Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications

Post by calvinmorrison » Wed, Dec 06, 2023, 2:38 PM UTC

Terretta wrote: post #105

andsoitis wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Yet it is the US government who revealed it: "In a letter to the Department of Justice, Senator Ron Wyden said foreign officials were demanding the data from Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google and Apple (AAPL.O). Although details were sparse,…

> Yet it is the US government who revealed it Less "the government" and more "a member of government", the same member who has revealed and demanded accountability when discovering domestic government overreach. We should choose our congress critters carefully.

Post by bryanrasmussen » Wed, Dec 06, 2023, 2:39 PM UTC

cultureswitch wrote: post #84

chatmasta wrote: post #73

This, to me, is the more disturbing part of the article: > In this case, the federal government prohibited us from sharing any information," the company said in a statement. "Now that this method has become public we are updating our transparency reporting to detail these kinds of requests. What is the point of transparency reports if they don't include major vectors of government surveillance? IMO such gag orders sh…

Seems like a pretty open and shut case of unconstitutional restriction of speech in the US. Especially when you consider the wording of the Apple communication saying that they can talk about it openly now that it's public knowledge.

Post by g-b-r » Wed, Dec 06, 2023, 2:39 PM UTC

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #109

MaxikCZ wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I so hate when people put words "only" and "metadata" in the same sentence... They know you rang a phone sex line at 2:24 am and spoke for 18 minutes. But they don't know what you talked about. They know you called the suicide prevention hotline from the Golden Gate Bridge. But the topic of the call remains a secret. They know you got an email from an HIV testing service, then called your doctor, then visited an HIV…

It's important but what do we do about it? You're using the internet afterall which isn't your network- it's someone else's! When you send a packet there is a header w/ information required for routing. Some call this the "outside of the envelope" if using the mail analogy. We can pass the buck by using a VPN but this also adds a VPN org that we need to trust. On the other hand, it's not your network! Why do you thin…

Post by nprateem » Wed, Dec 06, 2023, 2:39 PM UTC

fidotron wrote: post #64

nprateem wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would very much help if you wanted to stop the government hoovering up the content of chat messages sent as push notifications

Encrypted messengers aren’t sending unencrypted push payloads, at least not deliberately. A lot of apps don’t even put much in the push messages themselves at all, they are mainly an indicator to phone home for more information. Consequently no gov has been getting meaningful info from the content of this stuff for many years - it will all be what you can infer from observed patterns, which is a lot.

Post by sonicanatidae » Wed, Dec 06, 2023, 2:41 PM UTC

Terretta wrote: post #105

andsoitis wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Yet it is the US government who revealed it: "In a letter to the Department of Justice, Senator Ron Wyden said foreign officials were demanding the data from Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google and Apple (AAPL.O). Although details were sparse,…

> Yet it is the US government who revealed it Less "the government" and more "a member of government", the same member who has revealed and demanded accountability when discovering domestic government overreach. We should choose our congress critters carefully.