The original article in German is here Behörden fragen Apple und Google nach Nutzern von Messenger-Apps.
Here’s Senator Wyden in action on the issue of monitoring apps such as Signal, Wire, Threema, etc via “push tokens”.
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked the Department of Justice to allow Apple and Google to be more transparent about alleged surveillance of mobile push notifications.
Wyden began investigating possible surveillance of push notification records after receiving a tip that foreign governments had requested such records from Google and Apple. According to the companies, the information they provided Wyden about this practice is restricted from public release by the U.S. government.
“Apple and Google should be permitted to be transparent about the legal demands they receive, particularly from foreign governments, just as the companies regularly notify users about other types of government demands for data,” Wyden wrote, in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland. “These companies should be permitted to generally reveal whether they have been compelled to facilitate this surveillance practice, to publish aggregate statistics about the number of demands they receive, and unless temporarily gagged by a court, to notify specific customers about demands for their data.”
Push notifications are alerts sent by phone apps to users' smartphones. These alerts pass through a digital post office run by the phone operating system provider - overwhelmingly Apple or Google. Because of that structure, the two companies have visibility into how their customers use apps and could be compelled to provide this information to U.S. or foreign governments.
OK, are you nervous yet?
I’m not.
Because I wrote What Hunts You?
Let me explain a bit …
I worry about :
Hate Groups
Corporate Security
Corrupt Law Enforcement
Frivolous Litigation
And only one of those might have access to that level of information, and they’re not going to blow access like that trying to pin some fabricated shite on me.
There have been many times where the DOJ has dropped cases against people using Tor because they got cornered on the “network investigative technique” they were using to ID people. They’d just let them go if their secret was at all endangered.
Some of you, particularly if you work with foreign persons in conflict zones, DO need to treat this as a deadly serious threat. I will come up with some apps that I think are NOT subject to this problem, but be aware there will be less convenience and functionality. You might even be stuck with desktop/laptop only in such situations.
This is just another Friday that’s decided to act like a Monday. Things like this are a constant, that’s why you need to be on the right side of Paranoia: Pathological or Professional?