A media report said yesterday that the US National Security Agency developed plans to hack into data links to app stores operated by Google and Samsung to plant spyware on smartphones.
The online news site The Intercept said US intelligence developed the plan with allies in Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, a group known as the “Five Eyes” alliance.
The report, based on a document leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, said the plan aimed to step up surveillance efforts on smartphones.
The plan appeared to have been discussed at meetings involving the intelligence services in 2011 and 2012, according to the classified document.
The project called “Irritant Horn” would allow the agencies to hijack data connections to app stores and surreptitiously implant malicious software on smartphones that would allow for data to be harvested.
The intelligence agencies could also use the spyware to send misinformation to targets to confuse potential adversaries, according to the report.
Now that the US House has voted to reform the government’s sweeping telephone surveillance programme, the Senate should quickly do the same. It’s a first step in a long overdue examination of government snooping on Americans.
A determination to keep the country safe from the growing threat of terrorism produced the excesses of the NSA. In the process, the agency not only violated the nation’s fundamental sense of privacy, but it also resorted to methods deemed illegal by a federal appellate court earlier this month.
The reform bill does not contain all the safeguards that privacy advocates want, but it’s a start. It prohibits the NSA’s bulk collection of “metadata,” which charts all the telephone calls made by Americans. Removing the government’s authority to collect the records is a plus, although the bill stops short of denying the information to the government.
If it becomes law, as it should - it has the support of the Obama administration and some of the most conservative members of Congress - the information would be put in the hands of the private sector, most likely telecommunication firms like AT&T and Verizon.
Spy and law-enforcement agencies such as the FBI could then request the data relevant to an investigation - if they get the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which conducts most of its business in secret.
For privacy advocates, this change is hardly reassuring. The FISA Court, as it’s known, has been a pushover for the government, rarely denying its aggressive efforts to obtain telecommunications data. One reason for this is that the government presents its case in secret and without the court hearing opposing views. This departure from standard judicial procedure is one of the fundamental flaws of the legislation involving the secret court, but that is an argument - and a reform - for another day.
The collection of the data itself represents the most startling departure from standard protections against government intrusion. The government sweeps of metadata constitute a “general warrant” - arguably, a violation of the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable search and seizure and the probable-cause standard required in criminal cases.
