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USA-NSA (UK-GCHQ): iSpy: How the NSA Accesses Smartphone Data

18 October 2014

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"The mini-computers have become personal communication centers, digital assistants and life coaches, and they often know more about their users than most users suspect.

For an agency like the NSA, the data storage units are a goldmine, combining in a single device almost all the information that would interest an intelligence agency: social contacts, details about the user's behavior and location, interests (through search terms, for example), photos and sometimes credit card numbers and passwords.... Smartphones, in short, are a wonderful technical innovation, but also a terrific opportunity to spy on people, opening doors that even such a powerful organization as the NSA couldn't look behind until now....

The NSA and its partner agency, Britain's GCHQ, focused with similar intensity on another electronic toy: the BlackBerry."

See the full article: How the NSA Accesses Smartphone Data (Der Spiegel, link)

And see: Lawmakers probing NSA face German secrecy hurdles (Washington Post, link): "German lawmakers probing the NSA following Edward Snowden’s revelations have hit a hurdle: their own government. Officials have refused to hand over dozens of German intelligence documents detailing the extent to which the country’s spy agencies cooperated with their U.S. counterparts."

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