Apple has fired the latest salvo in its on-going war against jailbroken devices this week. According to The Register, the gadget giant has filed for a patent, titled “Systems and Methods for Identifying Unauthorized Users of an Electronic Device” that Apple claims would give the company a greater ability to lock down stolen devices. Using complex identification measures like voice recognition and heartbeat sensors, these systems would be able to identify stolen devices and deploy a number of anti-theft countermeasures.

These countermeasures, which include remote activation of an iPhone’s camera, geotagging, and erasing of all sensitive information on an identified device, are presented as benefitting the consumer. After all, who wants one’s personal information floating around the web if one’s iPhone gets lost?

Digging a little deeper into the language of the patent, however, it becomes obvious that Apple may actually have a different motivation at play here. They’re trying to implement what would amount to a kill switch.

“An activity that can detect an unauthorized user can be any action that may indicate the electronic device is being tampered with by being, for example, hacked, jailbroken, or unlocked,” the patents says. “For example, a sudden increase in memory usage of the electronic device can indicate that a hacking program is being run and that an unauthorized user may be using the electronic device.”

It was just last month that the U.S. Copyright Office released a new set of rules saying that the jailbreaking of mobile devices represented an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. While doing so already puts users in a no-man’s land in terms of warranty eligibility and customer support, this latest patent application seems to indicate the Apple will do away with this exemption by plausibly lumping jailbroken devices in with those that have been stolen. In other words, they plan to toss out the jailbreaking baby with the bath water.

Those who decided to keep their iPads jailbroken after the most recent patch officially closed the loophole may want to reconsider that choice soon. There’s no telling exactly when Apple is going to start coming after jailbroken users, but if nothing else, it’s an assertion that, whatever the law says, Apple is not going to allow consumers to use the company’s devices for any activity or application outside of those expressly permitted.