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The secret project began in 2005, when the iPod with video was launched
Apple helped the US government build a “top secret” iPod with hidden sensors inside, a former employee has revealed.
Only four people at the company knew about the project, according to former Apple software engineer David Shayer.
Two men from a defense contractor had joined Apple in 2005, on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy, he said.
They wanted help building an iPod that looked and worked just like a normal but secretly recorded data with hidden extra hardware inside.
Apple had helped the engineers build a customized version of the iPod software to meet the secret device, Mr Shayer said.
“They were careful to make sure I never saw the hardware,” he wrote in a lengthy post for Apple Newsletter Tidbits.
“And I never did.”
He said the two engineers, from defense contractor Bechtel, had been working for months out of an office at Apple buildings.
“They wanted to add some custom hardware to an iPod and enter data from that custom hardware on the iPod disk in a way that could not be easily detected,” he wrote.
“But it still had to look and work like a normal iPod.”
The couple got a copy of the source code of the iPod system on DVD and bought their own devices at stores to experiment, Mr Shayer said.
“This was not a collaboration with Bechtel with a contract and payment,” he wrote.
“It was Apple who made a favorite under the table for the Department of Energy.”
Nuclear power
Mr. Shayer never figured out exactly what the two engineers were building, but suspected “something like a stealth Geiger counter” of measuring radiation without being noticed.
The Department of Energy is, among other functions, responsible for nuclear power.
The story was supported by other Apple employees of the time.
Tony Fadell, the former vice president of the iPod division, tweeted the story was “absolutely spot on” and “really without a doubt”.
“Crazy super cool technology that the government was working on back then … I can only imagine what’s boiling these days,” he added.
Apple has not yet responded to a request for confirmation of the story.
The company has made privacy a key marketing point of its iPhones, leading to agreements with the U.S. Department of Justice.
But the high level of secrecy – and the fact that the four people who knew it since leaving Apple – meant, Mr Shayer said: “The PR people would honestly tell you that Apple has no record of such project. “
