NSA and GCHQ developing capabilities to piggyback on data from apps including Angry Birds
NSA and GCHQ target 'leaky' phone apps like Angry Birds to scoop user data
• US and UK spy agencies piggyback on commercial data • Details can include age, location and sexual orientation • Documents also reveal targeted tools against individual phones
GCHQ documents use Angry Birds – reportedly downloaded more than 1.7bn times – as a case study for app data collection.
The National Security Agency and its UK counterpart GCHQ
have been developing capabilities to take advantage of "leaky"
smartphone apps, such as the wildly popular Angry Birds game, that
transmit users' private information across the internet, according to
top secret documents.
The data pouring onto communication
networks from the new generation of iPhone and Android apps ranges from
phone model and screen size to personal details such as age, gender and
location. 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.
Many smartphone owners will be
unaware of the full extent this information is being shared across the
internet, and even the most sophisticated would be unlikely to realise
that all of it is available for the spy agencies to collect.
Dozens of classified documents, provided to the Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden and reported in partnership with the New York Times and ProPublica, detail the NSA and GCHQ efforts to piggyback on this commercial data collection for their own purposes.
Scooping
up information the apps are sending about their users allows the
agencies to collect large quantities of mobile phone data from their
existing mass surveillance tools – such as cable taps, or from
international mobile networks – rather than solely from hacking into
individual mobile handsets.
Exploiting phone information and
location is a high-priority effort for the intelligence agencies, as
terrorists and other intelligence targets make substantial use of phones
in planning and carrying out their activities, for example by using
phones as triggering devices in conflict zones. The NSA has cumulatively
spent more than $1bn in its phone targeting efforts.
The disclosures also reveal how much the shift towards smartphone browsing could benefit spy agencies' collection efforts. A May 2010 NSA slide on the agency's 'perfect scenario' for obtaining data from mobile apps. Photograph: Guardian
One slide from a May 2010 NSA presentation on getting data from
smartphones – breathlessly titled "Golden Nugget!" – sets out the
agency's "perfect scenario": "Target uploading photo to a social media
site taken with a mobile device. What can we get?"
The question is
answered in the notes to the slide: from that event alone, the agency
said it could obtain a "possible image", email selector, phone, buddy
lists, and "a host of other social working data as well as location".
In
practice, most major social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter,
strip photos of identifying location metadata (known as EXIF data)
before publication. However, depending on when this is done during
upload, such data may still, briefly, be available for collection by the
agencies as it travels across the networks.
Depending on what
profile information a user had supplied, the documents suggested, the
agency would be able to collect almost every key detail of a user's
life: including home country, current location (through geolocation),
age, gender, zip code, martial status – options included "single",
"married", "divorced", "swinger" and more – income, ethnicity, sexual
orientation, education level, and number of children.
The agencies
also made use of their mobile interception capabilities to collect
location information in bulk, from Google and other mapping apps. One
basic effort by GCHQ and the NSA was to build a database geolocating
every mobile phone mast in the world – meaning that just by taking tower
ID from a handset, location information could be gleaned.
A more
sophisticated effort, though, relied on intercepting Google Maps queries
made on smartphones, and using them to collect large volumes of
location information.
So successful was this effort that one 2008
document noted that "[i]t effectively means that anyone using Google
Maps on a smartphone is working in support of a GCHQ system."
The
information generated by each app is chosen by its developers, or by the
company that delivers an app's adverts. The documents do not detail
whether the agencies actually collect the potentially sensitive details
some apps are capable of storing or transmitting, but any such
information would likely qualify as content, rather than metadata.
Data
collected from smartphone apps is subject to the same laws and
minimisation procedures as all other NSA activity – procedures that
the US president, Barack Obama, suggested may be subject to reform in a speech 10 days ago.
But the president focused largely on the NSA's collection of the
metadata from US phone calls and made no mention in his address of the
large amounts of data the agency collects from smartphone apps.
The
latest disclosures could also add to mounting public concern about how
the technology sector collects and uses information, especially for
those outside the US, who enjoy fewer privacy protections than
Americans. A January poll for the Washington Post showed 69% of US
adults were already concerned about how tech companies such as Google
used and stored their information.
The documents do not make it
clear how much of the information that can be taken from apps is
routinely collected, stored or searched, nor how many users may be
affected. The NSA says it does not target Americans and its capabilities
are deployed only against "valid foreign intelligence targets".
The
documents do set out in great detail exactly how much information can
be collected from widely popular apps. One document held on GCHQ's
internal Wikipedia-style guide for staff details what can be collected
from different apps. Though it uses Android apps for most of its
examples, it suggests much of the same data could be taken from
equivalent apps on iPhone or other platforms.
The GCHQ documents
set out examples of what information can be extracted from different ad
platforms, using perhaps the most popular mobile phone game of all time,
Angry Birds – which has reportedly been downloaded more than 1.7bn
times – as a case study.
From some app platforms, relatively
limited, but identifying, information such as exact handset model, the
unique ID of the handset, software version, and similar details are all
that are transmitted.
Other apps choose to transmit much more
data, meaning the agency could potentially net far more. One mobile ad
platform, Millennial Media, appeared to offer particularly rich
information. Millennial Media's website states it has partnered with
Rovio on a special edition of Angry Birds; with Farmville maker Zynga;
with Call of Duty developer Activision, and many other major franchises.
Rovio,
the maker of Angry Birds, said it had no knowledge of any NSA or GCHQ
programs looking to extract data from its apps users.
"Rovio
doesn't have any previous knowledge of this matter, and have not been
aware of such activity in 3rd party advertising networks," said Saara
Bergström, Rovio's VP of marketing and communications. "Nor do we have
any involvement with the organizations you mentioned [NSA and GCHQ]."
Millennial Media did not respond to a request for comment.
In December, the Washington Post reported on
how the NSA could make use of advertising tracking files generated
through normal internet browsing – known as cookies – from Google and
others to get information on potential targets.
However, the
richer personal data available to many apps, coupled with real-time
geolocation, and the uniquely identifying handset information many apps
transmit give the agencies a far richer data source than conventional
web-tracking cookies.
Almost every major website uses cookies to
serve targeted advertising and content, as well as streamline the
experience for the user, for example by managing logins. One GCHQ
document from 2010 notes that cookie data – which generally qualifies as
metadata – has become just as important to the spies. In fact, the
agencies were sweeping it up in such high volumes that their were
struggling to store it.
"They are gathered in bulk, and are currently our single largest type of events," the document stated.
The
ability to obtain targeted intelligence by hacking individual handsets
has been well documented, both through several years of hacker
conferences and previous NSA disclosures in Der Spiegel, and both the NSA and GCHQ have extensive tools ready to deploy against iPhone, Android and other phone platforms.
GCHQ's
targeted tools against individual smartphones are named after
characters in the TV series The Smurfs. An ability to make the phone's
microphone 'hot', to listen in to conversations, is named "Nosey Smurf".
High-precision geolocation is called "Tracker Smurf", power management –
an ability to stealthily activate an a phone that is apparently turned
off – is "Dreamy Smurf", while the spyware's self-hiding capabilities
are codenamed "Paranoid Smurf".
Those capability names are set out
in a much broader 2010 presentation that sheds light on spy agencies'
aspirations for mobile phone interception, and that less-documented
mass-collection abilities.
The cover sheet of the document sets out the team's aspirations: The cover slide for a May 2010 GCHQ presentation on mobile phone data interception. Photograph: Guardian
Another slide details weak spots in where data flows from mobile
phone network providers to the wider internet, where the agency attempts
to intercept communications. These are locations either within a
particular network, or international roaming exchanges (known as GRXs),
where data from travellers roaming outside their home country is routed. While GCHQ uses Android apps for most of its
examples, it suggests much of the same data could be taken from iPhone
apps. Photograph: GuardianGCHQ's targeted tools against individual
smartphones are named after characters in the TV series The Smurfs.
Photograph: Guardian
These are particularly useful to the agency as data is often only
weakly encrypted on such networks, and includes extra information such
as handset ID or mobile number – much stronger target identifiers than
usual IP addresses or similar information left behind when PCs and
laptops browse the internet.
The NSA said its phone interception
techniques are only used against valid targets, and are subject to
stringent legal safeguards.
"The communications of people who are
not valid foreign intelligence targets are not of interest to the
National Security Agency," said a spokeswoman in a statement.
"Any
implication that NSA's foreign intelligence collection is focused on
the smartphone or social media communications of everyday Americans is
not true. Moreover, NSA does not profile everyday Americans as it
carries out its foreign intelligence mission. We collect only those
communications that we are authorized by law to collect for valid
foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes – regardless of
the technical means used by the targets.
"Because some data of US
persons may at times be incidentally collected in NSA's lawful foreign
intelligence mission, privacy protections for US persons exist across
the entire process concerning the use, handling, retention, and
dissemination of data. In addition, NSA actively works to remove
extraneous data, to include that of innocent foreign citizens, as early
as possible in the process.
"Continuous and selective publication
of specific techniques and tools lawfully used by NSA to pursue
legitimate foreign intelligence targets is detrimental to the security
of the United States and our allies – and places at risk those we are
sworn to protect."
The NSA declined to respond to a series of
queries on how routinely capabilities against apps were deployed, or on
the specific minimisation procedures used to prevent US citizens'
information being stored through such measures.
GCHQ declined to
comment on any of its specific programs, but stressed all of its
activities were proportional and complied with UK law.
"It is a longstanding policy that we do not comment on intelligence matters," said a spokesman.
"Furthermore,
all of GCHQ's work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and
policy framework that ensures that our activities are authorised,
necessary and proportionate, and that there is rigorous oversight,
including from the Secretary of State, the Interception and Intelligence
Services Commissioners and the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security
Committee. All our operational processes rigorously support this
position." COPY http://www.theguardian.com/uk
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