Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 649 posts

Re: Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications

#271

Post by sneak »

heywoodlh wrote: post #262

One question I have as someone who tries to maintain (some) data sovereignty: is there any way as an end-user to circumvent/mitigate this kind of surveillance — aside from abandoning iOS and Android completely?

On iOS, all notifications must go via the centralized APNS, but on non-Google Android (eg Graphene) it is possible to run the device with the Google FCM stuff blocked off. Some apps will break, but stuff that runs in the background for polling or does non-Google notifications will continue to work.

Re: Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications

#272

Post by wredue »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #176
titzer wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But gagging a company from disclosing untargeted or semi-targeted surveillance, especially if it involves American citizens, seems like it should be unconstitutional on free speech grounds. I see you have not read the Patriot Act, an Orwellian double-speak of a title if there ever was one.

Is it really that hard for the government to get a warrant for a suspected terrorist? Is there any data on how often they're surveilling people without warrants vs with warrants? This seems like important info to know.

Having data on illegal searches would require an insider leaking that information. Nobody has any semblance of a clue how much illegal data sniffing is happening, and it’s even more questionable since the USA and five eyes continues to degrade basic privacy.

But won’t someone think of the children!?

Re: Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications

#274

Post by [deleted] »

MaxikCZ wrote: post #76
HumblyTossed wrote: post #65

It should only[0] be meta data, though. The push notification should signal the app that there is data to fetch, then the app goes and fetches it. The push notification itself should carry none of the data. [0] still bad though and they should stop.

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…

[deleted]

Re: Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications

#275

Post by wahnfrieden »

xyst wrote: post #150

Would be great to see an example of notification metadata that can supposedly link it to real users. Seems like this is what is being implied: Given: - users with notifications enabled - have X app installed - targeted user(s) reside in USA - targeted users(s) following “foo” on X app When: - issue FISA warrant for all smartphone users that received notifications in regards to “foo” user Then: - able to pull all Appl…

Build parallel networks for sections of society to operate and associate outside of what govt has their hands in or with technological guarantees of privacy and safety. I understand this is a tricky constraint to scale but it’s not impossible, current iterative solutions are at hand, and people have coordinated before around successfully building alternative societies in terms of communications, mutual aid, and safety provided to public regardless of family; these are a threat to gov and business though as they minimize people’s reliance on those institutions which is a kind of power money alone can have less control over (so they lean on violence historically - eg battle of blair mountain). I believe technology uniquely makes it possible to scale potential solutions because of how much it’s cheapened unit cost and labor cost thru automation and commodity and open src

Re: Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications

#276

Post by ChrisRR »

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…

This is why I never believe Apple's "We're super serious about your privacy!"

That is until a government asks them to do things behind the scenes.

Re: Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications

#278

Post by fsflover »

HumblyTossed wrote: post #99
fsflover wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Still bad" strongly underestimates the problem. Metadata often is more important than the data as demonstrated in the above examples.

But my intention was to point out that actual content wasn't being transmitted and that "only" meta data was gleaned since some people seem to think that chat messages are being scooped up. Other people have rightly pointed out that meta data is bad and why and I didn't feel the need to reiterate that.

It's not the intention that matters but the execution.

Re: Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications

#279

Post by deafpolygon »

Completely unrelated, but sort of related. With all this surveillance and spying going on, what's a normal citizen to do?

For example; Cloud storage? Streaming music? Online note-taking?

Should the more technically-inclined, but average, person start looking at taking more and more of these things off-line given the state of mass surveillance going on and the crazy push towards all things AI?

Re: Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications

#280

Post by Ruthalas »

Zak wrote: post #21

It'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.

UnifiedPush[0] seems like a great project in this area, and I wish it was implemented in more apps.

[0] https://unifiedpush.org/

Post reply on HN