{"id":52966,"date":"2015-01-26T12:00:39","date_gmt":"2015-01-26T12:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=52966"},"modified":"2023-06-20T06:04:09","modified_gmt":"2023-06-20T05:04:09","slug":"snowden-iphones-have-secret-spyware-that-lets-govts-monitor-unsuspecting-users","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/01\/snowden-iphones-have-secret-spyware-that-lets-govts-monitor-unsuspecting-users\/","title":{"rendered":"Snowden: iPhones Have Secret Spyware That Lets Govt&#8217;s Monitor Unsuspecting Users"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>The NSA whistleblower&#8217;s lawyer says the secret software can be remotely activated to watch the user.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Jan 21, 2015 <\/em>&#8211; The iPhone has secret spyware that lets governments watch users without their knowledge, according to Edward Snowden.<\/p>\n<p>The NSA whistleblower doesn\u2019t use a phone because of the secret software, which Snowden\u2019s lawyer says can be remotely activated to watch the user.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Edward never uses an iPhone, he\u2019s got a simple phone,&#8221; Anatoly Kucherena told Russian news agency RIA Novosti. &#8220;The iPhone has special software that can activate itself without the owner having to press a button and gather information about him, that\u2019s why on security grounds he refused to have this phone.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Apple has been active in making the iPhone harder for security services to spy on, and the company said that\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/life-style\/gadgets-and-tech\/apples-ios-8-update-will-make-it-impossible-for-police-to-scrape-data-off-your-iphone-9741331.html\" >iOS 8 made it impossible for law enforcement to extract users\u2019 personal data<\/a>, even if they have a warrant. The company has also been active in campaigning for privacy reform after the Snowden revelations,<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/life-style\/gadgets-and-tech\/news\/facebook-apple-google-push-us-government-to-back-privacy-reform-9865871.html\" >joining with Facebook and Google to call for changes to the law<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But recently published files from the NSA showed that British agency GCHQ used the phones UDIDs \u2014 the unique identifier that each iPhone has \u2014 to track users. While there doesn\u2019t seem to be any mention of such spying software in any of the revelations so far, a range of documents are thought to be still unpublished.<\/p>\n<p>Snowden opts not to use the phone for professional reasons, but Kucherena said that whether or not to use one was a personal choice,\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/sputniknews.com\/art_living\/20150119\/1017099963.html\" >Sputnik News reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.alternet.org\/news-amp-politics\/snowden-iphones-have-secret-spyware-lets-govts-monitor-unsuspecting-users\" >Go to Original \u2013 alternet.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Edward never uses an iPhone, he\u2019s got a simple phone,&#8221; his lawyer said. &#8220;The iPhone has special software that can activate itself and gather information about users, that\u2019s why on security grounds he refused to have this phone.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[216,3078],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","category-artificial-intelligence-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52966"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":237713,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52966\/revisions\/237713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}