Steve Jobs says Apple will testify before Congress

Apple CEO Steve Jobs says his company “looks forward” to testifying before Congress and other regulatory bodies to clarify how the iPhone collects and stores data.

“[Yes], I [certainly] think Apple will be testifying,” Jobs told AllThingsD.

“They have asked us to come and we will honor their request, of course.”

However, Jobs emphasized that Apple hasn’t been tracking anyone.

“The files they found on these phones, as we explained, it turned out were basically files we have built through anonymous, crowdsourced information that we collect from the tens of millions of iPhones out there.”

Nevertheless, Jobs acknowledged that the tech industry hasn’t been doing a good job of educating users about complicated issues like location-based data collection. 

“As new technology comes into the society there is a period of adjustment and education.

“We haven’t – as an industry – done a very good job educating people, I think, as to some of the more subtle things going on here. As such, (people) jumped to a lot of wrong conclusions in the last week.”