Apple Confirms Governments Using Push Notifications to Surveil Users

[droplink]

Its probably Hungary and Poland...

I wish they would list the countries.

 

[supremedesigner]

I'm not surprised. If you disable notifications, how will the government track you? Do they use carrier networks to ping your location?

 

[sparkinstx]

Countries like China and Burma (sorry, I refuse to call it "Myanmar") I would expect, and Saudi Arabia. It's disappointing to hear of it going on in democracies. Canada and Australia are democracies in name only anymore.

 

[CarAnalogy]

Push notification tracking? Didn’t see that coming. Interesting…

It’s great this is being revealed. It should not at all (but somehow will, for a staggering number of people) come as BREAKING NEWS to learn that governments are surveilling its citizens nor that they are legally preventing companies from divulging said surveilling (wait… whaaaat?!?). Right, wrong, or something in between, that’s how it’s worked since we crawled out of the ocean: a select few control govern the masses.

While this is clearly so much bigger than any one company, I fully expect usual suspects to call for Tim’s ousting. Brace yourselves.

At this point expect any and all metadata to be correlated to such a degree that the actual data hardly matters as it can be inferred.

Very scary thought. As another poster points out, AI makes this easier.

This is the most obvious danger of AI, to me. Seems dangerous to create something that is so much smarter than us. Next thing you know it will be used to predict FutureCrime. Probably already is, unofficially.

 

[CarAnalogy]

I'm not surprised. If you disable notifications, how will the government track you? Do they use carrier networks to ping your location?

Yes. Many stories lately of dragnet warrants asking for all devices connected to a certain cell tower at a certain time. Been going on since before smart phones.

 

[zakarhino]

Its probably Hungary and Poland...

I wish they would list the countries.

Maybe to Hungary but no to Poland. Not to say they're not both using this trick but the USA would protect Poland because it's part of the NATO battering ram against the Soviet Uni- I mean Russia. There's no incentive to point the finger at Poland.

Hungary is a maybe because of Orban's desire to be closer to China and Russia instead of the EU and the US. Remember, the point of this stunt is not to earnestly expose a security loophole, it's purely a political hit against some country they're frustrated with (hence Mexico or Hungary being good options).

 

[kycophpd]

Tell me more about Apple security please, there will never be any security until they put a firewall the user can configure in the phone

And then Apple won't be able to sell the iPhone in those countries. The countries that can force this on their users don't believe in freedom. While USA isn't perfect and there are still instances of abuse of laws, at least they are required to get a warrant validated by a Judge to do that here.

 

[antiprotest]

Now govt knows I get all these notifications from MacRumors web app.

 

[Superhai]

Maybe to Hungary but no to Poland. Not to say they're not both using this trick but the USA would protect Poland because it's part of the NATO battering ram against the Soviet Uni- I mean Russia. There's no incentive to point the finger at Poland.

Hungary is a maybe because of Orban's desire to be closer to China and Russia instead of the EU and the US. Remember, the point of this stunt is not to earnestly expose a security loophole, it's purely a political hit against some country they're frustrated with (hence Mexico or Hungary being good options).

Your argument should make the opposite conclusion, the quote from Reuters is "
His staff did not elaborate on the tip, but a source familiar with the matter confirmed that both foreign and U.S. government agencies have been asking Apple and Google for metadata related to push notifications to, for example, help tie anonymous users of messaging apps to specific Apple or Google accounts. The source declined to identify the foreign governments involved in making the requests but described them as democracies allied to the United States."

So while the anonymous source could have som political reason behind this tip, it is more likely to illustrate that also friendly countries did the requests as well.

 

[Verified Whiskey]

So you can tie the push notification to the user’s Apple ID (maybe), but what else is there to glean from that? Whatever is in the push notification (again, maybe. If the notification isn’t encrypted)? It’s not like the entire app’s data or all the iPhone’s data is compromised.

That being said, this is disgusting and I hope that Apple is able to now put safeguards into iOS to prevent this now that it’s public information. Require encrypted notifications? Layer on encryption if the developer doesn’t implement it themselves?

 

[MacProFCP]

We've been doing this in our non-communist countries for close to a century and yet still no communism, just more of a gradual tilt towards feudalism if anything. Man that commie road sure is long, winding, and taking plenty of detours. These Western communists must really suck if all they've managed to do is bolster corporate interests and make the country even more terrified of The Great Communist Threat™️ from China.

American has become less and less free over the same period. The idealism of the founding fathers has long been forgotten by most.

Specifically says a democracy allied with the United States, not Russia or China. That's most likely the UK, could be Canada or Australia. Less likely to be EU as EU laws mostly make this kind of surveillance illegal.

Eh, the EU is just better at silencing the whistleblowers of government overreach. They too concerned about private companies producing cell phones without a USB-C cable.

I believe the reference was to which allied (of the US) democracy that was referenced.

Ally is a very subjective term.

 

[usmaak]

Is it really a transparency report if you're only transparent when you're forced to?

Forced transparency report? After action transparency report?

 

[bigboy29]

Our tax dollars at work!
Remember folks, it is "for your protection".
/s

 

[GMShadow]

Reuters' source would not identify which governments were making the data requests but described them as "democracies allied to the United States."

So the entire EU, the UK, Canada for sure, Australia...

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.

 

[xpxp2002]

Do Signal and Telegram encrypt push notification payloads?

Was wondering this. Well, at least about Signal.

Telegram's barely audited self-rolled crypto is so questionable that unencrypted push payloads are the least of its users' worries.

 

[GMShadow]

I'm afraid you are very naive about EU law if you think that will make any difference to what national governments request from corporations.

Correct. The EU's laws are just to prevent competition in the criminal space, not to stop the EU governments from doing it themselves.

 

[elvisimprsntr]

That’s it! I’m going Jason Bourne and using a burner phone.

 

[t0rqx]

All of you still think the VPN hole "bug" is still a big? Also who still thinks the heavy privacy first marketing from Apple is genuine?

 

[ignatius345]

Sorry, but I just don't believe my GPS-enabled device encrusted with sensors, microphones, cameras is being used to track my movements and activities. Next you're going to tell me a global network of financial networks, behavioral marketers and intelligence agencies is gathering data on everyone and building a network of AI-powered computers to sift through it all. Yeah, right.

 

[siddavis]

They’re as transparent as the people you elected will legally allow them to be. Contact your representatives if you have a problem with gag orders.

Shouldn't have to. Constitutional overreach.

 

[siddavis]

I can't believe this has been relegated to the political forum. There is nothing "political" about this - it's just wrong and unconstitutional (in the US at least).

 

[hagar]

Correct. The EU's laws are just to prevent competition in the criminal space, not to stop the EU governments from doing it themselves.

The EU has passed sweeping laws to protect human rights and personal privacy. But it lacks powers over national security. So, Europe’s spy agencies use this gap to conduct wiretapping and tracking with little legal oversight. So, once again, the EU is not the problem, but rather some (most?) individual member states.

But, what I find more interesting is that Apple mentions foreign governments. What about the USA? They just remain silent on them? In the name of national security?

 

[centauratlas]

I think you meant authoritarianism.

Any form of authoritarianism - socialism, communism, fascism, totalitarianism etc - will use this to control and monitor their people. It is just a question of how far down that path you are going. Any system that doesn't respect the liberty and privacy of their citizens is evil.

 

[GMShadow]

This is not correct. The EU has passed sweeping laws to protect human rights and personal privacy. But it lacks powers over national security. So, Europe’s spy agencies use this gap to conduct wiretapping and tracking with little legal oversight.

You're repeating what I said with a pointless layer of EU fog.

 

[siddavis]

"Unidentified governments"

So that confirms USA, Germany, UK, Israel, France, New Zealand, Australia, Saudi, UAE, Ukraine, and a few more European states.

But I guess the media and social media will want to focus on how China, Iran, and Russia are using this instead because foreign countries doing bad things is more important than our own countries and allies doing it to us apparently.

Or we could focus on both? Instead we have internal forces pushing us closer to the ways of China, Iran, and Russia.
This bad? Yes
That bad? Yes
Who gives a crap who's doing it.