It is not a surprise that Apple's devices, iPhone and iPad, are capable of tracking a user's location and recording latitude-longitude and a timestamp. It is a surprise that Apple's devices store this data in an unencrypted file called consolidated.db. The data is
already being used by the police.
Daring Fireball has
posted that it could be a bug or oversight. It isn't very good coding if it was unintentional. Daring Fireball thinks the problem will be probably be gone after the next iOS update.