来自《Roughly Drafted》杂志的丹尼尔•伊兰•迪尔格在一则帖子中写下这样一段话：“如果要指出一些比不懂技术的媒体报道捏造的“位置门”虚假丑闻微妙之处更不恰当的行为，那么非欧美政客们打着调查的幌子进行监管的行为莫属了。为了打探智能手机是否能够记录手机用户所在位置，他们竟然将整顿经济、住房、就业以及各类天灾人祸问题撇在了一边。而事实上，自从移动电话出现以来，移动基站塔和手机公司就一直在记录手机用户的位置信息。” 对于其在美国科技网站AppleInsider的读者而言，这番话可能有些太过隐讳。

    图片分享网站Tumblr 的合伙创始人、Instapaper的创始人马尔科•阿门特在一篇文章中发表了相似的观点，他这样写道：“如果人们知道Facebook和谷歌(Google)对自己的情况有多么了解，他们会同样惊恐，甚至可能更加恐慌。”

    “一些网络服务商可自行存储数据并永久保存，用户根本无法控制。只要需要，他们随时可以读取你的‘私人’信息”，并根据他人的汇总信息对你或其他任何人做出推断，甚至远超过你以为他们对你的了解。因为一个安全性漏洞，或是一桩有利可图的商业交易，成千上万人的私人信息顷刻间就会曝光。执法机关通常易如反掌地就能获得想要的任何信息，因为很多服务商认为，为了保护用户隐私而与执法机关争辩很不值得，这既耗时又费钱。”

    与专靠向广告商出售用户个人信息获取收益的公司不同，苹果公司（Apple）最初是因为销售快速空间定位装置能够获利而决定开发相关功能。这恰能解释本周一爆出的据称是史蒂夫•乔布斯与用户的秘密往来电子邮件。

    问：史蒂夫，您能解释一下在我的iPhone中，内置被动式定位跟踪工具有何必要性吗？知道自己的准确位置每时每刻都被记录下来，这让人感到非常不安。或许你应该在我改用摩托罗拉Droid手机之前，做番解释说明。Droid手机就不会跟踪我。

    答：你错了，摩托的手机会跟踪你，而我们不会。现在流传的消息都不属实。

    如果上述回信真的是乔布斯写的，那他本应该做出澄清，毕竟个中区别的隐情也的确非常微妙。如果事实确如传闻所说，苹果的媒体智囊团仍然有大量机会可以详细说明这场争辩的原委。苹果和谷歌已被传唤参加将在五月举行的美国参议院司法听证会。法国、德国、意大利和韩国的立法委员已派专人调查此事。而美国佛罗里达州联邦法院也接到了两位分别购买了一部iPhone和iPad的用户对苹果公司的起诉，他们要求苹果退款。

    "If there is anything less appropriate than a technologically ignorant media covering the subtleties of the manufactured LocationGate phony-scandal," writes Roughly Drafted's Daniel Eran Dilger, in a post perhaps too subtle for his usual AppleInsider audience, "it's the investigative policing by US and EU politicians who have suspended their efforts to rectify the economy, housing, employment and various other natural and man-made disasters in order to tackle the idea of whether smartphones might be recording one's location the same way mobile towers and phone companies have since the beginning of mobile telephony."

    "People would be similarly freaked out, if not more so, if they saw how much Facebook and Google know about them," wrote Marco Arment, the co-founder of Tumblr and creator of Instapaper, striking a similar theme:

    "Web services store the data themselves, outside of your control, and can keep it forever. They can access your 'private' data whenever they want, and they can aggregate everyone else's data to deduce even more about you (and everyone else) than what you thought they knew. A security breach — or a lucrative business deal — can expose the private data of thousands or millions of people at once, and law enforcement agencies can usually get whatever information they want extremely easily because it's not worth most services' time or money to argue with them."

    The difference between Apple, which is primarily motivated by the money it can make selling devices that can help you quickly locate your position in space, and companies that get most of their revenue selling information about you to advertisers, may explain the cryptic e-mail exchange attributed Monday to Steve Jobs:

    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.

    Jobs, if that was indeed he, may have been making a distinction that was also a shade too subtle. If so, Apple's spin doctors will have plenty of opportunities to flesh out the argument. Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) have both been summoned to appear before a Senate judiciary hearing in May. Investigations have been launched by French, German, Italian and South Korean regulators. And Apple has been sued in a Florida Federal court by two guys who bought an iPhone and an iPad and want their money back.