By Greg Mills

Apple, having been stung in the recent iPhone tracking flap, has joined another industry group to lobby for better definition of privacy rights related to data on mobile devices, the cloud and ISP servers.

As electronic devices and modern miracles such as GPS have become mainstream, the old standards of what is private and what is public have become blurred over time. The constitutional right to privacy of our homes, papers and effects has become less clear, and the goal of the Digital Due Process Organization is to push for legislation that will clearly define the right of privacy vs the right of the government to search without a warrant. Go to http://digitaldueprocess.org for details.

While few of us would argue that anything ought to be private if a court orders a search warrant upon probable cause a crime has been committed, law enforcement tends to test the limits of their power. The Federal courts haven't been much help as the police can put a GPS tracking device on a car without a warrant in some jurisdictions and not in others. The Supreme Court hasn't weighed in yet on the issue so the need for a law is apparent.

I applaud Apple for standing with other companies that are seeking to fully define our rights to privacy.

There is a new law at the US Patent Office where the first to file a patent on a new invention gets the patent rather than the person who can show they first invented the device. As an inventor can I trust the cloud with my patent drawings and writings? I think not.

That is Greg's Bite for today.