaining safe.

In a nutshell, Facebook still has access to information about you when you logout. They give their specific reasons for keeping specific cookies active – mainly security and protection. I guess it’s up to Facebook users to decide if this explanation is understandable, or if measures like Cubrilovic suggests need to be taken – specifically wiping all cookies or using different browsers.

Privacy concerns and Facebook are the peanut butter and jelly of the social networking world, but it sure doesn’t seem to be hurting business.

What do you think? Is Facebook’s explanation satisfactory? Do you worry about your privacy as a Facebook user? Let us know in the comments.

Or ask Ben Affleck, who was depicted in a love-act with an 8-year-old’s hand-puppet that he thought was current girlfriend Jennifer Lopez.  Or more recently, Britney Spears’ cameo involved her attempting suicide but surviving as a disfigured, headless monster.

So Steve Jobs can’t be too thrilled that he is the focus of the season premiere of South Park, airing tonight on Comedy Central.

In this sneak peak of the upcoming episode we find Jobs’ in his trademark black turtleneck, introducing his newest creation, the HumancentiPad.  He lauds the new invention as “a new product that will once again revolutionize the way we use our phones and tablet devices.”  Video is NSFW due to unsavory references.

This bit is clearly a reference to last year’s underground hit horror film, The Human Centipede.  No need for me to go into details about it.  If you haven’t seen it, Google it.  Be careful, however.

The last time Mr. Jobs appeared on South Park, he was a featured guest at the premiere of Mr. Garrison’s new transportation device, the “IT.”  The IT operated by two strategically placed metal rods…just check out the video below.  If you haven’t guessed, it’s also NSFW.

Job’s company Apple has been in the news recently.  Two data scientists discovered a file in iOS devices that stores users’ location data.  It took Apple over a week to respond, but they finally did this morning in a press release.

Today, Jobs himself responded to the tracking issue in an interview with All Things D’s Mobilized.  He reiterated what Apple’s release said earlier, that they weren’t tracking anyone.

“We haven’t been tracking anyone,” Jobs said in a telephone interview with Mobilized on Wednesday. “The files they found on these phones, as we explained, it turned out were basically files we have built through anonymous, crowdsourced information that we collect from the tens of millions of iPhones out there.”

“As new technology comes into the society there is a period of adjustment and education,” Jobs said. “We haven’t–as an industry–done a very good job educating people, I think, as to some of the more subtle things going on here. As such, (people) jumped to a lot of wrong conclusions in the last week.”

It’s a good thing he responded, as the public’s concern continues to grow about the tracking issue.  The recent privacy concern is most likely too recent to be a part of tonight’s South Park episode, but who knows.  Those guys are crafty.  I can see it now:

Unencrypted geo-logging is bad, mmmmmmkay.

This is the unequivocal opening statement from Apple’s official release this morning.  This marks the first official response from the company since the iPhone tracking location data snafu.

Of course by now you know that last week two data scientists presented information on a hidden data file on iOS devices that was storing location data that reached as far back as one year.  Although there was no indication that this specific data was being directly sent to Apple or any other party, the data was unprotected and unencrypted so it raised privacy concerns.

Apple, as well as Google have admitted in the past to collecting anonymous random location data for the purposes of improving upon its location database.  But logging all of that info into a single file was ominous news for some.

Earlier this week, an email surfaced that purported to be a conversation with Steve Jobs about the issue, but the validity of that correspondence wasn’t confirmed.  The response did sound snarky enough to be Mr. Jobs, however.

In today’s official release from Apple, they address the  particular data file that was found to be storing location data.  Apple states that the reason it exists is to assist location calculating.  They blame a bug on the fact that it has been logging data as far back as one year.

6. People have identified up to a year’s worth of location data being stored on the iPhone. Why does my iPhone need so much data in order to assist it in finding my location today?
This data is not the iPhone’s location data—it is a subset (cache) of the crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower database which is downloaded from Apple into the iPhone to assist the iPhone in rapidly and accurately calculating location. The reason the iPhone stores so much data is a bug we uncovered and plan to fix shortly (see Software Update section below). We don’t think the iPhone needs to store more than seven days of this data.

On Monday, it was also found that the iPhone was logging your location data even if you disabled location services in the settings.  Apple also says that this is a bug, and will be fixed.

Here is Apple’s full statement:

Apple would like to respond to the questions we have recently received about the gathering and use of location information by our devices.

1. Why is Apple tracking the location of my iPhone?
Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone. Apple has never done so and has no plans to ever do so.

2. Then why is everyone so concerned about this?
Providing mobile users with fast and accurate location information while preserving their security and privacy has raised some very complex technical issues which are hard to communicate in a soundbite. Users are confused, partly because the creators of this new technology (including Apple) have not provided enough education about these issues to date.

3. Why is my iPhone logging my location?
The iPhone is not logging your location. Rather, it’s maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location, some of which may be located more than one hundred miles away from your iPhone, to help your iPhone rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested. Calculating a phone’s location using just GPS satellite data can take up to several minutes. iPhone can reduce this time to just a few seconds by using Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data to quickly find GPS satellites, and even triangulate its location using just Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data when GPS is not available (such as indoors or in basements). These calculations are performed live on the iPhone using a crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data that is generated by tens of millions of iPhones sending the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple.

4. Is this crowd-sourced database stored on the iPhone?
The entire crowd-sourced database is too big to store on an iPhone, so we download an appropriate subset (cache) onto each iPhone. This cache is protected but not encrypted, and is backed up in iTunes whenever you back up your iPhone. The backup is encrypted or not, depending on the user settings in iTunes. The location data that researchers are seeing on the iPhone is not the past or present location of the iPhone, but rather the locations of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers surrounding the iPhone’s location, which can be more than one hundred miles away from the iPhone. We plan to cease backing up this cache in a software update coming soon (see Software Update section below).

5. Can Apple locate me based on my geo-tagged Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data?
No. This data is sent to Apple in an anonymous and encrypted form. Apple cannot identify the source of this data.

6. People have identified up to a year’s worth of location data being stored on the iPhone. Why does my iPhone need so much data in order to assist it in finding my location today?
This data is not the iPhone’s location data—it is a subset (cache) of the crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower database which is downloaded from Apple into the iPhone to assist the iPhone in rapidly and accurately calculating location. The reason the iPhone stores so much data is a bug we uncovered and plan to fix shortly (see Software Update section below). We don’t think the iPhone needs to store more than seven days of this data.

7. When I turn off Location Services, why does my iPhone sometimes continue updating its Wi-Fi and cell tower data from Apple’s crowd-sourced database?
It shouldn’t. This is a bug, which we plan to fix shortly (see Software Update section below).

8. What other location data is Apple collecting from the iPhone besides crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data?
Apple is now collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service in the next couple of years.

9. Does Apple currently provide any data collected from iPhones to third parties?
We provide anonymous crash logs from users that have opted in to third-party developers to help them debug their apps. Our iAds advertising system can use location as a factor in targeting ads. Location is not shared with any third party or ad unless the user explicitly approves giving the current location to the current ad (for example, to request the ad locate the Target store nearest them).

10. Does Apple believe that personal information security and privacy are important?
Yes, we strongly do. For example, iPhone was the first to ask users to give their permission for each and every app that wanted to use location. Apple will continue to be one of the leaders in strengthening personal information security and privacy.

Software Update

Sometime in the next few weeks Apple will release a free iOS software update that:

• reduces the size of the crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower database cached on the iPhone,
• ceases backing up this cache, and
• deletes this cache entirely when Location Services is turned off.

In the next major iOS software release the cache will also be encrypted on the iPhone.

Senators, representatives, state officials and entire foreign countries have all requested a response from Apple regarding the involuntary logging of location data in iOS devices.

And according to MacRumors, Apple’s Steve Jobs has broken his silence to a random, unnamed MacRumors reader.  Here’s the alleged email correspondence:

Q: Steve,

Could you please explain the necessity of the passive location-tracking tool embedded in my iPhone? It’s kind of unnerving knowing that my exact location is being recorded at all times. Maybe you could shed some light on this for me before I switch to a Droid. They don’t track me.

A: Oh yes they do. We don’t track anyone. The info circulating around is false.

Sent from my iPhone

Always the skeptic, I of course question the legitimacy of this brief conversation…but if that response doesn’t sound like Steve Jobs then I don’t know what does.  The only way I would’ve been sure that it was really Jobs is if he would’ve referred to the claims as “magical.”

The unidentified sender of the email query should be told that tests confirmed last week the Google was also mining for location data through Android devices much more aggressively and much less anonymously than they led on.

Today, more information emerged about the now famous consolidated.db file.  The WSJ reported that through their own tests they found that disabling location services on your iDevices does not stop the logging of location data.  Many had thought this would be a quick fix to the problem.

Whether this was really Jobs or not, you have to expect a more formal response in the next few days.  The media firestorm around this topic began almost a week ago.