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Apple admits to secretly giving governments push notification data
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2023
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This headline is ridiculous; I expect better from Ars Technica. You "admit" to things you shouldn't have done. In this case the government compelled Apple to disclose certain data and simultaneously prohibited Apple from disclosing the disclosure. Thanks to a senator's letter, Apple is now free to disclose something that they previously wanted to disclose, about something they were forced to do in the first place.
Compare to the Reuters headline: "Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications - US senator." The emphasis and agency are correctly placed on the bad actors.
To be fair Google was already making this information public via their transparency reports, albeit in aggregate, since 2010 [0].
Apple conveniently played it safe until the coast was clear. Maybe they'd have been allowed to comment on this privacy issue if they published it in aggregate like Google - e.g. not specifically calling out the U.S. Govt? But that wasn't a risk Apple was willing to take for its users.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_report