Apple & Google give the contents of push notifications to anyone with a warrant or subpoena

US Senator Ron Wyden revealed that "government agencies in foreign countries were demanding smartphone push notification records from Google and Apple", placing these companies in a "unique position to facilitate government surveillance of how users are using particular apps". This handily provides access to unencrypted messages that would normally be sent via end-to-end encryption, as the messages have to be decrypted in order to appear in a push notification preview (if enabled on the user's device) and are not end-to-end encrypted themselves. Apple and Google has confirmed this takes place and Google even said it "already documents requests for push notification data in aggregated data of all government requests for user information". Senator Wyden wants to make it so companies can be more specific about push notification interception in their transparency reports.


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