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Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications

reuters.com

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

#371

Post by forward1 »

greentea23 wrote: post #360
forward1 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parent is asking about government surveillance. You're suggesting a deviation from the norm (99.99% of users) by installing a custom operating system (which they will now also be on the hook to secure and update regularly) by developers with nothing to lose. This will greatly increase scrutiny on you, or colloquially speaking definitely put you on a watch list, the opposite of what is allegedly desired. Rather, accep…

AOSP is not a deviation from the norm. It's the thing Google ships, vendors install play services as separate apps on top, so there is nothing oddball about your device fingerprint just by not installing Google specific services like the push handler. Your traffic will look like any other android making web requests, but then those requests will only be tracked by the servers they target instead of the OS itself betr…

> NSA: Linux Journal is an "extremist forum" and its readers get flagged for extra surveillance

https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/nsa-linux-journal-extre...

But they totally can't figure out you use a custom OS built to resist surveillance. Go figure!

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

#373

Post by beebeepka »

kome wrote: post #185
beretguy wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, don’t have Twitter account and/or app installed and you should be good?

no it's more like: don’t have a smartphone and you are good (perhaps).

No, having a dumb phone is not enough. A malicious actor can pretend they need to deliver an SMS to you, which may result in a network disclosing your location (anywhere in the world). Mobile networks probably don't honour aggressive probing for just about any peer but it's not like nobody can do this at scale. None of this is new.

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

#374

Post by forward1 »

PrimeMcFly wrote: post #369
forward1 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parent is asking about government surveillance. You're suggesting a deviation from the norm (99.99% of users) by installing a custom operating system (which they will now also be on the hook to secure and update regularly) by developers with nothing to lose. This will greatly increase scrutiny on you, or colloquially speaking definitely put you on a watch list, the opposite of what is allegedly desired. Rather, accep…

They won't get put on a list, it will just be assumed they don't do anything via a smartphone.

Signals Intelligence is not based on mere assumptions.

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

#375

Post by hiatus »

lostNFound wrote: post #370
unethical_ban wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet you've committed at least a ticketable offense in the past 48 hours, unless you are a true hermit. Our laws were not designed for a society with perfect surveillance.

This is quite the proposition. You think that the average person commits a legal offense at least every 2 days? What examples are you proposing? If you count speeding, sure I guess.

Do you know how many laws you are subject to right this moment? If you don't know the number, how can you be sure you haven't broken any?

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

#376

Post by krunck »

Nifty3929 wrote: post #310
TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #303

It's crazy to me that so much effort is being expended pretending that companies and the government are doing anything in the name of privacy, when we have all the proof by Assange and Snowden that they're doing realtime surveillance of ALL communications, 24x7 -- no matter what any laws say -- and we don't even talk about it any more. What's the point of any of this? All we can do is assume that our every position,…

I think where we go wrong is to allow the conversation to revolve around what evil corporations are doing with our information, rather than what the evil government is doing with it. I believe the risk to our freedom is much greater from the latter. Of course governments can extract the information from corporations that have it, but let's keep the spotlight on the government itself, and use THAT as a reason to give…

Corporations use the government to get around regulation. Goverment uses corporations to get around the constitution. It takes two to tango.

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

#377

Post by Hizonner »

forward1 wrote: post #318
jeroenhd wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google-free Android will allow you (force you) to use alternative push servers. That could be your own server (using something like Unified Push) or querying your apps' servers directly. This comes at the cost of battery life, sometimes significantly so, but it does decentralise the notification system. Of course, your data will still be in the hands of app vendors unless you choose your apps wisely. You should also…

Parent is asking about government surveillance. You're suggesting a deviation from the norm (99.99% of users) by installing a custom operating system (which they will now also be on the hook to secure and update regularly) by developers with nothing to lose. This will greatly increase scrutiny on you, or colloquially speaking definitely put you on a watch list, the opposite of what is allegedly desired. Rather, accep…

> You're suggesting a deviation from the norm (99.99% of users)

Which still leaves you in a large enough group that it's not practical to deploy full-press individualized surveillance against all of them. A group which contains a fairly large number of people who're doing it just to piss off the spies, and an even larger number of people who happen to be of no interest to you as a particular spy deciding where to apply your resources.

As for mass surveillance of that group, that can happen, but there still aren't such good, cheap choke points to use. The cost per bit of actionable information is still relatively high even if the group is relatively rich in targets.

> by installing a custom operating system (which they will now also be on the hook to secure and update regularly)

... as opposed to the stock operating system, which may very well not get updated at all.

I get constant updates for GrapheneOS. And they're automatic.

> by developers with nothing to lose.

What the hell does that mean? They have reputations on the line, much more so than the faceless people doing the OS work inside the vendors. Some of them depend on this for their livelihoods.

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

#378

Post by riversflow »

unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #355
rootusrootus wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think many people actually care much about privacy. There are a few, and they're loud. But look at what matters in politics -- both major political tribes in the US are only interested in privacy and protection from the government as it relates to their own interest, but they are perfectly happy to use that power against their perceived opponents.

Thirty years ago, one perceived element of moral superiority in the West was revelations of the extensive internal surveillance in places like East Germany and own-spying. There used to be news items and documentaries mocking this behavior and intimating how backward and uncouth those governments were to stoop to furiously wiretapping irrelevant private conversations. So, whether the world has changed enough to justi…

Meh, collecting information is different from acting on it. My underdtaning, which could be wrong, was that people legitimately lived in fear of getting found out by the stazi. There isn’t a good reason to fear the NSA based on current actions, that I’m aware of anyway.

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

#379

Post by 0xEF »

unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #355
rootusrootus wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think many people actually care much about privacy. There are a few, and they're loud. But look at what matters in politics -- both major political tribes in the US are only interested in privacy and protection from the government as it relates to their own interest, but they are perfectly happy to use that power against their perceived opponents.

Thirty years ago, one perceived element of moral superiority in the West was revelations of the extensive internal surveillance in places like East Germany and own-spying. There used to be news items and documentaries mocking this behavior and intimating how backward and uncouth those governments were to stoop to furiously wiretapping irrelevant private conversations. So, whether the world has changed enough to justi…

It is my opinion that people do not about privacy as much as they did in your mention Cold War-era times (or the tail end of it, anyway). They've been shown how easy it is to trade their privacy for considerable convenience and now they're in so deep that the idea of our governments tracking us seems remarkably mundane. Normalization is a helluva drug.

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

#380

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

lostNFound wrote: post #370
unethical_ban wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet you've committed at least a ticketable offense in the past 48 hours, unless you are a true hermit. Our laws were not designed for a society with perfect surveillance.

This is quite the proposition. You think that the average person commits a legal offense at least every 2 days? What examples are you proposing? If you count speeding, sure I guess.

Speed Limit 55
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