Even Angry Birds are guns in the hands of spies ?!
Under their agreement with the U.S. government, leading Internet companies may in the future disclose the extent to which they have been asked to provide information about their customers as part of a national security investigation.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced Monday that it has agreed to do so under the leadership of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook and LinkedIn. The companies sued to be able to inform their customers about regulatory inquiries. With the permission of the Foreign Intelligence Oversight Court (FISC), the range of companies involved in the agreement will be expanded. Apple said Monday that in the first half of 2013, it received 249 reporting orders from FISC for fewer than 249 customers.
Justice Secretary Eric Holder and Eric Clapper, director of National Intelligence (DNI), which brings together 16 U.S. secret services, said information about the magnitude of data requested from the companies involved could only be released with a six-month delay.
The U.S. NSA and UK GCHQ are also reported to have observed the Angry Birds game app written for smartphones. From this, the two intelligence services collected information on, among other things, the players' age, gender, sexual orientation and marital status. A spokesman for Rovio, the company that developed the application, said the company was unaware of the espionage.
(MTI)
