While Wyden's letter says that governments outside the US have requested people's push notification records, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has done so as well.
A February 2021 search warrant application submitted by an FBI agent to the US District Court in Washington, DC, requested details for two accounts controlled by Meta, specifically citing a request for push notification tokens.
The search warrant request related to an investigation into a person accused of taking part in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
Meta, which owns Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, did not immediately respond to WIRED's request to comment.
The DOJ has not yet responded to a request for comment.
A spokesperson for Signal, the popular encrypted messaging app, also did not respond.
Although Wyden is asking the DOJ to allow Apple and Google to discuss government requests for push notification records, the senator's letter appears to have enabled them to do just that.
An Apple spokesperson tells WIRED that the company has updated its Law Enforcement Guidelines in its transparency report to reflect government requests for push notification records.
The company will also begin to detail these requests in its next transparency report.
Google confirmed to WIRED that it receives requests for push notification records, but the company says it already includes these types of requests in its transparency reports.
A WIRED review of Google's most recent transparency report for the period between December 2019 and December 2022 found that it does not specifically break out government requests for push notification records, and Google confirmed that it aggregates this data in its transparency report.
Google's transparency report shows that the US government requested Google Cloud Platform data from enterprise customers 175 times during the period, and of those, used a search warrant 13 times.
It is unclear whether any of those requests for user data included push notification records-details that may, following Wyden's letter, be revealed in the future.
This Cyber News was published on www.wired.com. Publication date: Wed, 06 Dec 2023 17:43:10 +0000