Apple, Google Users Spied On By Governments, Via Push Notifications: REVEALED

United Stated senator Ron Wyden revealed in a letter to the Department of Justice, that both U.S. and foreign government agencies have been asking Apple and Google for metadata related to push notifications to help target anonymous users of messaging apps.

Apps rely on push notifications to alert smartphone users to incoming messages and other updates. These travel over Google and Apple's servers, and are received in the form of audible "dings" or visual indicators on users' phones.

This means that these two companies have a unique insight into the traffic flowing from those apps to their users, and in turn puts them "in a unique position to facilitate government surveillance of how users are using particular apps," Wyden said. He asked the Department of Justice(DOJ) to "repeal or modify any policies" that hindered public discussions of push notification spying.

The stranglehold the duopoly have in the space, often makes it difficult for developers to deploy push notification without sending data to Google or Apple servers.

Wyden's letter cited a "tip" as the source of the information about the surveillance. However, the identify of the foreign governments involved in making the requests, and how long such information had been gathered in that way, have not been made public.

Apple said in a statement, that Wyden's letter gave them the opening they needed to share more details with the public about how governments monitored push notifications. "In this case, the federal government prohibited us from sharing any information," the company said. "Now that this method has become public we are updating our transparency reporting to detail these kinds of requests."

Google said that it shared Wyden's "commitment to keeping users informed about these requests."

President Joe Biden's DOJ has not commented on the latest revelations. His administration has faced backlash for supporting more censorship on Big Tech platforms.

Critics have been raising alarms over the collusion of governments and Big Tech in recent years to monitor and censor dissident voices on the internet. X owner Elon Musk released the so-called Twitter Files revealing that left-wing bureaucrats and politicians colluded to target and deplatform conservative and dissident voices from platforms like then-Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and others.