Most interestingly, this information came to the public not through anonymous leaks, conjectures or investigative journalists, but thanks to Oregon State Senator Ron Wyden. He wrote a letter to the US Department of Justice asking them to lift restrictions on discussing this method of hacking users.

What is known about this subject

Wyden writes in his letter: Authorities allegedly requested data from Apple and Google to track smartphones. At the same time, the only country the senator named is the United States. It is not known which other governments were involved.

The politician says that both companies are in a unique position because, as developers of the Android and iOS operating systems, they have access to such information. According to him, this makes things easier. “Government surveillance of how users use certain applications”.

He also asked the Ministry of Justice “cancel or change any policy”This could prevent public discussion of espionage through push notifications.

Apple contacted Reuters for comment and said Wyden’s letter gave it the opportunity to share with the public more detailed information about how governments monitor push notifications.

In this case, the federal government prohibited us from sharing any information. Now that this method is publicly available, we are updating our transparency reports to detail similar requests.
– he said in the statement.

Wyden did not specify what information the governments received. However, we can assume that this is data about the name of the application, the time of receipt of the notification and its content. Considering the fact that messengers display received messages in notifications, it is quite possible that outsiders can read their target’s correspondence in this way.

It’s also worth noting that Wyden’s letter mentions a “clue” as the source of the information, but it’s unclear who that person might be and whether the person works for one of the companies or is a member of the US government. That may be so, but a mysterious source says: both foreign and U.S. government agencies It is alleged that he is trying to get data from Apple and Google.