Apple sends VP of Software to face off with Senate over location data

We knew that Apple was going to be sending a representative to a Senate hearing about user privacy in the wake of the location data fiasco last month. Now, thanks to a Senate posting regarding the hearing, discovered by All Things D and Jim Dalrymple at The Loop, we know that it will be Apple’s VP of Software Bud Tribble.

The hearing was sparked by the discussion of user privacy in mobile devices that resulted from the discovery that the iPhone’s location data cache kept nearly a year’s worth of data and that it was easily accessible to users. Senator Al Franken was the one to initiate the hearing, posing questions about the privacy expectations of mobile device users.

Tribble is a veterean Apple employee and was part of the original team that developed the Mac OS. He’s also a loyal follower of Steve Jobs, having left Apple to join Jobs at NeXT, working on projects that would later become the foundation for OS X.

Apple answered questions regarding the location cache in a public Q&A, it has since changed the way that the iPhone handles location caching with a software update. It’s worth noting that Apple isn’t the only company with a representative at this hearing, Google’s Alan Davidson will also be there. Google’s Android OS also anonymously tracks user data.