Shortly after a leaker revealed to a US senator in Oregon that "democratic authorities associated with the United States" are spying on Apple and Android notifications, Apple has updated its "Legal Process Guideline" document.
Updated document to secure yourself legally
Part “AA” has been added as such in the document, so that users are notified that the authorities can access Apple IDs associated with alerts “with a subpoena or higher legal process” – mao. should this actually go through a legal process, something that has not happened, let's believe Senator Ron Wyden and the anonymous leaker who did not reveal which countries are involved in the report on 6 December.
“Apple says Wyden's disclosures give it the opportunity to share more information with the public about how “authorities” monitor such alerts, Reuters reports. In a statement, Apple reports that "in this case, the federal government prohibited us from sharing information." This is what Apple means: that now that Wyden has revealed the surveillance program, Apple can speak out, and with that they confirm the authenticity of the revelations,” we reported on December 6.
Apple has, as far as we know, not said anything more about the matter beyond updating the document to make sure it is legal if they are asked by the authorities about access to Apple IDs associated with selected notifications sent via Apple's servers.
There is nothing more written in this paragraph relating to alerts, beyond the introduction that explains alerts and tokens:
“When users allow an app they've installed to receive push notifications, an Apple Push Notification Service (APN) token is generated and registered to that developer and device. Some apps may have multiple APN tokens for one account on one device to distinguish between messaging and multimedia.”