The NSA was caught doing this. It has said that program has ended, but there is no way of knowing for sure. So it is possible that it is true. Now to be specific, NSA said they recorded and stored the calls and only if their algorithms caught something suspicious would they "hear" the call.
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Apple Tracks Who You Contact on Messages, Stores Logs for 30 Days
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That seems generally pretty, uh... well, useless from a prosecution point of view. Maybe a good place to start an investigation, but certainly not evidence in its own right. Getting records from their cell provider would be far more fruitful.
I don't see what the problem is, even if they are. It's unlikely they're picking up your calls, unless you have someone from Raqqa on your speed dial
To those who are concerned, especially the ones who have ordered 7+ in MB, please feel free to cancel your order. I do not want to wait til October to get mine 
I swear I'm not picking on you. I swear. Your post highlights an issue I've had with people when discussing the difference between Apple's actual privacy policy and their marketed privacy philosophy. They are not the same thing and shouldn't be confused with one another. Anyone trying to conflate the two only has themselves to blame. Apple's privacy policy has been available to anyone to read, well, since forever. Apple is pretty darn honest about what they do and don't do.
Their privacy policy should be required reading for anyone discussing what they think Apple's stance is on privacy.
Again, not picking on you. Just using your comment as the vehicle to drive my point.
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You're missing the point. It's stored for 30 days. I get the pinging part, but it does that once. Why store the details?
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This is a software thing. Other messages apps are available.To those who are concerned, especially the ones who have ordered 7+ in MB, please feel free to cancel your order. I do not want to wait til October to get mine
Why would I even care if they know that I just messaged Aunt Mary that I AM ON MY WAY!
SEESH, as long as it may catch a bad guy, I'm fine with it!
SEESH, as long as it may catch a bad guy, I'm fine with it!
I'm not happy about this. But I can see the technical reasons for Apple having to maintain the metadata, at least for a few days anyway - if the recipient device of a message isn't online when the message is sent then the message has to be held in a queue somewhere and resent when the device becomes available. Otherwise you'd have messages going into a black hole whenever someone has their phone off.
You're confusing the ability to do something and a promise. iMessage encryption works by using public+private key cryptography. The idea behind that is the private key stays in your possession, always on your device. The problem is Apple controls all the software, they can push an update to upload the private key and you can't stop it or even know.
The likelihood of Apple doing it is slim but the Government can order Apple to do that under secrecy. The Government already did do something similar. They forced an email server, Lavabit, to do exactly that. It was the web email server Edward Snowden used while he was living in USA.
This is not the only example of questionable logging with iMessage. I've long been concerned about iMessage/iCloud's tendency to store contact names and numbers you've had in your iCloud Contacts (or perhaps even not) long after they've been removed.
These contacts appear in the Recents list of the Messages app (iOS or macOS) whenever you start typing in the recipient field and there's no way to permanently clear this list. It keeps building, seemingly as a record of anyone you've ever contacted that either has or had iMessage or been in your iCloud Contacts (I can't tell which, possibly both) regardless of whether they still are. You can hide the contact by clicking a blue (i) button in the list and selecting "Remove From Recents" but contrary to claims this does not permanently remove it from the Recents list Apple is storing. It simply hides it from the current device until you "Erase All Content and Settings", after which the complete Recents list returns.
This is reproducible. You can (painstakingly) remove all the contacts you don't want from the Recents list, but if you reset the device or get a new device or Mac they come back. Therefore, Apple must be storing this list and you have no access to change, modify or permanently delete the list. It's a completely separate list from your iCloud Contacts. If Apple stores the information then it's available to law enforcement and the argument that this won't be accessed or used unless you're under suspicion of having committed a crime is a moot point. Privacy is privacy regardless of how much or how little you trust the motivations, intentions and capabilities of the state and law-enforcement agencies (in my case very little). If it serves no function or benefit, or even if it does, I should have the option of deleting the record permanently. As it stands I do not.
At the very least this behaviour is annoying. If I ever reset my phone or computer or get a new iCloud-enabled device or Mac I find a big Recents list containing contacts from years past I have no intention of ever contacting again and this makes it harder and slower to find the contact I do want from that list. At worst this is a scary form of tracking. A Recents list should contain only contacts you've contacted, you know, recently, and I should have the option of clearing that list from Apple's servers at any time. Contacts I haven't contacted or had in my Contacts list for years shouldn't be in that list!
I would like answers from Apple as to why this is occurring and I plan to contact them to report it and seek those answers. Personally, I think there's a disconnect between Apple's marketing and the reality of privacy concerns regarding its online services. Governments would (and do) go to extreme lengths to get the sort of information iCloud is using. Apple is aware of how much concerns around privacy could be a deterrent to sales so it's in their interest to downplay these concerns.
These contacts appear in the Recents list of the Messages app (iOS or macOS) whenever you start typing in the recipient field and there's no way to permanently clear this list. It keeps building, seemingly as a record of anyone you've ever contacted that either has or had iMessage or been in your iCloud Contacts (I can't tell which, possibly both) regardless of whether they still are. You can hide the contact by clicking a blue (i) button in the list and selecting "Remove From Recents" but contrary to claims this does not permanently remove it from the Recents list Apple is storing. It simply hides it from the current device until you "Erase All Content and Settings", after which the complete Recents list returns.
This is reproducible. You can (painstakingly) remove all the contacts you don't want from the Recents list, but if you reset the device or get a new device or Mac they come back. Therefore, Apple must be storing this list and you have no access to change, modify or permanently delete the list. It's a completely separate list from your iCloud Contacts. If Apple stores the information then it's available to law enforcement and the argument that this won't be accessed or used unless you're under suspicion of having committed a crime is a moot point. Privacy is privacy regardless of how much or how little you trust the motivations, intentions and capabilities of the state and law-enforcement agencies (in my case very little). If it serves no function or benefit, or even if it does, I should have the option of deleting the record permanently. As it stands I do not.
At the very least this behaviour is annoying. If I ever reset my phone or computer or get a new iCloud-enabled device or Mac I find a big Recents list containing contacts from years past I have no intention of ever contacting again and this makes it harder and slower to find the contact I do want from that list. At worst this is a scary form of tracking. A Recents list should contain only contacts you've contacted, you know, recently, and I should have the option of clearing that list from Apple's servers at any time. Contacts I haven't contacted or had in my Contacts list for years shouldn't be in that list!
I would like answers from Apple as to why this is occurring and I plan to contact them to report it and seek those answers. Personally, I think there's a disconnect between Apple's marketing and the reality of privacy concerns regarding its online services. Governments would (and do) go to extreme lengths to get the sort of information iCloud is using. Apple is aware of how much concerns around privacy could be a deterrent to sales so it's in their interest to downplay these concerns.
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What if Aunt Mary goes and robs a bank while waiting for you to arrive? After catching her, they see who she's received messages from. Hmm, you sent her one right before the crime. Guess we'd better look a little closer at you...
Take a look at detailed billing from your carrier if you send and receive standard SMS messages instead of iMessages. They keep track of the same stuff. Your ISP also logs all kinds of stuff related to your internet activity. If you're paranoid about being tracked and logged, you shouldn't own a cell phone or a computer that connects to the internet. Alternatively, if you can't live without a cell phone or a connected computer and you're paranoid, you should be savvy enough to know how to circumvent the logging and tracking to the best of your ability.
I am pretty sure that my comment specifically stated that the 30-day issue was something that could be argued, so not missing the point. Most operations tend to save logs for 30 days, it's fairly standard stuff. Most policies I have written is that we maintain daily incremental backups of logs and data on-site, with off-site backups for 30 days. For mission critical we replicate logs off-site even within the day so that we can recover to almost the last transaction. My guess is no one thought about this and just let it be part of their normal process of backups and purging within the operations procedures. Maybe they review this and decide to reduce the time, but I don't see it as a major issue in the first place. To change is more a policy/process change and very little software change (may be as simple as a parameter in their backup/purge software).
"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say," - ES.
There it is boys and girls, the expert apologists have spoken... Nothing to be concerned about, Apple's here to keep you safe.
I get what you're asking but I hate the way that question is phrased... because in the absence of a direct answer and focus on an abstract, I feel anything I could answer with supports the "well then it must be for law enforcement if you can't put your finger directly on some function."
As an engineer, I can think of countless reasons why I would retain a set of logs about anything that occurs on my servers - of which, at the very minimum would be a set of metrics outlining the raison d'etre so I could make future decisions down the line.
Metrics to see how the system should respond, capacities, location-focuses, etc. There are countless reasons why that information is stored, and there probably is not a single purpose, but data is useful. The more data you have the more accurate picture you can draw... maybe 30-days was the limit they could get?
I keep iMessage turned off. So all my texts are sent through the carrier.
Hopefully straight to the carrier, without Apple involvement.
Hopefully straight to the carrier, without Apple involvement.
Call me naive, but if the government told Apple to do something like that, I don't think it would go down quietly.
I don't have faith in an updated Mac Pro any time soon. I don't have faith in all-Flash storage. But by gum I have faith that Apple will fight tooth and nail against anything like that.
Homework assignment for you. Try to apply the 4th Amendment to this to protect your data. Let us know how you would and what your results would be.
BL.
If I haven't done anything wrong, why would I mind that as well. SHEESH!
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WHAT I DO CARE ABOUT IS CATCHING BAD GUYS AND TERRORISTS AND MURDERS.
I'D GLADLY GIVE UP MY RIGHTS FOR THAT! PERIOD!
I'm pretty sure we all are familiar with that famous quote from our 1st US Postmaster General. If not, then it should bear repeating, and I paraphrase:
Those who sacrifice freedoms for safety and security deserve neither. - Ben Franklin
BL.