Apple’s Push Notification Data Used to Investigate Capitol Rioters; Apple Sets Higher Legal bar

When it initially came to light that governments globally demanded push notification data from Apple and Google, suspicion mounted that the US government was doing the same. This has now been confirmed, with one use of it being the monitoring the Capitol riots, that will take place on January 6.

Previously, Apple was prohibited from disclosing that it was receiving legal demands for the information. However, now that it is permitted to do so, it has also raised the standard for compliance.

What is This All About?

Last week, it was revealed that legal demands were being made to Apple and Google to provide details of the notifications that were sent to persons of interest in the legal investigations. While both companies were meeting the demands, they were not allowed to disclose that it was actually happening.

The facts were then made public through an open letter by a senator.

Push notifications can still disclose a lot of information, even though they prevent third parties from seeing the content of end-to-end encrypted conversations, such as those sent over iMessage.

Consider, for instance, a message exchange between a Chinese whistleblower and a US journalist exposing violations of human rights. The push data indicates that the source and journalist had a lengthy back-and-forth conversation yesterday, and a report on the abuses was released today.

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