WikiLeaks on Tuesday released thousands of documents that it said described sophisticated software tools used by the Central Intelligence Agency to break into smartphones, computers and even Internet-connected televisions.
If the documents are authentic, as appeared likely at first review, the release would be the latest coup for the anti-secrecy organization and a serious blow to the C.I.A., which maintains its own hacking capabilities to be used for espionage.
The initial release, which WikiLeaks said was only the first part of the document collection, included 7,818 web pages with 943 attachments, the group said. The entire archive of C.I.A. material consists of several hundred million lines of computer code, it said.
Among other disclosures that, if confirmed, would rock the technology world, the WikiLeaks release said that the C.I.A. and allied intelligence services had managed to bypass encryption on popular phone and messaging services such as Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram. According to the statement from WikiLeaks, government hackers can penetrate Android phones and collect “audio and message traffic before encryption is applied.”
Just like with Snowden, none of this bothers me because it doesn't surprise me. I took it for granted that the government can do these things, and we've known Smart TVs are hackable for quite a while now..
Frankly, I'd hope that the CIA can do anything another country's intelligence or an independent hacker can do. The important question is whether or not it abuses those techniques.
Of course, WikiLeaks doesn't care about any of this. WikiLeaks is trying to make the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies look bad in the eyes of the American public in order to try to discredit them while Trump continues the war he's fighting against the intelligence community to cover up his and his associates' ties to Russia.
It just might work. CIA, your move.
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