NSA, GCHQ tapped Angry Birds, Google Maps to gather user data

The US National Security Agency (NSA) and the UK's Government Communications HQ (GCHQ) have been tapping and mapping gaming and social network apps to tap location information as also details including political affiliation or sexual orientation, documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden indicate.

According to reports in The New York Times, The Guardian and ProPublica, the joint spying programme "effectively means that anyone using Google Maps on a smartphone is working in support of a GCHQ system".

The NSA said in a statement that the communications of those who were not "valid foreign intelligence targets" were not of interest.

It added, "Any implication that NSA's foreign intelligence collection is focused on the smartphone or social media communications of everyday Americans is not true.

"We collect only those communications that we are authorised by law to collect for valid foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes - regardless of the technical means used by the targets."

GCHQ maintaining that it did not comment on intelligence matters, insisted all of its activities were "authorised, necessary and proportionate".

The New York Times said, a 2012 British intelligence report outlined how users' information could be extracted from phones using the Android operating system.

A slide from a 2010 presentation by the NSA revealed information about a project, called Golden Nugget, for data extraction from phones.

Responding to queries about the latest revelation from Snowden, White House press secretary Jay Carney said the Obama administration was focused only on intelligence targets - but neither confirmed nor denied the use of the tactic.

''We are not interested in the communications of people who are not valid for intelligence targets, and we are not after the information of ordinary Americans,'' he said.

However, defending the use of high-tech surveillance Carney said, terrorists, proliferators, other bad actors used the same communication tools that others use.

According to the UK's Guardian newspaper, one app mentioned as a possible target in the documents allowed users to categorise themselves as ''single,'' ''married,'' or ''swinger.''

The Finnish company Rovio, which owns  ''Angry Birds,'' denied any knowledge about spying.

The documents did not state the extent of the intrusions by the agencies into the app.

In another development yesterday, top internet companies and the feds reached an agreement allowing the companies to reveal how often they were ordered by the government to turn over information about customers.