U.S. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon announced on Wednesday that he has requested that the Department of Justice allow Apple and Google to be more transparent about surveillance of mobile push notifications. Wyden’s request comes after becoming aware of “a tip that government agencies in foreign countries were demanding smartphone ‘push’ notification records,” according to Wyden’s letter to the DoJ.
“These companies should be permitted to generally reveal whether they have been compelled to facilitate this surveillance practice, to publish aggregate statistics about the number of demands they receive, and unless temporarily gagged by a court, to notify specific customers about demands for their data,” said Wyden.
The request would change the federal government’s current policy. In a statement to Reuters, Apple said, “In this case, the federal government prohibited us from sharing any information.” As a response to Wyden’s request, Apple told Reuters that, “Now that this method has become public we are updating our transparency reporting to detail these kinds of requests.”
Apple introduced push notifications to the iPhone in 2009 through version 3.0 of what was then called iPhone OS. System-related push notifications alert users to incoming messages, phone calls, OS updates, security info, and more. But apps, websites, and third-party software can perform push alerts, too.
