Especially interesting is one of the final requests, referencing the ways in which publishers interpret Apple’s own iOS Developer Program License Agreement. According to the letters, the agreement says that apps “may not collect user or device data without prior user consent, and then only to provide a service or function that is directly relevant to the use of the Application, or to serve advertising.” The letters ask the app makers to clarify how they read this license. How, for instance, do publishers define which user and device data requires users' prior consent before the app accesses it? How do  publishers distinguish between “user data” and “device data”? And then the Congressmen go on to ask which of the harvested data points are directly relevant to the apps.

Waxman and Butterfield’s line of questioning suggests a couple of trajectories for these investigations, and so some indication of the kinds of recommendations and regulatory proposals we might see come from it. First, they are teasing out the unique layered relationship apps have between maker and user. Their focus on Apple’s own licensing agreement suggests they plan to explore the wiggle room the policy either makes or that app makers take from it.

Even more importantly, the questions make the connection between data collected and its actual relevance to the app’s functionality and user benefit. I suspect we will see more focus on this theme in the coming year. For a long time the digital media world boasted of “all this data” rendered by user interactions with content. Years ago, at a Mobile Marketing Association forum, I heard the head of content at AT&T (then Cingular) tell the audience that the carrier was indeed sitting on mountains of data -- but that it didn’t even know what it had in there.

The data on user interaction with mobile content and devices had never been collected with marketing or any other aim in mind. Some startups collected enormous amounts of user data on the premise that at some point it could be made into useful products and services for marketers or users.

Those days may be coming to an end. What may come out of government scrutiny is the end of simply harvesting data on spec. We can foresee either self-regulatory measures or government agency guidelines that call for app makers to be very specific not only about what they are taking from a user device, but also how it is being used.

This is precisely the kind of linkage the data industries need to move forward. At the recent OMMA Data and Behavioral event, Organic's executive director of mobile marketing, Rachel Pasqua, made an important point about the ways in which mobile apps have gotten people more accustomed to permission-based data gathering. Every time Apple or an app asks for permission to track your location, you are opting in to a system of data collection. Users are getting used to exchanging data for service. A conversation about data is being surfaced and initiated here. The important piece is that the data rendered is associated with a real benefit. That is the kind of discipline about data use and communication with users that could build better relationships with consumers -- and build better apps.