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How government departments use a day-to-day function for mass surveillance of citizens.
A recent investigation published by The Washington Post revealed more than 130 petitions to US courts demanding access to the metadata of Push notifications of American citizens. This discovery highlights how vulnerable mobile device users are to their own privacy concerns.
Due to the weak protection of the Push notification system on mobile devices, US investigators often receive valuable information for investigating crimes related to terrorism, sexual exploitation, drugs and fraud.
Data disclosure occurs even in cases where suspects try to hide their communications using encrypted messages, since, unlike messages in secure messengers, Push notifications are not encrypted in any way.
All this is very good and useful when dealing with real criminals, but such access also allows American prosecutors to conduct very controversial cases against innocent people.
For example, in American states where abortion is prohibited, it is recommended to require information to determine the location of women, recording all their visits to reproductive health facilities. This can hardly be called a reasonable application of such powers.
In addition, data about Push notifications from Apple, Google, third-party services, or app developers may also be required by foreign governments for their own investigations or political harassment. There are already concerns in the human rights community that they may have been doing this for many years, but only now has this information come to light.
In December 2023, US Senator Ron Wyden sent a letter to the US Department of Justice regarding information received by his office in 2022. According to this information, foreign government agencies require Google and Apple to save records of Push notifications from all devices under their control, so that later, if necessary, they can use this data for their own purposes.
Wyden called on the Justice Department to be transparent, because when trying to get information from Apple and Google, he was told that data on such requirements is limited to distribution.
According to an investigation by The Washington Post, court documents in 14 US states and the District of Columbia show that investigators regularly use Push notification metadata to enforce their interests.
Zach Edwards, a security consultant at Victory Medium, emphasizes that Push notification metadata is extremely valuable and can be used to track users current location and driving directions, which puts their privacy at risk.
Edwards also cited the example of Pushwoosh, which for a long time secretly used Push notifications as a means of spying on US government applications.
This could include an urgent call to put on tinfoil hats and disable any Push notifications on all your devices for privacy reasons. However, it is far from a fact that disabling Push on the end device will somehow protect you from the"Big Brother". After all, there is a big difference in what data is displayed on the screen of your smartphone, and what data is actually transmitted to foreign servers.
All this only confirms concerns about abuse by government agencies and large corporations, and also underlines the need for strict international control of this type of data in order to ensure the safety of the global community.
A recent investigation published by The Washington Post revealed more than 130 petitions to US courts demanding access to the metadata of Push notifications of American citizens. This discovery highlights how vulnerable mobile device users are to their own privacy concerns.
Due to the weak protection of the Push notification system on mobile devices, US investigators often receive valuable information for investigating crimes related to terrorism, sexual exploitation, drugs and fraud.
Data disclosure occurs even in cases where suspects try to hide their communications using encrypted messages, since, unlike messages in secure messengers, Push notifications are not encrypted in any way.
All this is very good and useful when dealing with real criminals, but such access also allows American prosecutors to conduct very controversial cases against innocent people.
For example, in American states where abortion is prohibited, it is recommended to require information to determine the location of women, recording all their visits to reproductive health facilities. This can hardly be called a reasonable application of such powers.
In addition, data about Push notifications from Apple, Google, third-party services, or app developers may also be required by foreign governments for their own investigations or political harassment. There are already concerns in the human rights community that they may have been doing this for many years, but only now has this information come to light.
In December 2023, US Senator Ron Wyden sent a letter to the US Department of Justice regarding information received by his office in 2022. According to this information, foreign government agencies require Google and Apple to save records of Push notifications from all devices under their control, so that later, if necessary, they can use this data for their own purposes.
Wyden called on the Justice Department to be transparent, because when trying to get information from Apple and Google, he was told that data on such requirements is limited to distribution.
According to an investigation by The Washington Post, court documents in 14 US states and the District of Columbia show that investigators regularly use Push notification metadata to enforce their interests.
Zach Edwards, a security consultant at Victory Medium, emphasizes that Push notification metadata is extremely valuable and can be used to track users current location and driving directions, which puts their privacy at risk.
Edwards also cited the example of Pushwoosh, which for a long time secretly used Push notifications as a means of spying on US government applications.
This could include an urgent call to put on tinfoil hats and disable any Push notifications on all your devices for privacy reasons. However, it is far from a fact that disabling Push on the end device will somehow protect you from the"Big Brother". After all, there is a big difference in what data is displayed on the screen of your smartphone, and what data is actually transmitted to foreign servers.
All this only confirms concerns about abuse by government agencies and large corporations, and also underlines the need for strict international control of this type of data in order to ensure the safety of the global community.
