There's a lot of hullabaloo over the iPhone tracking story -- "Your iPhone is secretly tracking you all the time," the "Today" show warns -- but it's really not that big of a deal. This issue has been known since last June, and no one thought much of it at the time.

Why all the fuss now? Because two computer programmers -- one a former Apple (AAPL) employee -- presented a paper at a conference about it. The programmers also posted a free app for Mac computers that lets users see their location data.

Post continues after this outrageously alarmist video from the "Today" show about iPhone tracking:
I don't mean to dismiss the issue. There are questions here that Apple needs to answer, and so far, the company has clammed up about it. Apple upgraded its mobile operating system last year and inserted a new file that began taking snapshots of a user's location. The data isn't precise; it's a guesstimate based on nearby cellphone towers and Wi-Fi networks, not GPS technology. It's sometimes miles off.

But the data collection, along with the free app, is enough to make some users uncomfortable. "Suddenly I wasn't laughing anymore," Rosa Golijan writes for "Today." "I was too busy watching an eerily accurate replay of my travels around my home."

The biggest question seems to be why Apple would be doing this. Apple isn't answering, so that's given rise to lots of speculation. One expert thinks this is Apple's way of building a database of global Wi-Fi hot spots, and that seems to be the most logical answer to me. Apple even said so last July, when it sent a letter to two congressmen saying it was collecting "cell tower and Wi-Fi access point information." You can read the letter here (.pdf download).

Another expert thinks Apple is trying to track the performance of its phone and network, not user movements.

John Gruber, a well-connected Apple observer, said a little birdie told him that the problem is either a bug or an oversight, since the history of a user's location should be getting culled but isn't.

So we don't know why Apple is doing this. The company is not collecting your data, says Alex Levinson, a network security engineer focused on the Mac operating system. It's actually illegal under California law to use electronic tracking on a person.

Apple stores the information on your iPhone, and it can be copied to your hard drive when your phone is synced to a computer. So no one will see it unless he hacks into your network or steals your phone. Even then, a rough draft of where you've traveled isn't going to mean much.

"It is more symbolic than anything else," technology pundit Tim O'Reilly told The New York Times. "It is one more sign of how devices are collecting data about us and potentially sharing it with others. This is the future. We have to figure out how to deal with it."

It's not just the iPhone either. Police can already get this location information from Verizon (VZ) and other cellphone carriers, the Times reports, though courts have differing opinions on whether they need a search warrant.

If you're really worried, just turn off the location-services feature on your iPhone. Open the phone's settings app and turn the "Location Services" feature to the off setting, PC World reports.

So don't panic. But O'Reilly is right. This is the future. Foursquare and Facebook Places can see your location. Same with Twitter. Same with a thousand other current and future gadgets and websites we'll use.

I'm more outraged by Facebook's ongoing privacy-breach shenanigans than by this iPhone issue. But Apple does need to answer some questions immediately. Now that one U.S. senator has written chief executive Steve Jobs a two-page letter demanding answers, I think the company will open up soon.