Slashdot Mirror
NSA Can Spy On Data From Smart Phones, Including Blackberry
An anonymous reader writes with a report from Spiegel Online that the U.S. government "has the capability of tapping user data from the iPhone, [and] devices using Android as well as BlackBerry, a system previously believed to be highly secure.
The United States' National Security Agency intelligence-gathering operation is capable of accessing user data from smart phones from all leading manufacturers. ... The documents state that it is possible for the NSA to tap most sensitive data held on these smart phones, including contact lists, SMS traffic, notes and location information about where a user has been." As a bonus, the same reader points out a Washington Post report according to which "The Obama administration secretly won permission from a surveillance court in 2011 to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency's use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans' communications in its massive databases ... In addition, the court extended the length of time that the NSA is allowed to retain intercepted U.S. communications from five years to six years — and more under special circumstances, according to the documents, which include a recently released 2011 opinion by U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, then chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court."
Phones are connected to networks. Government agencies by definition have the ability to issue warrants to get the network provider to turn over all data that passes through their network. Every government on the planet does this and has since the invention of the telephone. It's called a wiretap and the logic was extended for text and other data.
The network provider owns the network. Through the use of warrants the government owns the network provider. When you own the network you own all of the data going over it. With devices that perform MITM on the fly your encryption is useless unless you exchanged the key offline ahead of time. These devices have been sold for government and corporate use for many years.
The idea that anyone has ever had privacy on their mobile is a myth that has never had any basis in reality. You want a secure phone that your favorite government bad guy can't get into? Go to the store, buy your favorite phone and leave it in the package.
What amazes me is that there have been no reprisals so far. Not by the US citizens, by US courts nor by other countries. Folks who actually live in the US, please tell me: are people really just shrugging it off or am I just not seeing the repercussions from here?
What do you mean?
I have my guns, big screen TV, sports package, beer, pizza, and of course church! I wish Libtards would STFU and just be grateful they live in the most free and greatest nation on Earth!
Secret oversight can't be trusted, and anyone who thought it could be trusted was a moron.
Public votes and open hearings on specific "secret" intelligence programs means they aren't secret anymore, which means they aren't likely to work.
Try holding a public referendum on pay increases for organized crime informants by name to see how that works.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell