NSA planned to hijack Google Play and place spyware on Android phones

‘We already know a lot about the illegal and unconstitutional National Security Agency (NSA) spy programs, thanks in great part to Edward Snowden’s efforts, but now there is proof of activities on the part of the agency that go beyond what anyone imagined the NSA would ever contemplate.

It has been revealed that the now notorious (but still in operation) spy agency had plans to hijack app stores with the aim of infecting smartphones with spyware. The complicated high-tech methods for doing so would also have given the NSA the ability to send disinformation to the infected phones, which apparently would be done in order to disrupt the actions of protesters and other citizen movements the agency deemed a threat.

These new details of the agency’s program — codenamed Irritant Horn — were revealed in a report published by Canada’s CBC and Glen Greenwald’s The Intercept news site.’

Read more: NSA planned to hijack Google Play and place spyware on Android phones