The NSA, Apple’s iPhone and a whole lot of bad reporting

“With the treasure trove of classified information Edward Snowden procured from the NSA, we’re seemingly inundated with more details regarding NSA surveillance efforts every single week,” Yoni Heisler writes for TUAW. “Last week, the major NSA-related headline centered on the agency’s apparent ability to attain complete and unfettered access to Apple’s iPhone… through a program called DROPOUTJEEP, has the ability to completely compromise an iPhone, gaining access to the device’s camera, contact list, text messages, voicemail and much more. What’s more, classified documents indicated that the NSA, in its efforts to compromise the iPhone, enjoyed a 100 percent success rate.”

“Exacerbating the matter, security researcher Jacob Appelbaum seemed to imply during a recent speech that Apple may be assisting the NSA in their efforts,” Heisler writes. “[But] If you look at the document [see full article], you’ll note that it states: ‘The initial release of DROPOUTJEEP will focus on installing the implant via close access methods. A remote capability will be pursued in a future release.'”

A”ll told, the notion that a government agency, or even a lone individual, can compromise a device in-hand is hardly groundbreaking news. Folks were jailbreaking the iPhone, for example, just months after the device first hit store shelves,” Heisler writes. “And yet, if you glanced at any number of headlines last week, you’d be convinced that every iPhone out in the free world is a sleeping spy device just waiting for the ‘activate/wake-up’ signal from the NSA… many of the fear-inducing headlines conveyed information that was completely mismatched when compared to the original Der Spiegel story.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Visit the Apple-backed reformgovernmentsurveillance.com today.

Related articles:
U.S. NSA seeks to build quantum computer to crack most types of encryption – January 3, 2014
Ex-NSA chief calls for Obama to reject commission’s recommendations to rein in NSA surveillance – December 30, 2013
How the U.S. NSA remotely bugs your Apple iPhone – December 30, 2013
Report: U.S. NSA intercepts computers during shipping to install surveillance malware – December 30, 2013
U.S. NSA uses Google cookies to pinpoint targets for hacking – December 11, 2013
Apple, Google, others call for government surveillance reform – December 9, 2013
U.S. NSA secretly infiltrated Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide, Snowden documents say – October 30, 2013
Obama administration decides NSA spying is ‘essential,’ but oversight of NSA is not – October 8, 2013
Apple’s iPhone 5s with Touch ID seen as protection against U.S. NSA – September 16, 2013
German government: Windows 8 contains U.S. NSA snooping back doors; too dangerous to use – August 23, 2013
Report: NSA can see 75% of U.S. Web traffic, can snare emails – August 21, 2013
NSA can read email, online chats, track Web browsing without warrant, documents leaked by Edward Snowden show – July 31, 2013
Momentum builds against U.S. government surveillance – July 29, 2013
U.S. House rejects effort to curb NSA surveillance powers, 205-217 – July 24, 2013
Obama administration scrambles to shut down imminent U.S. House vote to defund NSA spying – July 24, 2013
Obama administration demands master encryption keys from firms in order to conduct electronic surveillance against Internet users – July 24, 2013
Apple, Google, dozens of others push Obama administration to disclose U.S. surveillance requests – July 19, 2013
Secret court agrees to allow Yahoo to reveal its fight against U.S. government PRISM requests – July 16, 2013
How Microsoft handed U.S. NSA, FBI, CIA access to users’ encrypted video, audio, and text communications – July 11, 2013
DuckDuckGo search engine surges 33% in wake of PRISM scandal – June 20, 2013
Yahoo: Since December 2012, we have received up to 13,000 U.S. gov’t requests for customer data – June 18, 2013
Apple: Since December 2012, we have received U.S. gov’t requests for customer data for up to 10,000 accounts – June 17, 2013
Nine companies, including Apple, tied to PRISM, Obama to be smacked with class-action lawsuit – June 12, 2013
U.S. lawmakers urge review of ‘Prism’ domestic spying, Patriot Act – June 10, 2013
PRISM: Do Apple, Google, Facebook have an ethical obligation not to spy on users? – June 8, 2013
Plausible deniability: The strange and unbelievable similarities in the Apple, Google, and Facebook PRISM denials – June 7, 2013
Google’s Larry Page on government eavesdropping: ‘We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday’ – June 7, 2013
Seecrypt app lets iPhone, Android users keep voice calls, text messages away from carriers, government eyes and ears – June 7, 2013
Obama administration defends PRISM data-collection as legal anti-terrorism tool – June 7, 2013
Facebook, Google, Yahoo join Apple in sort-of denying PRISM involvement – June 7, 2013
Report: Intelligence program gives U.S. government direct access to customer data on Apple servers; Apple denies – June 6, 2013

12 Comments

  1. Let’s see… The NSA might have been able to access every iPhone years ago (with physical access) or the combination of Samsung and Google now. I’ll take my chances with an iPhone.

  2. If the first story contains no facts, it isn’t bad reporting, it’s fiction. If the next story contains the same fiction, it’s plagiarism. The fact that these fiction writers and plagiarists call themselves journalists is an insult.

    1. Dan, I’m sure Frida is a barrister from Nigeria who can show you how to earn $37,478,634.00 USD per day, working from home, and receive a free iPhone for everyone on your contacts list. Just send him/her/it your bank account information, IDs, passwords, SSN, name of first born child, and sexual preferences. I’m sure you can trust this Christian person because he/she/it is dying of terminal toenail fungus and wants to pass on this valuable information while there’s still time. So hurry, and above all, don’t tell a soul about this amazing opportunity.

Reader Feedback

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.