Apple Granted Patent That Aims To Make Your iPhone Situationally Aware

Apple has just been granted a rather curious patent, that will allow its gadgets to behave differently in different situations. It will use a combination of GPS, network triangulation, and local networks to determine your whereabouts, and behave accordingly. If configured properly, it could be used for things like automatically putting your phone on silent when you’re in a meeting room.

These self-aware behaviours, called “policy restrictions” in the patent manifest, could be used for all manner of convenient features. The patent focuses mostly on use in local network applications, like having a Wi-Fi hotspot that told your phone to switch to silent mode. From the patent manifest, as dug up by Apple Insider:

This policy enforcement capability is useful for a variety of reasons, including for example to disable noise and/or light emanating from wireless devices (such as at a movie theater), for preventing wireless devices from communicating with other wireless devices (such as in academic settings), and for forcing certain electronic devices to enter “sleep mode” when entering a sensitive area.

While a lot of this sounds pretty useful, it also seems like a security nightmare. If a wireless hotspot can tell your iPhone to turn itself off, or put itself on silent, it’s a short hop to telling it to get up to more nefarious tasks. There’s also the possibility that Apple could use this to further control DRM. Could Apple not use this to disable your iTunes-purchased music when you travel to a country that that music isn’t licensed for?
All of this is still up in the air until we see how Apple plans to implement the technology, which they’ve shown no signs of doing just yet.