NSA denies Facebook snooping
An article that accused the National Security Agency of impersonating Facebook to spy on U.S. citizens has triggered a denial from the NSA and a reprimand for the U.S. president from CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
The article, which also said the NSA plans to infect millions of PCs with malware, appeared on the website First Look and was co-written by Glenn Greenwald, who shot to prominence last year for a series of articles in the Guardian about classified NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden.
“In some cases the NSA has masqueraded as a fake Facebook server, using the social media site as a launching pad to infect a target’s computer and exfiltrate files from a hard drive,” the article states, citing leaked documents. “In others, it has sent out spam emails laced with the malware, which can be tailored to covertly record audio from a computer’s microphone and take snapshots with its webcam.” On Thursday, the NSA issued a sharp rebuke.
