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Apple Confirms Governments Using Push Notifications to Surveil Users
(www.macrumors.com)
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this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2023
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How do those governments have access to this data? Is it not TLS encrypted?
The article states that Apple recommends not putting any sensitive data in the payloads as well as encrypting the payloads
This sounds a lot like a scenario where Apple informs that a mechanism used for standard mobile communication is being survived by governments not necessarily a scenario where something Apple or google are doing is inherently surveillance.
Here it seems like the surveillance is occurring at the 3rd parties who send the push notifications.
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Right?
First they get location data because cell towers and people not caring.
Then they notice all these message notifications between these dozen people at this time, at this location, that happens to coincide with a protest.
Ding, fries are done!
Apple would be able (and perhaps required?) to provide the decrypted data. TLS is not end-to-end encryption; it's just server-to-client. It's useful to prevent MITM wiretapping but it is NOT useful to prevent server-side spying.
The article quotes Apple as saying they can update their transparency report now that this is public. Doesn't look like they have data for 2023 yet at https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/
I'd think Apple could make push notification content end-to-end encrypted if they so desired, but I don't know how they could avoid having access to the vendor and user at minimum for the sake of validation and delivery.
To turn that question around, what incentive do the corporations have to encrypt that data? Whole bunch easier to just not care.