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Apple is being sued by 27,000 South Koreans for privacy violations where each is seeking a million won ($932 USD), for the company’s collection of location information from their iPhones, the Associated Press reported.

South Korea has location information laws which Apple’s data collection breached. “If the court in the southern city of Changwon rules in favor of the plaintiffs, the total award could come to about 27.6 billion won ($25.7 million). Cupertino, California-based Apple — the most valuable company in the United States — earned $7.31 billion in its fiscal third quarter,” AP noted.

The location data is collected using cellphone towers and Wi-Fi access points near a user’s phone and is stored on the phone. In the US, the “discovery of an unencrypted location file on the iPhone created an uproar among people concerned that their phones could be searched and their location data used against them,” the Wall Street Journal noted.

If Korea is successful no doubt other countries may follow suit.

During the protest period of the 1960s, San Francisco become the center of the Free Speech movement and student activism throughout the United States in the 60s. However, in a decision that contradicted all that the city has come to be known for, the Bay Area Transit Authority shut off the small cell towers inside BART facilities.

The transit system was reacting to a possible threat from protesters. “While the original protests were planned in response to the shootings of Charles Hill and Oscar Grant by transit police, Anonymous also took their anti-BART campaign to real life by organizing more protests against the cell service disruption, starting today at San Francisco’s Civic Center startion at 5pm. This resulted in a sort of dual protest, both for the cell service issue and the deaths,” TechCrunch reported.

The legality of the shutdown has been questioned, but since it was on BART property the company claims it had the right to do it.

That this would occur in San Francisco, not only the cradle of student activism, but also the home of most things digital, seems counter to the city’s culture. Have the conservatives in California become that pervasive? Has the corporate direction of the internet companies – once fledgling start-ups – now hugely successful corporations created a shift in the liberal sensibilities of the area?