Rovio Denies Knowledge of NSA Access, Angry Birds Website Defaced Anyway 71
Nerval's Lobster writes "Rovio Entertainment, the software company behind Angry Birds, denies that it knowingly shares data with the NSA, Britain's GCHQ, or any other national intelligence agency. But that didn't stop hackers from briefly defacing the Angry Birds website with an NSA logo and the title
'Spying Birds.' Rovio's troubles began with a New York Times article that suggested the NSA and GCHQ had installed backdoors in popular apps such as Angry Birds, allowing the agencies to siphon up enormous amounts of user data. The Times drew its information from government whistleblower Edward Snowden, who has leaked hundreds of pages of top-secret documents related to NSA activities over the past few months. 'The alleged surveillance may be conducted through third party advertising networks used by millions of commercial web sites and mobile applications across all industries,' Rovio wrote in a statement on its website. 'If advertising networks are indeed targeted, it would appear that no Internet-enabled device that visits ad-enabled web sites or uses ad-enabled applications is immune to such surveillance.' The company pledged to evaluate its relationships with those ad networks. The controversy is unlikely to dampen enthusiasm for the Angry Birds franchise, which has enjoyed hundreds of millions of downloads across a multitude of platforms. It could, however, add momentum to continuing discussions about the NSA's reach into peoples' lives."
Liar, liar pants on fire! (Score:4, Insightful)
Companies like Google, Microsoft, Rovio Entertainment, Facebook, and others remind me of that Clapper idiot.
Vigilantism Hackers (Score:5, Insightful)
It always bothers me when I see comments like "But that didn't stop hackers from briefly defacing the Angry Birds website with an NSA logo and the title 'Spying Birds.' ".
Did they install the backdoor software knowingly? Does it even have it, or is Snowden's reports wrong? Do they deserve some level of punishment at all? These hackers do not know, but they take some comment from the NYT and use that as justification to target someone for punishment. This is the exact reason we have a legal system and outlaw vigilantism; while our legal system is annoyingly frustrating, this kind of vigilante anarchy is not better.
Re:Liar, liar pants on fire! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, there are numerous parties we can blame here. Certainly the NSA, but what about the advertising companies? They build leaky software, and they make their money by harvesting information you don't know you're sending or don't wish to be sending to them anyway.
Shouldn't these fly by night outfits that serve ads on the internet and trade in your personal information have some responsibility to protect it?
Re:Liar, liar pants on fire! (Score:5, Insightful)
I think if I read the original news articles correctly, you are spot on. NSA did not compromise Angry Birds. They however did spy on the marketing info the program 3rd party advertising returned. This 3rd party info was intercepted. Block all advertising and this may have been a non issue.
Free app.. Supported by 3rd party adverts .. Advert demographics information scrapped on the way back through governemtnt internet checkpoints.
Re:Liar, liar pants on fire! (Score:4, Insightful)
Until Google has a weaponized drone fleet and Microsoft can send you to prison for decades, this corporations-are-as-bad-as-government meme is total horseshit.