These Apple “executives” need to be arrested for sedition and treason. Put that in your little data base, you pu$$ified geeks. We see you.
Why? You believe the press now? This has NOTHING to do with tracking, monitoring, or reading users' mail or phone messages. Nothing, Zip, nada. Nil.
These bozos have found something in Apple's privacy statement and are CONFLATING it into being the same thing that FACEBOOK does in rating their members by political correctness and how left they are. It is not the same thing at all.
This is merely a snapshot of normal user usage of the device that Apple's iTunes Store can use to compare one purchase visit with the next to assure that the user making a purchase has a similar usage profile. If the profiles are at all dissimilar, then the new purchaser may have to jump through some more hoops before just being allowed to use the ACTIVE on-flle credit card.
For example, if a user normally sends approximately 100 emails, and makes 300 phones calls a month then that becomes the profile. The next time that user connects to rent or purchase an app or movie, and his device shows 110 emails and 280 phone calls, there is no problem, because his profile is close enough to a normal expected variation of what would be expected. However, if the next time a someone connects using the account tries to make a purchase on that user's iTunes account shows only TEN phone calls and 2000 emails, a red flag would be raised, requiring the purchaser to re-enter the Credit Card's security code, or even re-enter the entire credit card information before completing the purchase.
Now, do you get it?