Technology

Clickbaits need to die

yeah, it looks like most of the other new agencies are attributing it correctly as the government. IMO it's the damn gag order that's most damning. You will spy on them for us and tell no-one.

To be fair Google was already making this information public via their transparency reports, albeit in aggregate, since 2010 [0].

"Google's transparency report, Ars confirmed, already documents requests for push notification data in aggregated data of all government requests for user information."

Apple conveniently played it safe until the coast was clear. Maybe they'd have been allowed to comment on this privacy issue if they published it in aggregate like Google - e.g. not specifically calling out the U.S. Govt? But that wasn't a risk Apple was willing to take for its users.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_report

I actually scrolled straight to the bottom of the article to see if it was flagged as being "republished from another Condé Nast property." Just hoping there was an excuse for Ars.

A letter from a senator doesn't carry much legal force. From my understanding of the article, Apple claims they were prohibited from sharing this information, but a simple letter couldn't overturn something like a legal order or court mandate. The change here doesn't support the claim.

It reads more like Apple chose not to disclose in order to avoid the ire of the DOJ, even though it would have been morally more correct to tell the public sooner.

Third party doctrine for one: the data held by third parties has no expectation of privacy, even if it's about you.

From Wikipedia:

The third-party doctrine is a United States legal doctrine that holds that people who voluntarily give information to third parties—such as banks, phone companies, internet service providers (ISPs), and e-mail servers—have "no reasonable expectation of privacy" in that information. A lack of privacy protection allows the United States government to obtain information from third parties without a legal warrant and without otherwise complying with the Fourth Amendment prohibition against search and seizure without probable cause and a judicial search warrant.

Basically the government's argument: if you wanted it to remain private, you wouldn't have given it to someone else.

I'm reality, it's an area of law that desperately needs to be updated.

It will take someone being brought in on evidence gathered by this method to get it overturned. It would probably wind its way up to the Supreme Court.

PATRIOT

What if push messages doesn't happen on your phone but is somehow "pushed" from somewhere else?

Pretty much any app that has message details in the notification. For instance, if I get a comment response on Lemmy, my app sends a push notification. If that notification contains details about the message, the government would supposedly be able to read that data.

Secure messaging apps have moved away from including message info specifically for this reason. For instance, Signal only sends a notification that you received a message. The push notification doesn’t say who the message was from, or what the message said.

But when Snapchat tells you that a specific friend is typing/has sent a message, the government could conceivably see that and connect you to that person. Maybe not a huge deal if it’s just a friend with nothing to hide. But we all know that “you have nothing to hide so you have nothing to fear” is a horrible excuse. Because it could land you on a list if that friend is a dealer, or becomes radicalized in the future, or has family who has ties to illegal activity, or any number of other things that the government may want to start watching them for.