(from 'Freepress.net')

"Apple wants to patent a kill switch technology that can detect when people are using their phone cameras and give corporations the power to shut them down.
Think that’s bad? Imagine what would happen if this tool fell into the hands of repressive regimes. Thousands of people across the Middle East have used cellphone cameras to document government abuses.
This kind of technology would give tyrants the power to stem the flow of videos and crack down on protesters with impunity.
Apple says this new technology was designed to stop concertgoers from taking unofficial video at live events. But you can bet that governments and corporations will use it in other, more dangerous ways – to silence the voices of protesters, political opponents or anyone else they dislike.
Earlier this year, researchers discovered that iPhones recorded your every move for the past year in a hidden but unprotected file. The public was outraged, and Apple soon announced that it was updating its software to better protect users.
We must stop Apple again. This new camera-blocking technology is a pre-emptive strike against free speech. If activated, it would be immensely harmful to our rights to connect and communicate. "

How many concerts have you been to that explicitly state that no photography or audio recording is allowed? It's an IR "kill switch" that, by nature, is very short range. The reaction over this proposed technology is a bit over the top. It isn't intended to infringe on free speech, but to protect copyrighted performances.

There are so many problems with these statements I don't know where to start or finish.

Unless foreign corporations (or any corp, for that matter) are actually building there own iPhones and selling them, they won't be able to block anyone from doing anything - only Apple can turn on/off the capability. I suspect that anyone outside of the recording industry and movie industry aren't going to convince them to allow them to block things.

Then there's the technology involved. Concerts are easy to block. Deciding what is a government protest vs. a crowd at a soccer match might be a bit more difficult.

Then you can move on to the misstatement that Apple was tracking users for the past year - which is false. The public wasn't outraged, in fact the public probably couldn't care less. The only people outraged were tech writers and a few uninformed senators/congressmen.

Baaaahhhh. This isn't worth the time it's so silly.