28/01/2014 17:20
Spy agencies interested in sexual orientation of smartphone owners
US and UK intelligence agencies were jointly collecting personal data via smartphone application programs, reports New York Times with reference to new Edward Snowden’s documents, according to the Voice of Russia.
The data that was obtained allowed intelligence agencies to determine the location, age, gender and other data of the users.
Already in 2007, the NSA and the British Government Communications Center were able to hack into dozens of applications, states the document.
Since then, they have learned to get access to the address book, the "friends" lists in social networks, data about calls and geographical markers through popular applications such as mobile versions of Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn and Twitter. They also hacked such popular games for smartphones as Angry Birds.
Among the information that intelligence agencies were interested in was, in particular, political and sexual orientation of users, the newspaper notes, citing a secret British intelligence document from 2012.
Spy agencies were particularly interested in a program Google Maps. Back in 2008, a secret report of the Government Communications stated that anyone who uses Google Maps on smartphones, supports surveillance system deployed by the secret service.
NSA representative said that the secret service does not follow the ordinary Americans during intelligence operations abroad. British Government Communications Center declined to comment on new Snowden’s revelations, but said that it was acting in accordance with the British law.
Collected database of security services were compared with lists of people who are interested in intelligence. Thus, analysis of the database collected by British intelligence services for the three months confirmed that 24.7 million people were regarded as potential targets for exploration. At the same time, there is no evidence of any suspicious activity from these people.