Ride the Lightning
Cybersecurity and Future of Law Practice Blog
by Sharon D. Nelson Esq., President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
The NSA Has Infiltrated . . . Wait for It . . . Angry Birds!
January 30, 2014
I read the original story in the Guardian and was rocked on my heels a bit. Seriously, Angry Birds?
I have a warm feeling for Angry Birds – several years ago, I endured three knee surgeries and a staph infection over the course of six months. There was a lot I could not do, but a friend recommended Angry Birds as a distraction and I devoted myself cheerfully to the global elimination of pigs.
It is not just the NSA which is collecting geolocation data, age, gender, address books, buddy lists, telephone logs and other pieces of information from “leaky” mobile apps like Angry Birds. Its UK counterpart, the GCHQ, is doing the same thing. Virtually all of our apps contain data apparently being scooped up by the NSA and the GCHQ. I know I am always asking rhetorically, "Why does this app need these permissions?" They want them for their own commercial purposes – but so do the government spies among us.
Yesterday, the official Angry Birds website was defaced by hackers with this "Spying Birds" image – note the NSA logo:
Apparently, the new mantra is "What does the NSA want to know? There's an app for that."
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