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Apple will require law enforcement to obtain a court order before the company hands over details of customers\u2019 push notifications from now on. As Reuters<\/em> reports, Apple quietly updated its guidelines for law enforcement page on Monday with language specifying that search warrants and court orders are now required for it to give up \u201cThe Apple ID associated with\u201d an Apple Push Notification Service token. The new policy follows revelations that both Apple and Google have been providing details about the notifications to governments.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Apps can \u201cpush\u201d notifications to your phone so that you receive alerts, like a text message or incoming email, even when the app itself isn\u2019t open. But the process involves potentially sensitive information being shared with Apple and Google, including metadata \u201cdetailing which app received a notification and when, as well as the phone and associated Apple or Google account to which that notification was intended to be delivered,\u201d as Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) wrote in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland last week.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Wyden\u2019s letter notified the US Justice Department that his office had been investigating whether foreign governments had compelled Apple and Google to turn over personal details from smartphone push notifications. Wyden said the two companies admitted this happens, and both later confirmed it to news outlets. Apple told Reuters<\/em> that the federal government had \u201cprohibited\u201d it from sharing the requests but added, \u201cnow that this method has become public we are updating our transparency reporting to detail these kinds of requests.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Google already had a policy to require court orders in place. In a statement reported by Reuters<\/em>, Wyden said Apple was \u201cdoing the right thing by matching Google and requiring a court order to hand over push notification related data.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n In his original letter, Wyden asked the Department of Justice to \u201crepeal or modify any policies\u201d that prevent the companies from being \u201ctransparent about the legal demands they receive, particularly from foreign governments.\u201d Google already includes information about demands like those Wyden mentioned in its transparency reports, according to 404 Media<\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Though Wyden mentioned foreign governments specifically, US law enforcement has sought the same information. 404 Media<\/em>\u2019s story details a 2020 FBI search warrant request with language very close to what Wyden wrote. In the warrant, the requesting agent said that both Apple and Google would send users\u2019 phones a \u201cpush token\u201d that is then routed through whatever app is being used to the servers of the company that makes it. The agent wrote that with the token comes a \u201cpayload\u201d of information that \u201cmay help identify the specific device(s) used by a particular subscriber\u201d to access their account. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Apps don\u2019t always have to include identifying details when sending push notifications. As described in this post on Mastodon, the encrypted messaging app, Signal, takes care not to include data that could be traced back to a user\u2019s account or device when sending a push notification. But, as pointed out in the thread, the existence of a notification and the associated metadata can be enough for certain surveillance purposes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n[ad_2]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [ad_1] Apple will require law enforcement to obtain a court order before the company hands over details of customers\u2019 push notifications from now on. As Reuters reports, Apple quietly updated its guidelines for law enforcement page on Monday with language specifying that search warrants and court orders are now required for it to give up …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15449"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}