Apple and Google sharing people's smartphone notification data with governments

Hanno Labuschagne

Hanno Labuschagne

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Apple and Google sharing people's smartphone notification data with governments

Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google have been forced by foreign governments to provide users’ data from notifications they get on their devices, according to a US lawmaker, drawing attention to a new privacy concern.

In a letter published Wednesday, US Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon asked the Justice Department to allow the technology companies to discuss the practice publicly.

[Bloomberg]
 
Hanno Labuschagne said:
Apple and Google sharing people's smartphone notification data with governments

Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google have been forced by foreign governments to provide users’ data from notifications they get on their devices, according to a US lawmaker, drawing attention to a new privacy concern.

In a letter published Wednesday, US Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon asked the Justice Department to allow the technology companies to discuss the practice publicly.

[Bloomberg]
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Some gov employee somewhere can see my OF notifications. Nice.
 
What's more shocking is that the good ol' US of A prevented this from being disclosed. They don't have your best interest at heart.
 
Swa said:
What's more shocking is that the good ol' US of A prevented this from being disclosed. They don't have your best interest at heart.
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The USA; land of the free, home of the brave; is a cesspool of corruption, evil and criminality. A police state with government departments that rival the East German Stasi. Nothing they do or say surprises me any longer.
 
OK, so do I understand this correctly? Apple or Google notify which ever foreign agency that I got a notification from Telegram, but they dont know what the content in the actual message is right? Or a Apple user gets a notification that they have a new iMessage, and that gets sent to whatever agency, but not the content of the actual message because these messages in these apps are encrypted. What use is that to these foreign entities?
 
But it is all, and any, push notification services that get the demand. Exactly the same has been in place with all SMS providers since the inception of cell networks. The focus should be on how/why governments are collecting all this data, and why there is no transparency. The US CLOUD Act provides the same enforcements, without disclosure, on any US owned company anywhere in the world i.e. Microsoft or Google operating inside SA.

We really need to look at this in the holistic context and not just around one specific technology.
 
Not necessarily a bad thing at all.
 
good luck to them ..... i hope it wastes their freaking time reading all that cr@p as much as it wastes mine :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::ROFL::ROFL::ROFL::ROFL::ROFL:
 
Velskoen said:
The USA; land of the free, home of the brave; is a cesspool of corruption, evil and criminality. A police state with government departments that rival the East German Stasi. Nothing they do or say surprises me any longer.
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You're sounding delusional lol. They're not perfect, but they definitely stand for more good than many many many other Govts. Our little terrorist-supporting-corner included.
 
I don't mind the US Government having my data, I mind if it has to go to dodgy af countries on the other side. Then i'm gonna have a problem.
 
Ockie said:
OK, so do I understand this correctly? Apple or Google notify which ever foreign agency that I got a notification from Telegram, but they dont know what the content in the actual message is right? Or a Apple user gets a notification that they have a new iMessage, and that gets sent to whatever agency, but not the content of the actual message because these messages in these apps are encrypted. What use is that to these foreign entities?
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You TRUST some one else's claim on their encryption?

You also believe those foreign entities, do not have the ability to break that encyption, without too much of a sweat?
 
It would be great if they acted on some notifications like:
7:00 Take out wheelie bin
14:00 Take cat to vet
etc
 
elf_lord_ZC5 said:
You TRUST some one else's claim on their encryption?

You also believe those foreign entities, do not have the ability to break that encyption, without too much of a sweat?
Click to expand...
As we generally know, WhatsApp is claimed to be encrypted. Not really. Too many times I have seen supposedly private conversations being leaked, and search engines picking up what you discussed and presenting you with results in line with what you discussed.
Meta can read and use every single bit of your chat, as they wish.
 
Ockie said:
OK, so do I understand this correctly? Apple or Google notify which ever foreign agency that I got a notification from Telegram, but they dont know what the content in the actual message is right? Or a Apple user gets a notification that they have a new iMessage, and that gets sent to whatever agency, but not the content of the actual message because these messages in these apps are encrypted. What use is that to these foreign entities?
Click to expand...
No, they get whatever data the notification contains, which in some cases can be more than simply that there's a new message. But that's not the big issue. If you can't trust to know when this happens then can you trust to know when something big happens?

PaulMurkin said:
As we generally know, WhatsApp is claimed to be encrypted. Not really. Too many times I have seen supposedly private conversations being leaked, and search engines picking up what you discussed and presenting you with results in line with what you discussed.
Meta can read and use every single bit of your chat, as they wish.
Click to expand...
Just because it's encrypted doesn't mean the endpoints aren't sharing data in parallel.
 
WalkWithMe said:
HarmonyOS = Chinesse
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Better the Chinese than the US.
US was caught spying on Angela Merkel's phone.

Recently CIA was caught in Spain trying to bribe Spanish agent, even though Spain already shares all security info with US.
 
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