Apple and Google returned to Capitol Hill this morning to defend themselves against accusations from U.S. politicians who claim that the companies aren't doing enough to protect their customers' location privacy.

Today's Senate subcommittee hearing, which Facebook also joined, came only a week after a different Senate subcommittee convened nearly the identical hearing on the identical topic: mobile phones, privacy, and user consent.

"I think anyone who uses a mobile device has an expectation of privacy, and sadly that expectation is not always being met," said Sen. John Rockefeller IV (D-W.V.), chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. A mother posting a smartphone photograph of her child online, he suggested, may not realize that "geotagged" location data may be embedded in the image file.

U.S. Senator Mark Pryor
(Credit: U.S. Senate)

The hearing, like last week's, grew out of revelations that iPhones and Android phones were recording information about owners' locations, and, in some cases, transmitting that data to Apple and Google without sufficiently clear consent.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said that "we need companies like Google and Apple and Facebook" to join Microsoft, which has "already come

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