NSA planned to hijack app stores to spy on users

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NSA planned to hijack app stores to spy on users
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On the heels of Sen. Rand Paul's 10-hour semi-filibuster to protest the Patriot Act and National Security Agency (NSA) mass surveillance, The Intercept reports that the NSA intended to use the Google and Samsung app stores to infiltrate users' phones for mass surveillance purposes.

This new revelation comes from a document freshly released by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The hijacking plan was a portion of a program called "Irritant Horn," and the goal was to enable the agency to install hidden software on smartphones to secretly broadcast data back to the NSA.

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Bonnie Kristian
Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.