当心“愤怒的小鸟”：英美利用手机程序搜集情报_时事

当心“愤怒的小鸟”：英美利用手机程序搜集情报

The NSA and its British counterpart are tapping popular smartphone apps such as Angry Birds to peek into the tremendous amounts of very personal data those bits of software collect -- including age, location, sex and even sexual preferences, according to new reports from the New York Times and The Guardian.

Citing confidential documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the reports detail efforts to supplement data collection from cell phone carriers and smartphones by tapping into “leaky” apps themselves.

“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,” the Guardian said.

That information can come from a user profile, which may contain martial status -- options included "single," "married," "divorced," "swinger" and more, the report said.

Both spy agencies showed a particular interest in Google Maps, which is accurate to within a few yards or better in some locations and would clearly pass along data about a phone owner's whereabouts.

“It effectively means that anyone using Google Maps on a smartphone is working in support of a GCHQ system,” reads a secret 2008 report by the NSA's sister spy agency, according to the New York Times.

More surprising is the wide range of apps that the agencies cull for data, including innocent-seeming apps such as Angry Birds. One document in particular from GCHQ listed what information can be extracted from which apps, citing Android apps but suggesting the same data was available from the iPhone platform.