Woman Arrested For Taping Police Cleared, Apple Wants "Kill Switch" For Camera Phones

Apple is developing software that can detect when iPhone owners are using their cameras and disable the function, a report last week discovered.

The technology would trigger an infrared sensor, like the kind that is often installed at concert venues, which would instruct the iPhone to shut off its camera. Apple filed the patent application 18 months ago in California, but only became public knowledge after the Daily Mail uncovered the documents.

Apple said the company created the software to prevent users from recording and distributing videos of live concerts to which broadcasters have already bought exclusive rights. But media reform groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Free Press have said that the "kill switch" technology carries with it a more ominous implication - such as what would happen if a government received access to the software.

Free Press campaign director Tim Karr notes that such worst-case scenarios are supported by the recent actions of the police department in Rochester, New York, where a woman was arrested for recording officers making a traffic stop in May. Emily Good was charged with obstruction of governmental administration when she used her iPhone to videotape three white police officers pull over a black man in front of her house, which she believed could have been an example of racial profiling; Officer Mario Masic arrested Good after she refused to leave her front lawn and go back into her house.

"[This] is my front yard. I'm just recording what you're doing, it's my right," Good can be heard saying on the May 12 video. "It's my right to be in my yard and I'm sorry you don't feel safe. All I have is a camera.... I have no weapons." She is arrested approximately two minutes into the video.

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