New leaked documents from the National Security Agency reveal that it operates an iPhone backdoor surveillance program that allows officials to snoop through virtually any communication sent or received using an Apple product.
The new documents,
obtained by German news magazine Der Spiegel as per The Daily Dot, detail the program called "DROPOUTJEEP," in which the NSA can "intercept SMS messages, access contact lists, locate a phone using cell tower data, and even activate the device's microphone and camera."
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It appears that the NSA needs physical access to the iPhone devices in order to implant the spyware, and the documents suggest that the agency does this by rerouting online orders.
Security researcher Jacob Appelbaum detailed the iPhone backdoor surveillance program this week at the Chaos Communication Conference in Hamburg, Germany. He alluded that Apple is in on the program.
"Either [the NSA] have a huge collection of exploits that work against Apple products, meaning they are hoarding information about critical systems that American companies produce, and sabotaging them, or Apple sabotaged it themselves," he said
This isn’t the first time the NSA has been suspected of spying on iPhones. Some of the documents leaked by Edward Snowden over the summer referred to Apple's
Steve Jobs as "Big Brother" and iPhone users as "zombies," according to Business Insider.
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