I really like R/C helicopters from a hobbyist’s perspective, but you can see how useful they’d be for more practical purposes too. Drones are used all the time in a military context and now one sheriff’s office in Texas is getting its own drone copter, complete with the ability to get weaponized.

The Shadowhawk helicopter has been acquired by the Sheriff’s office in Montgomery County in Texas. They say that it is being used as a safety asset, equipped with a remote video camera, infrared heat-seeking, and onboard GPS. It can be used to monitor situations where a human presence might not be the best idea.

The 50-pound UAV is built by Vanguard Defense Industries and while it is capable of carrying weapons, the Sheriff says that they have no plans to equip it with pellet guns, bean bags, or frickin’ laser beams tasers. Instead, the application is more toward tracking down criminals or assisting SWAT teams. What do you think of the concerns in relation to Big Brother-esque ramifications?

Check out the local news coverage for a video.

The post Drone Copter For Texas Sheriff Can Be Weaponized Too appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Big Brother is watching you from inside your pants pocket. And his name is Apple.

Before you work up some crazy conspiracy theory, let’s get to the facts. It appears that the iPhone and iPad 3G automatically record your location data everywhere you go. Your movements are then automatically saved to a secret file on the device, and the file is automatically backed up on your computer when you sync up the device with iTunes.

The location data is based on raw GPS coordinates (think longitude/latitude), along with time stamps for each of these recordings. To see this data, all you need is a simple iPhone tracker application, readily available to anyone with with a computer. That’s the scary news.

The bright side is that this data (supposedly) will not be shared with anyone. It’s just stored locally on your iPhone/iPad and your computer. However, there’s not much to stop Apple (or worse, some random hacker) from acquiring this information and using it for some evildoings. Considering how much people volunteer through Foursquare, Gowalla, and Facebook Places, I guess this isn’t that far out there, except for the very important fact that this tracking is not voluntary. So Apple, tell us why this data is being recording automatically, regardless of an app needing it or not.

The post iPhone Secretly Records Geolocation Data appeared first on Mobile Magazine.