Rovio Denies Knowledge of NSA Access, Angry Birds Website Defaced Anyway

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."

Re:New York Times to be beaten with wet noodle

[GT66]

Did Rovio use a system already identified as being fraught with privacy concerns? Yes. And as long as it made them money, they didn't pay more than lip service to the issues (just like all the other companies built on Google's system - so don't I'm raging on just Rovio).

It has long been established legal reasoning that people benefiting from an illegality are complicit in that illegality. I consider it hypocritical for Rovio or any other developer to simply say, "Hey, it wasn't us, we just used and profited from the system." Rovio made a choice, at the least they can stand up and show some integrity and tell us they knew this system was bad but they were more interested in the money. At least then I can respect them for being forthright. As it is though, they're as dirty as the rest and liars to boot.

Re:Vigilantism Hackers

[sl4shd0rk]

is Snowden's reports wrong?

RTFA... Snowden's released [PDF] documents [amazonaws.com] says nothing specific about what apps were targeted. Don't make it sound like he's to blame.