On Wednesday, a United States Senator warned that unidentified governments were using push notifications to spy on smartphone users.
In a letter to the Department of Justice, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) alleged that foreign officials were demanding the data from Google and Apple.
The letter didn’t specifically explain how foreign governments would be able to track smartphones, though it did lay out a path.
According to Wyden’s letter, push notifications sent from apps on smartphones travel over Google and Apple’s servers, allowing the companies access to traffic flowing from those apps to their users.
Reuters reported that a source familiar with the matter said that both foreign and U.S. government agencies have been asking the companies for metadata related to push notifications.
One example included government officials trying to tie anonymous users of messaging apps to specific Apple or Google accounts. Whether or not the information was gathered was not shared.
Wyden says this puts the companies “in a unique position to facilitate government surveillance of how users are using particular apps.”
To address the issue, Wyden is asking the DOJ to “repeal or modify any policies” that hindered public discussions of push notification spying so the issue could be addressed.
Apple responded to Wyden’s letter, saying it gave the company the ability to share more about how governments monitored push notifications.
“In this case, the federal government prohibited us from sharing any information,” the company said in a statement. “Now that this method has become public, we are updating our transparency reporting to detail these kinds of requests.”
In the letter, Wyden cited a “tip” from a source that made him aware of the surveillance information. His staff did not elaborate on who the source was.