Privacy is under threat: Apple and Google are helping governments spy on users
Unknown governments are monitoring smartphone users on both Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS via push notifications.
This was stated by US Senator Ron Wyden in a letter to the US Department of Justice, Reuters reports.
Wyden claims that foreign officials are demanding data from Alphabet’s Google and Apple. Without elaborating, the senator described the way foreign governments monitor smartphones.
Apps use push notifications to notify users of incoming messages, breaking news, and other updates. Sound “bells” or indicators popping up on top show that the user has received a new email or their sports team has won a game.
Almost all such notifications go through Google and Apple servers.
Thus, tech giants have data on traffic coming from apps to smartphone users. The senator believes that companies are “uniquely positioned to facilitate government surveillance of how users use certain apps.”
Wyden asked the Department of Justice to “rescind or modify any policy” that prevented public discussion of spying through push notifications.
Apple comments that Wyden’s letter allowed it to share more information with the public about how governments control push notifications.
“In this case, the federal government prohibited us from sharing any information. Now that this method is publicly available, we are updating our transparency reports to detail such requests,” Apple said.
Google, in turn, shares Wyden’s concern about “the obligation to inform users about these requests.”
The Ministry of Justice refused to comment on whether push notifications are actually being monitored and whether the government has actually banned Apple or Google from talking about the situation.
In the letter, Wyden cites an informed source.
Other sources have confirmed that both foreign and U.S. government agencies have requested metadata related to push notifications from Apple and Google to, for example, help link anonymous messaging app users to specific Apple or Google accounts.
It is not specified which governments are being referred to, but they are “democracies that are allies of the United States.”
It is not known how long governments have been collecting such information.
Smartphone users occasionally complain that push notifications are difficult to deploy without sending data to Google or Apple.
