There is literally not one form of digital communication or entertainment that the NSA won’t use to look at your private information: Even the mobile game Angry Birds is subject to the watchful eye of Big Brother. According to a new batch of leaked documents from former contractor Edward Snowden, the NSA and a British spy agency would regularly utilize “leaky” mobile apps to find out personal information about users—everything from your age, model of phone, location, gender and marital status was evidently of interest to them. According to the report, the wildly popular Angry Birds, which utilizes a mobile ad network software to transmit private user data, was one of their favorites. Chillingly, when asked about the NSA extracting information from people’s iPhone and Android apps, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney laughed. Carney then reassured reporters that they are only interested in gathering information on “foreign intelligence targets” (you know, the kinds that play Angry Birds) not ordinary Americans. If George Orwell could have imagined a game like Angry Birds, even he wouldn’t be able to fathom that such a source of whimsical pig-crushing fun would be part of a sinister, 1984-like spying plot …
