Apple: Your Data Is Safe With Us, China

People wait outside an Apple store all night prior to the mainland release of iPhone 4S on January 12, 2012 in Beijing, China.   ChinaFotoPress—Getty Images

Apple insisted Saturday that it does not pass on data collected from Chinese iPhone users to U.S. intelligence services

Apple on Saturday denied claims made on Chinese state media that its iPhone presents a security risk to customers by compromising location data.

“Apple does not track users’ locations – Apple has never done so and has no plans to ever do so,” Apple said on Saturday, the Financial Times reports.

A Friday report on CCTV, the widely influential Chinese state-owned broadcaster, warned that the iPhone could track users using its positioning technology, and “view the user’s home address, unit information and whereabouts.” The report also claimed that information could be passed to U.S. intelligence services.

In an explanation published on its homepage in China, Apple said it has “never worked with any government agency from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services,” the Financial Times reports.

Apple also said that users location services can only be accessed by the device’s owner when they enter their passcode

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Why Detroit is terrified of google's self driving cars!

Google’s latest self-driving car prototype doesn’t 

even have a steering wheel.

Image courtesy of Google

Detroit's Dilemma : The American automotive industry isn’t as resistant to innovation as it once was. But Detroit’s big three automakers have their cost structures to deal with, their reputations to think about, and (lately) their profits to protect. So anything too risky is going to be a hard sell.

It doesn’t get much more risky than a technology that would turn cars into robots and end driving as we know it.

It’s no wonder, then, that Google and Detroit haven’t found much common ground in their early discussions about self-driving car collaborations, as Reuters’ Alexei Oreskovich and Ben Klayman reported Monday:

In one meeting, both sides were enthusiastic about the futuristic technology, yet it soon became clear that they would not be working together. The Internet search company and the automaker disagreed on almost every point, from car capabilities and time needed to get it to market to extent of collaboration. It was as if the two were “talking a different language,” recalls one person who was present.