I just noticed, in that apology letter, the line:

"... Your trust matters to us and we want you to feel completely in control of your information on Path. ..."

So they want you to feel in control.

"We are deeply sorry if you were uncomfortable with how our application used your phone contacts."

That non-apology is corporate communications at its most typical.

Path's customer service replied to this article's author on Twitter saying they'd "love to engage."

If you aren't Captain Picard, you're not engaging anything. Shut up and talk human, folks.

I’m a big sucker for a non-apology apology, reading one never fails to make my day.

More here: http://terribleapologies.com/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-apology_apology#Examples and http://jezebel.com/sorry-not-sorry-how-to-non-apologize-5993...

This kind of thing sits alongside "it is important that justice is seen to be done" in my list of phrases that will preclude you from being taken at face value ever again.

Kind of. In law, actual justice is obviously the top priority, but it's also important for social stability and the effectiveness of the courts that justice appear to be done. (Otherwise, people may not respect court decisions even when they are just, etc.) Luckily, these two properties are usually complimentary. Given actual justice, the appearance of justice usually follows through transparency and the like.

Haha, yes! It's very important to feel you're in control, just like you want to feel like you're making a wise decision when you reach for the conveniently placed junk in the supermarket isles.

I get the feeling that either those in charge are hopelessly detached from society to see how privacy is perceived by the rest of us (like Zuckerberg) or there's little to no vetting when it comes to implementation decisions.

They just had to pay a $800,000 fine for that stunt http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2013/02/path.shtm