The NSA is watching you through Angry Birds

The NSA and its British chums across the pond have been using a backdoor in ad-supported mobile apps—specifically, Angry Birds—to mine sensitive data, according to The New York Times. This includes Google Map locations, websites visited, and buddy lists, according to newly declassified documents leaked to the press by Edward Snowden. And you thought you were just flicking a peeved canary dressed as Obi-Wan into a very flimsy Deathstar.

It sucks that government snooping has tainted the beautiful thing that is free mobile games, but it’s not unprecedented. We already knew that the NSA had spies inside of World of Warcraft, which came out in a similar document leak last year. I guess if there is an upside it’s that this speaks to the rising cultural currency of games; they're a medium not just of artistic expression but of communication, as well. Might as well spy on'em, then.