CIA Allegedly Hacking into Our Phones, Cars, and Televisions

Summary: Wikileaks has released a report that the CIA is now hacking into our personal devices to spy on us.

It’s not just a concept seen in spy movies. The U.S. government can actually use our every day devices such as our televisions and smart phones to watch us. According to Wikileaks, the CIA has been exploiting this technology to bypass the recent wave of heightened encryption.

On Tuesday, Wikileaks released documents that said the CIA has been hacking into our personal technology, including our internet-connected cars, to spy on us. These unverified papers say that the CIA is capable of recording sound, images, our text messages, and can bypass encrypted apps.

An even scarier revelation, however, is that the CIA could actually kill us by using the internet capabilities of our cars to control the vehicle system and conduct “nearly undetectable assassinations.”

The revelations released on Tuesday have slight differences from what former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden released in 2013. According to The Washington Post, Snowden’s documents described CIA surveillance of internet-based communication systems, not individual devices. By targeting devices, the Central Intelligence Agency can gain access to apps such as WhatsApp without having to hack the apps’ encryption. In essence, the CIA is bypassing encryption, not defeating it.

The government’s common defense of their breach of privacy is national security. The government has already complained that heightened encryption undermines their investigation into dangerous crimes such as child pornography and terrorism.

Privacy advocates have said that these new Wikileaks claims should increase the pressure on companies to make their devices safer.