Steve Jobs: "We Haven't Been Tracking Anyone."

"Apple CEO Steve Jobs said Wednesday that the iPhone database that people have assumed was their personal information was, in fact, the relevant chunk of a global crowdsourced database that the company uses to deliver location-based information."

As I suspected, this mysterious database in iPhones is used for location-based services, and follows Apple's policies on how location information is used. Apple did admit that this whole controversy did turn up a bug on Apple's end, their response being that this will be fixed, and that a smaller amount of data will be stored on devices. Jobs also mentioned that location services is required to be enabled, and each app must be explicitly authorized. As is often the case with technology, and technology bugs, unintended consequences result, and will be fixed. And we move on ...