From what I see, the NCFTA in "NCFTA_iOS_devices_intel.csv" looks like it stands for the National Cyber-Forensics & Training Alliance, which "functions as a conduit between private industry and law enforcement." (http://www.ncfta.net/)

Is Apple willingly sharing personal information with the FBI through the NCFTA?

UDIDs, APNS tokens (for push notifications), basic demographic information is something a popular social app or game might have. 12 million is a pretty good number, though.

edit: our iOS app has over 2 million of these type of device records (though we don't collect any demographic info, so just device ids, apns tokens, device names, device types -- standard for push notifications).

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Networ...

Just because I am ok with one organization having my information doesn't mean that I am ok with any others having the same.

1: http://thenextweb.com/2012/09/04/antisec-hackers-leak-100000...

Further down:

>>Possibly most importantly, though, the FBI is now presumably in possession of a complete copy of the Instapaper database as it stood on Tuesday morning, including the complete list of users and any non-deleted bookmarks. (“Archived” bookmarks are not deleted. “Deleted” bookmarks are hard-deleted out of the database immediately.)

Instapaper stores only salted SHA-1 hashes of passwords, so those are relatively safe. But email addresses are stored in the clear, as is the saved content of each bookmark saved by the bookmarklet.

The server also contained a complete copy of the Instapaper website codebase, but not the codebase of the iOS app.

Linked Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr accounts only store their respective OAuth keys. Linked Evernote accounts only store the Evernote email-in address. Linked Pinboard accounts, however, store plaintext usernames and encrypted passwords, and the encryption keys are present in the website source code on the server. <<

Possibly, the fact that personal data is missing so often actually might point to a non-apple leak, because they would have the link to personal data. Of course it could be fake, but it would be prsesent.

The FBI's mission is reasonably clear; it's a government-regulated organization; it's non-commercial. They have a certain amount of accountability. Alas, we can't say the same for "popular iOS developers". We've seen how sneaky some iOS app developers can be with respect to privacy, and with little remorse after they get caught.

(and yeah, I know this is probably going to hammer my HN karma all the way to the bottom but...lol man)

I'm just saying that you are unlikely to be successful in requesting more information for this file. Information that "could reasonably interfere" with law enforcement is exempt. Also, the FBI does not make it easy to request documents form them and, further, the turnaround on a request can be months or years.

Define "willingly."

But those types of actions are rare.

Plus for certain kinds of investigations, it would go against the court order to go public. I don't want to defend apple here but this is an American law enforcement problem, I'm certain ms, google and others have provided info to the government that would anger many and there are probably a lot of companies that do it without a court order... Trying to be good citizens.

Why the hell was that info on a laptop?

But again, if that were the case then it would be related to anti-terrorism efforts. Well I hope it would be. The FISA court exists for that reason (mostly).

I guess my paranoia depends on how much I trust the government :)

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/september/cyber_091611 “The exchange of strategic and threat intelligence is really the bread and butter of the NCFTA,” said Special Agent Eric Strom, who heads the FBI unit—the Cyber Initiative and Resource Fusion Unit (CIRFU)—assigned to the NCFTA. “The success of this effort at every level comes down to the free flow of information among our partners.”

Dan Larkin (the FBI Agent who setup NCFTA in 1997) http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dan-larkin/25/90/910

Note that he used to be with CIRFU. LIkely that he still is with the CIRFU. They share office space: http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?id=51778... "Mularski works for a little-known FBI division called the Cyber Initiative and Resource Fusion Unit, run out of the National Cyber-Forensics & Training Alliance in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The unit is different from a typical FBI field office. It works hand in hand with industry and takes the time to do the deep research required to penetrate the world of online crimina

A bit of a dick way of putting it, but there's no evidence the FBI is involved in this other than some words in an announcement that could be by anyone with an axe to grind.

could anonymous have hacked this information from Apple or a carrier themselves? what information is present that they didn't do that?

    we trimmed out other personal data as, full names, cell     
    numbers, addresses, zipcodes, etc. not all devices have 
    the same amount of personal data linked. some devices
    contained lot of info.

And is there some way to validate these are real UDIDs?

However, I renamed my iPad around last November after I started using it more in public, yet its original name (easy to find if you search for my HN nick) is the name listed.

EDIT: Oh, and fwiw, law-abiding natural born US citizen here. But who am I kidding - LEAs don't give a toss about that.

Non-gov researchers I know also attribute this to a possible hacking of an iphone/ipad application backend DB before Apple put in the UUID storing restrictions to the IOS api.

I'm only bringing this to light because it is easy to fall for things you read on the Internet and get excited/theorize.