The data in a push notification can help law enforcement officials identify and track a criminal suspect.
Most people turn on mobile push notifications and then promptly forget about them. However, it turns out that if you’re up to no good, those notifications could get you thrown in prison. The Washington Post reports that the FBI has been using mobile push notification data to unmask people suspected of serious crimes, like pedophilia, terrorism, and murder.
The Post did a little digging into court records and found evidence of at least 130 search warrants filed by the feds for push notification data in cases spanning 14 states. In those cases, FBI officials asked tech companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook to fork over data related to a suspect’s mobile notifications, then used the data to implicate the suspect in criminal behavior linked to a particular app, even though many of those apps were supposedly anonymous communication platforms, like Wickr.
How exactly is this possible?
One of the MANY reasons I simply will NOT – and never – own, have or buy a cell phone.
It’s not worth the “convenience” you think it allows you.
Push Notifications and Data Privacy (Threema, 19 Dec 2023)
More info on this issue for deeper reading than this article from a link within the article.
So, “pedophilia” is “a serious crime” right up there with terrorism and murder? In other words, “thoughts can be crimes?” Having a sustained attraction to kids is “a crime?” Yeah, I don’t think so.
I constantly feel as though I have just emerged from five hundred years of suspended animation only to emerge into Idiocracy, the actual movie. Seriously, watch that 2006 movie. It has only gotten more prescient and disturbing with time.
Does anyone understand what the actual hell this is about? It’s so short on details or the mechanics of any operation. Who was notifying whom and who was doing what to whom and how does this rise to probable cause and what activity is being tracked? The most chilling thing about it is that they’re able to get search warrants on the strength of these “push notifications.” “Push notifications” for what? Someday, we need a seminar on search warrants and how little evidence is needed to get them. I have a lot of questions and lots of concerns. I suspect that the more unpopular the “criminal,” the easier it is to convince a judge that there is “probable cause.