Yet another reason to be a happy GAPPSless LineageOS user
What's GAPless? I've been thinking about trying out LineageOS on a refurbished phone, so I'd love to know what I can do to make it even better.
Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications
41–50 of 649 posts
Re: Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications
#42[deleted]
Re: Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications
#43"The source declined to identify the foreign governments involved in making the requests but described them as democracies allied to the United States" - why not identify them?
Because the requests likely contain legal cladding to forbid disclosing the request, as is the case in Australia. A lot of people would be vindicated if it turned out one of the “democracies” making these requests was Australia.
Re: Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications
#44I noted that Apple says the governments in question are allies of the United States. I wonder if this is a case of American intelligence outsourcing the surveillance of American citizens to foreign intelligence. If that is indeed the case, I’d expect a quid pro quo.
Five Eyes.
Re: Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications
#45I noted that Apple says the governments in question are allies of the United States. I wonder if this is a case of American intelligence outsourcing the surveillance of American citizens to foreign intelligence. If that is indeed the case, I’d expect a quid pro quo.
Yep sounds like five eyes.
Re: Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications
#46Are the contents of push notifications not encrypted? Or are we talking about payloads rather than transport?
They mention metadata in the article. Imagine sending a message to a Signal account at time X, then asking Apple a list of all users that received a Signal notification at that specific time.
This ^. approach and modified forms of it can bu used to track lots of things, and have be done so for decades by some goverment agencies. You can use a method like this even if people are using encryption and lot of anonymous tunnels. You simply shape the traffic and watch where the shape of that traffic stops. Can track people realtime across almost any link, including things like Tor, etc.
Re: Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications
#47Unifiedpush to save the day! And an XMPP server with Conversations can be the basis for it: Https://unifiedpush.org/users/distributors/conversations/
AIU deanonymization happens due to pseudonymity. There are 3 pseudonyms: chat id, push id, phone number. Since all three are constant and linked, they can deanonymize the user. You need some sort of anonymous or confidential protocol to work around it.
Re: Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications
#48Hey other states, can you elect a few more Ron Wydens? He's been doing a ton of the heavy lifting lately. Every time we hear about the intelligence community egregiously violating civil liberties, it's always Wyden.
Yeah he's awesome. /s In May 2017, Wyden co-sponsored the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, Senate Bill 720, which made it a federal crime, punishable by a maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment,[88] for Americans to encourage or participate in boycotts against Israel and Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories if protesting actions by the Israeli government. The bill would make it legal for U.S. states…
If you require all your allies to be perfect people...
... you won't be left with many allies.
Re: Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications
#49It's a huge problem for both privacy and the open source ecosystem that Apple and Google mandate use of their own notification system for apps to be included in their stores.
And now we understand why they do that.
Re: Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications
#50"The source declined to identify the foreign governments involved in making the requests but described them as democracies allied to the United States" - why not identify them?
Anglosphere.