“The National Security Agency and its UK counterpart GCHQ have been developing capabilities to take advantage of ‘leaky’ smartphone apps, such as the wildly popular Angry Birds game, that transmit users’ private information across the internet, according to top secret documents,” James Ball reports for The Guardian.
“The data pouring onto communication networks from the new generation of iPhone and Android apps ranges from phone model and screen size to personal details such as age, gender and location. Some apps, the documents state, can share users’ most sensitive information such as sexual orientation – and one app recorded in the material even sends specific sexual preferences such as whether or not the user may be a swinger,” Ball reports. “Dozens of classified documents, provided to the Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden and reported in partnership with the New York Times and ProPublica, detail the NSA and GCHQ efforts to piggyback on this commercial data collection for their own purposes.”
“Exploiting phone information and location is a high-priority effort for the intelligence agencies, as terrorists and other intelligence targets make substantial use of phones in planning and carrying out their activities, for example by using phones as triggering devices in conflict zones. The NSA has cumulatively spent more than $1bn in its phone targeting efforts,” Ball reports. “The agencies also made use of their mobile interception capabilities to collect location information in bulk, from Google and other mapping apps. One basic effort by GCHQ and the NSA was to build a database geolocating every mobile phone mast in the world – meaning that just by taking tower ID from a handset, location information could be gleaned.”
“A more sophisticated effort, though, relied on intercepting Google Maps queries made on smartphones, and using them to collect large volumes of location information,” Ball reports. “So successful was this effort that one 2008 document noted that ‘[i]t effectively means that anyone using Google Maps on a smartphone is working in support of a GCHQ system.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free. – Ronald Reagan, March 30, 1961
Visit the Apple-backed reformgovernmentsurveillance.com today.
Related articles:
Apple issues update on U.S. NSA and law enforcement orders – January 27, 2014
Obama’s NSA proposals fall far short of real change – January 17, 2014
U.S. NSA devises radio pathway into computers to conduct surveillance, launch cyberattacks – January 15, 2014
The NSA, Apple’s iPhone and a whole lot of bad reporting – January 8, 2014
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
Ronald Reagan was nothing but a corporate shill before, during, and after his presidency. Quoting a speech he made that someone else wrote is really ridiculous if you actually know anything about Reagan. But of course the Reagan worshippers don’t.
Darwin, calm down. Even people who you disagree with often make statements that we can all agree with. I would offer the statement quoted by MDN as one of those universally true statements.
The ‘all or nothing’ permission system of Android is the platform’s biggest weakpoint here. At least Apple reviews apps submitted.
I deleted the very last bit of Google from my life (YouTube account) last week. One of the committees of which I am a member switched from Google Docs to Basecamp just yesterday, mostly because I refused to have a Google account in order to view Google Docs. Google is slime.
I find it pathetic that people are just now only finding out about this. People like me knew all along that our governments are corrupt, and they don’t care one bit about their constituents. They only care about their reputations. We are just a faceless mass to these liars and cheaters.
Throughout the 1950s, there were debates about wether Hawaii should gain independence or become a state. There is one problem though: The ballot only had 2 choices: Statehood or Territory. Did not even list independence! We have been an illegal state for more than half-century and know one cared one bit! Not even the UN, and they had the List of Non-Governing Self-Determined Colonies, and Hawaii is not on that list! The USA is a joke, the European Union is a joke, and the United Nations are a joke! Government in any form is ineffective! It is sad that no one knows, and even if they did, they would not care one bit…
You are the joke. Truly one sad human being. Really Heir, get help.
Why am I a joke? I am rightfully frustrated with all of the things that has happened on my islands since Statehood. Many of my people there believe that we were cheated out of having our own destiny, and that we didn’t ask to be part of a very brutal empire. Throughout most of the 19th Century, we were an Independent Kingdom of Hawaii. In the 1890s, the US Navy took over the Islands, and put Queen Lili’oukaliani into house arrest and abused her. Shortly after, our Islands became US Territory. Sometimes…I feel that things would have turned out better if the US did not interfere with our affairs.
I seriously doubt you don’t have your own destiny. Even within the federal system, each state has their own constitution, and can make their own laws. There are inalienable rights that the US Constitution protects, and I haven’t seen anyone say they were a bad idea. Sure some are trying to chip away at them but they will not stand up and say they are wrong.
Now about how life would be better without the Hawaii being apart of the US as a state or territory: I think you miss the development or economic gain you received by being a part of the Union. Singapore, as an example, exists smack in the middle of trade routs. I would suspect you wouldn’t have this potential by yourselves.
However with that said, Hawaii, looking at all historical aspects most likely would not exist as an independent state. Regardless of US involvement. You would either be part of another nation, like Japan, or other island group, maybe as capital, or as subject. Hawaii is so remote, it’s hard to tell.
Trying to second guess what could have been, is not healthy.
Between you and me, I have visited Hawaii twice. I am proud of its membership with the US, and it adds a lot of culture. I respect Hawaiian tradition, and history.
Hawaii, is what it is. Before statehood, it was already a mixed society.
Hawaii is in a strategically important location in the Pacific for imperialist superpowers. Just be grateful you’re not in Vietnam or Korea – those guys have a really rough history of imperialist meddling.
What a useless response to a good post. Cupertino Joe – just add a ‘k’ and you have your real name…
“You are the joke”. Says the person who constantly spreads FUD about Apple on these boards. At first, i agreed with you on some things, such as iOS 7’s questionable design choices, but lately, you have been sounding like a butthurt Fandroid troll. Go back to Android Authority where you will be a lot more happier.
Why not rate or identify leaky apps and warn others about them. Since this data is being freely shelled out by these apps, the fault on this one is not the NSA, but the app developer itself. If I knew Angry Birds was leaky, I would never have played it in the first place. Also there should be laws against obtaining information about a person, if they are not directly asked. Laws don’t stop people from breaking them, but they offer recourse when abuse is discovered. We need more accountability.
i wonder…. maybe we are looking at this all wrong… we are all rightly outraged about this snooping by the feds, and we keep thinking about how to cut it back or stop it – as if that will ever happen
so maybe the other alternative is to flood them with useless information and overload their capacity to store and process it – like maybe include keywords that will set their hair on fire in all of your emails – no doubt mr snowden could tell us those are – and just have all of our communications become a firehose of info they cannot handle.
nsa/cia/dia and others have already been pickeling in the brine of suspicion since 9/11 lets overload them with stimuli
I thought about that. We as humans are really good at filtering out noise. Computers over time will get better. So as much as we overwhelm the system to make us less noticeable, ultimately we won’t be able hide behind that.
We can find planets despite all the gas and stars. We can do this because we have learned to infer them and filter out the rest of the universe.
Maybe there is no solution. But like I was thinking, there needs to be recourse, at the minimum.
Bravo MDN for a great Reagan quote!
As for Rovio:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/28/angry-birds-rovio-respond-nsa-spying-revelations
Angry Birds firm calls for industry to respond to NSA spying revelations
• Rovio rethinks relationship with ad platforms
• CEO tells users it was not complicit in surveillance
• ‘We do not collaborate or share data with spy agencies’
So what that article is trying to say is, that Rovio my now only develop for iOS because they don’t trust the other companies platforms? If that is the case, then that is a smart move on them. Besides, you can always find “Angry Birds” knockoffs in the Play Store. If you can find iOS 7 knockoff skins in that store, then there is no problem finding a game that looks exactly, but not quite like, Angry Birds. People who knowingly buy knockoff tablets/phones deserve poor quality games.
The bottom line in all the NSA spying is this:
1- It is unconstitutional despite faked up “secret” law designed to keep politicians out of jail.
2- It defies the very foundational principles of privacy our founders though so important they were made conditions of approval for the Constitution that organizes our government and legal system.
3- Not one terrorist incident has been thwarted by this worldwide dragnet despite vague claims by politicians with an interest in claiming otherwise. Both the Congressional and Presidential boards looking at this said the NSA programs need to stop.
Flipboard on all of this for those interested:
http://flip.it/Q4une
This mass information gathering may very well be counter-productive. There is some research that implies that you are actually less likely to detect a threat if you are buried in a ton of information gathered from everywhere and everything. Actual threats can be undetectable in all the noise.
——RM