A data dump from WikiLeaks says the CIA can spy on you through your internet-connected Samsung television, which means government spies could know a lot more about you than whether you love Girls. 
 
 Earlier today, WikiLeaks released a trove of documents describing what it calls secret spying and hacking tools developed by the CIA and British intelligence. They include a Fake Off mode inserted into Samsung televisions. If activated, it makes the television appear to be off but keeps the power running so spies can capture audio and possibly video of anything in the room. Samsung has not yet responded to our request for comment. 
 
 It must be noted that the hack, codenamed Weeping Angel (a Doctor Who reference, by the way) applies only to Samsung televisions from 2012 and 2013 that feature outdated firmware versions 1111, 1112, and 1116. The exploit almost certainly impacts relatively few people, and there may be an easy way to tell if you've been hacked—Fake Off mode, as outlined in the 2014 document, leaves a blue LED on the back of the set illuminated. 
 
 Now, the CIA probably created this hack to target specific individuals, and it appears the hack can be loaded onto a television only via a USB firmware update that was recently disabled. So unless you're a known operative, it's unlikely the government compromised your TV. But we're sure you're still curious, so here's how to tell if it's happening: 
 
 The Telltale LED 
 
 In Fake Off mode, the screen appears off and the LEDs on the front of the set change color and dim, as you'd expect if you'd turned off your TV. Yet the TV remains powered and capable of recording conversations. Want to know if Big Brother is listening in? Look at the back of your set. The blue LED back there should be off. It remains illuminated in Fake Off mode, according to the documents WikiLeaks released. 
 
 Which TVs? 
 
 If you've got a Samsung from 2012 or 2013, check to see if you've got one of these models: From 2012: UNES8000F, E8000GF plasma, and UNES7550F. From 2013: UNF8000 series, F8500 plasma, UNF7500 series, and UNF7000 series. To determine your firmware version and to update it, go to the main menu, select Support, then select Software Update. 
 
 It is possible the CIA has updated Fake Off mode to address the telltale LED, and it's possible Samsung changed the LED on subsequent models. But the company acknowledged in 2015 that hackers could compromise the voice-control feature in some sets, and it took steps at the time to patch the problem. 
 
 Be Seeing You 
 
 The companies making internet-connected smart televisions have drawn criticism for collecting and sharing user data. If you want effective protection from unscrupulous companies, shifty hackers, and government spies, simply disconnect your TV from the internet. But if you remain worried, there's only one sure-fire method for preventing that: unplug the TV. ||||| WikiLeaks on Tuesday published a large cache of documents that it said are from the CIA that relate to its hacking tools. An intelligence source confirmed to The Wall Street Journal some of the contents of the documents. The files seem explosive at first glance. Internal CIA files are rarely seen, and WikiLeaks has used them to claim that the agency has "lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal." But some of the claims that WikiLeaks presented along with the documents have been criticized by security researchers as being exaggerated or overblown. WikiLeaks has claimed that secure messaging apps have been broken and that the CIA can hack into iPhones, which have widely been seen as a more secure choice than Android phones. Although the documents themselves are a rare and fascinating possible look into the CIA, there isn't much in there that should worry people for now, security researchers and professionals told Business Insider. Here's what you need to know as an iPhone or iPad user about the WikiLeaks "Vault 7" dump. View As: One Page Slides 
 
 False: The CIA was able to break into Signal and WhatsApp Apps like Signal and WhatsApp are commonly cited as secure messaging apps, meaning the government, companies, or hackers can't intercept messages in transit and read them. That's what security professionals call "end-to-end encryption." If the CIA were able to break into Signal, as several outlets and commentators have claimed, that would be a big deal. Even WikiLeaks is phrasing its claims to make it sound as if this is the case. The good news is that there is no evidence in the WikiLeaks dump that suggests the math that keeps messages secure — called "crypto" — that's behind either WhatsApp or Signal has been broken, as suggested by WikiLeaks. Instead, the claim is more fundamental. If the CIA were able to hack into an end user's iPhone or Android device, then Signal's crypto wouldn't matter. The CIA would be able to read what users are seeing and sending before it was encrypted by the software. If your computer or operating system, such as iOS, is already compromised, it doesn't matter how secure your messaging system is. Basically, the CIA "has some expensive, targeted ways to hack phones, and if your phone is hacked, well, your apps won't save you," Zeynep Tufekci, a New York Times contributor and associate professor at the University of North Carolina School of Information and Library Science, told Business Insider. "If someone is specifically targeted and their phone is running an older version and thus vulnerable to exploitation, no 'secure' apps can protect you because the OS itself is compromised," Will Strafach, the CEO of Sudo Security Group and a security professional with extensive experience in iOS exploits, told Business Insider. Signal's underlying technology remains secure, it says. "End-to-end encryption has pushed intelligence agencies away from undetected and unfettered mass surveillance to where they have to use high-risk and targeted attacks," Moxie Marlinspike, the creator of Signal, told New York magazine. Strafach said, "WikiLeaks has an interest in getting big hype for their leaks, obviously, so it blurs what is and is not a concern." ||||| WikiLeaks says it has a trove on the CIA's hacking secrets. Washington Post national security reporter Greg Miller explains what these documents reveal. (Dalton Bennett,Greg Miller/The Washington Post) 
 
 The latest revelations about the U.S. government’s powerful hacking tools potentially takes surveillance right into the homes and hip pockets of billions of users worldwide, showing how a remarkable variety of everyday devices can be turned to spy on their owners. 
 
 Televisions, smartphones and even anti-virus software are all vulnerable to CIA hacking, according to the WikiLeaks documents released Tuesday. The capabilities described include recording the sounds, images and the private text messages of users, even when they resort to encrypted apps to communicate. 
 
 [WikiLeaks says it has obtained trove of CIA hacking tools] 
 
 While many of the attack technologies had been previously discussed at cybersecurity conferences, experts were startled to see evidence that the CIA had turned so many theoretical vulnerabilities into functioning attack tools against staples of modern life. These include widely used Internet routers, smartphones, and Mac and Windows computers. 
 
 In the case of a tool called “Weeping Angel” for attacking Samsung SmartTVs, WikiLeaks wrote, “After infestation, Weeping Angel places the target TV in a ‘Fake-Off’ mode, so that the owner falsely believes the TV is off when it is on, In ‘Fake-Off’ mode the TV operates as a bug, recording conversations in the room and sending them over the Internet to a covert CIA server.” 
 
 The CIA reportedly also has studied whether it could infect vehicle control systems for cars and trucks, which WikiLeaks alleged could be used to conduct “nearly undetectable assassinations.” 
 
 And a specialized CIA unit called the Mobile Devices Branch produced malware to control and steal information from iPhones, which according to WikiLeaks were a particular focus because of the smartphone’s popularity “among social, political diplomatic and business elites.” The agency also targeted popular phones running Google’s Android, the world’s leading mobile operating system. 
 
 Wikileaks said it redacted lists of CIA surveillance targets, though it said they included targets and machines in Latin America, Europe and the United States. The anti-secrecy group also said that by developing such intrusive technology — rather than helping tech companies patch flaws in their products — the CIA was undermining efforts to protect the cybersecurity of Americans. 
 
 “The argument that there is some terrorist using a Samsung TV somewhere — as a reason to not disclose that vulnerability to the company, when it puts thousands of Americans at risk — I fundamentally disagree with it, “ said Alex Rice, chief technology officer for Hacker One, a start-up that enlists hackers to report security gaps to companies and organizations in exchange for cash. 
 
 [The Trump White House is totally changing its tune on wiretapping and hoping you don’t notice] 
 
 The trove released Tuesday , which The Washington Post could not independently verify and the CIA has declined to confirm, included 8,761 documents that were the first batch of a series of releases that WikiLeaks plans, it said. 
 
 This first group, at least, shows important differences from the 2013 revelations by the National Security Agency’s former contractor Edward Snowden. His trove of documents largely described mass surveillance of Internet-based communications systems, while the WikiLeaks release more often describes attacks on individual devices. 
 
 By targeting devices, the CIA reportedly gains access to even well-encrypted communications, on such popular apps as Signal and WhatsApp, without having to crack the encryption itself. The WikiLeaks reports acknowledged that difference by saying the CIA had found ways to “bypass,” as opposed to defeat, encryption technologies. 
 
 “The idea that the CIA and NSA can hack into devices is kind of old news,” said Johns Hopkins cryptography expert Matthew D. Green. “Anyone who thought they couldn’t was living in a fantasy world.” 
 
 Snowden’s revelations and the backlash made strong encryption a major, well-funded cause for both privacy advocates and, perhaps more importantly, technology companies that had the engineering expertise and budgets to protect data as it flowed across the world. 
 
 Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo and many other companies announced major new initiatives, in part to protect their brands against accusations by some users that they had made it too easy for the NSA to collect information from their systems. Many websites, meanwhile, began encrypting their data flows to users to prevent snooping. Encryption tools such as Tor were strengthened. 
 
 Encrypting apps for private messaging, such as Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp exploded in popularity, especially among users around the world who were fearful of government intrusion. In the days following the U.S. presidential election, Signal was among the most downloaded in Apple’s app store, and downloads grew by more than 300 percent. 
 
 Open Whispers Systems, which developed Signal, released a statement Tuesday, saying, “The CIA/WikiLeaks story today is about getting malware onto phones, none of the exploits are in Signal or break Signal Protocol encryption.” 
 
 WhatsApp declined to comment, and Telegram did not respond to requests for comment. Google declined to comment, while Samsung did not respond to requests for comment. 
 
 “While our initial analysis indicates that many of the issues leaked today were already patched in the latest iOS, we will continue work to rapidly address any identified vulnerabilities. We always urge customers to download the latest iOS to make sure they have the most recent security updates,” Apple spokesman Fred Sainz said in a statement Tuesday. 
 
 [Understanding cyberspace is key to defending against digital attacks] 
 
 U.S. government authorities complained loudly that the post-Snowden wave of encryption was undermining their ability to investigate serious crimes, such as terrorism and child pornography. The FBI in 2016 sued Apple in hopes of forcing it to unlock an iPhone used by the San Bernadino killers before announcing it had other ways to crack the device amid heavy public criticism. 
 
 Against that backdrop, many privacy advocates argued that devices — often called “endpoints” for their place on chains of communications that can crisscross continents — were the best available targets left in a world with widespread online encryption. The WikiLeaks documents suggests that the CIA may have reached the same conclusion. 
 
 “It would certainly be consistent with the hypothesis that we’ve made real progress in the encryption we’ve been introducing,” said Peter Eckersley, technology projects director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based civil liberties group. “It’s impossible to be 100 percent certain, but reading the tea leaves, it’s plausible.” 
 
 The WikiLeaks revelations also will serve as a reminder that, for whatever the political backlash to revelations about digital spying, it is not going away and probably will continue to grow. 
 
 Aside from the United States, many other advanced nations such as China, Russia, Britain and Israel have extremely sophisticated tools for digital spying. Less advanced nations have gained access to powerful online spying technology through a robust and lightly regulated industry of surveillance contractors based throughout the world. 
 
 On Tuesday, resignation and frustration rippled through Silicon Valley as technologists grappled with revelations of yet another U.S. government attempt to exploit their systems. And cybersecurity experts reacted with alarm. 
 
 “This is explosive,” said Jake Williams, founder of Rendition Infosec, a cybersecurity firm. The material highlights specific anti-virus products that can be defeated, going further than a release of NSA hacking tools last year, he said. 
 
 The WikiLeaks release revealed that the CIA has sophisticated “stealth” capabilities that enable hackers not only to infiltrate systems, but evade detection, as well as abilities to move inside a system freely as if they owned it. 
 
 Nicholas Weaver, a computer security researcher at the University of California at Berkeley said the dates in the WikiLeaks files suggest the documents were taken in February or March 2016. At least two of them are marked Top Secret, “which suggests that somebody in early 2016 managed to compromise a Top Secret CIA development system and is willing to say that they did.” 
 
 One internal CIA document listed a set of Apple iPhone “exploits” — or tools that can be used to compromise the device by taking advantage of software flaws. Some of the tools are based on “zero-days,” which are software vulnerabilities that have not been shared with the manufacturer. So “some of these descriptions will allow Apple to fix the vulnerabilities,” Weaver said. “But at the same time, they’re out in the public and whoever stole this data could use them against U.S. interests.” 
 
 Read more: 
 
 How the CIA deceives its own workforce about operations 
 
 NSA contractor charged with stealing top secret data 
 
 How hard is it to get an intelligence wiretap? Pretty hard. 
 
 This pretty blond doll could be spying on your family ||||| Former National Security Agency contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden is working with an MIT Media Lab researcher to build a device to protect journalists’ smartphones from government spies. 
 
 Former National Security Agency contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden is working with an MIT Media Lab researcher to build a device to protect journalists’ smartphones from government spies. 
 
 “Increasingly the tools of their trade are being used against them,” said Snowden during a Thursday conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But the device that he’s designing with Media Lab research affiliate Andrew “Bunnie” Huang, will detect whether a phone is sending or receiving unauthorized radio signals. 
 
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 Snowden, who addressed the symposium via teleconference, has lived in hiding somewhere in Russia since 2013. He fled the United States after revealing a variety of secret surveillance programs that collected information on millions of Americans. 
 
 The simplest way to avoid smartphone snooping is to leave the device at home, or switch it off. But many journalists use their phones to shoot video and still images, record interviews with sources or take notes. So to avoid broadcasting their locations, they can set the phone to “airplane mode,” which is supposed to switch off its cellular, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi radios. 
 
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 But Snowden said it’s possible that spy agencies could infect phones with malware that would leave the radios in operation even when a phone appeared to be in airplane mode. In addition, phone user can deliberately or accidentally switch on Wi-Fi or Bluetooth even in airplane mode. 
 
 The proposed device would eliminate these risks. It would be a plastic sleeve designed to slide over an Apple iPhone 6. The electronics in the device would monitor the phone’s antennas to detect any incoming or outgoing signals from the cellular, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, or NFC radio chips. It would trigger an alarm to warn the user of possible snooping. Because the device is a separate piece of hardware, it would be secure against any effort to hack the phone’s operating system. 
 
 “The technical goal here is to make sure that the radios are really off,” said Huang. “Think of the thing we’re doing as like a designated driver for the phone.” 
 
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 Snowden said that the creation of such a device would make spying less likely because it would increase the risk that an agency would be caught at it. “The NSA, for example, is very nervous about being caught red-handed,” he said. “They don’t want to risk the political impact of being seen targeting groups, like journalists, like American lawyers.... If we can create a track record of unlawful or unethical activity, we can begin creating a framework to overturn a culture of impunity.” 
 
 Snowden’s firsthand experience as a whistleblower may have inspired the project. He worked closely with several news organizations, including the Washington Post and the UK’s Guardian newspaper, to publicize his allegations. One Guardian reporter working on the Snowden story was detained at London’s Heathrow Airport in 2013, and his phone, laptop, and camera were confiscated. 
 
 For now, Snowden’s proposed spy detector exists only on paper. Huang couldn’t say when it would become available, or how much it would cost. ||||| WASHINGTON Moving to tamp down a public uproar spurred by the disclosure of two secret surveillance programs, the nation's top intelligence official is declassifying key details about one of the programs while insisting the efforts to collect Americans' phone records and the U.S. internet use of foreign nationals overseas were legal, limited in scope and necessary to detect terrorist threats. 
 
 Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, in an unusual late-night statement Thursday, denounced the leaks of highly classified documents that revealed the programs and warned that America's security will suffer. He called the disclosure of a program that targets foreigners' Internet use "reprehensible," and said the leak of another program that lets the government collect Americans' phone records would change enemies' behavior and make it harder to understand their intentions. 
 
 "The unauthorized disclosure of a top secret U.S. court document threatens potentially long-lasting and irreversible harm to our ability to identify and respond to the many threats facing our nation," Clapper said of the phone-tracking program. 
 
 It was revealed late Wednesday that the National Security Agency has been collecting the phone records of hundreds of millions of U.S. phone customers. The leaked document first reported by the British newspaper the Guardian gave the NSA authority to collect from all of Verizon's land and mobile customers, but intelligence experts said the program swept up the records of other phone companies too. The possibility of a third secret program letting the NSA tap into credit card transaction records emerged late Thursday in a report in The Wall Street Journal. The White House did not immediately respond to an inquiry about that program. 
 
 At the same time, Clapper offered new information about the phone program and another one that collects the audio, video, email, photographic and Internet search usage of foreign nationals overseas who use any of the nine major Internet providers: AOL Inc., Apple Inc., Facebook Inc., Google Inc., Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc., Skype, YouTube and Paltalk. 
 
 In statements, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo said they only provide the government with user data required under the law. (Google runs YouTube and Microsoft owns Skype.) AOL and Paltalk didn't immediately respond to inquiries from The Associated Press. 
 
 "I believe it is important for the American people to understand the limits of this targeted counterterrorism program and the principles that govern its use," Clapper said. 
 
 Among the previously classified information about the phone records collection that Clapper revealed: 
 
 -The program is conducted under authority granted by Congress and is authorized by the Foreign intelligence Surveillance Court which determines the legality of the program. 
 
 -The government is prohibited from "indiscriminately sifting" through the data acquired. It can only be reviewed "when there is a reasonable suspicion, based on specific facts, that the particular basis for the query is associated with a foreign terrorist organization." He also said only counterterrorism personnel trained in the program may access the records. 
 
 -The information acquired is overseen by the Justice Department and the FISA court. Only a very small fraction of the records are ever reviewed, he said. 
 
 -The program is reviewed every 90 days. 
 
 Miller on secret surveillance: "This is spying business" 
 
 The Obama administration's defense of the two programs came as members of Congress were vowing to change a program they voted to authorize and exasperated civil liberties advocates were crying foul, questioning how President Barack Obama, a former constitutional scholar who sought privacy protections as a U.S. senator, could embrace policies aligned with President George W. Bush, whose approach to national security he had vowed to leave behind. 
 
 "Senator Obama would not have supported this program under President Bush," Rep. RaDul M. Grijalva, D-Ariz., said Friday. "A secretive intelligence agency gathering millions of phone records and using them as it sees fit is the kind of excess many of us warned about after the Patriot Act became law." 
 
 Clapper alleged that articles about the Internet program "contain numerous inaccuracies." He did not specify. 
 
 Senior administration officials defended the programs as critical tools and said the intelligence they yield is among the most valuable data the U.S. collects. Clapper said the Internet program, known as PRISM, can't be used to intentionally target any Americans or anyone in the U.S, and that data accidentally collected about Americans is kept to a minimum. 
 
 But leaders of Congress' intelligence panels dismissed the furor over what they said was standard three-month renewal to a program that's operated for seven years. Committee leaders also said the program recently helped thwart what would have been a significant domestic terrorist attack. 
 
 CBS News senior correspondent John Miller described one such case, though it's unclear if it is the same referenced by lawmakers: 
 
 "Najibullah Zazi is a classic example. ... So on September 6, 2009, around dawn, an e-mail comes from an IP address to another IP address. One of them is nothing we're paying attention to. The other is one that's been flagged as an al Qaeda mail drop that is rarely used. And so when that bell rings, they say, 'Hey, they hardly ever use this account, but it's associated with Rashid Rauf, who is al Qaeda's master bomb maker, behind the plot to blow up all the airplanes, 'Who's he talking to?' And when they find out the other IP address on the other end is connected to Aurora, Colo., outside Denver, the connection to Zazi, it takes them to the plot to blow up the New York subways, it's all prevented. That's how a program like this is supposed to work," Miller said. 
 
 Why is the government tracking phone records? 
 
 The NSA must collect the phone data in broad swaths, Clapper said, because collecting it narrowly would make it harder to identify terrorism-related communications. 
 
 The data collected by the PRISM program is now a driving force in President Obama's daily intelligence briefing, his window into the world of ongoing and emerging threats, reports CBS News White House correspondent Major Garrett. 
 
 The legal basis grew out of the Patriot Act, passed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Only a handful of lawmakers knew of PRISM and all were sworn to secrecy. But revelations of the program this week raised alarms from both parties on Capitol Hill. 
 
 "I'm angry, and I was the one that wrote the law. And I think that the Justice Department and the NSA have abused this by going to far," said Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wisc., who helped craft the Patriot Act. 
 
 "When law-abiding Americans make phone calls, who they call, when they call and where they call from is private information," said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. "As a result of the disclosures that came to light today, now we're going to have a real debate in the Congress and the country and that's long overdue." 
 
 Officials from Clapper's office, the Justice Department, NSA and FBI briefed 27 senators for some two hours late Thursday at a hurriedly convened session prompted by severe criticism and uncertainty about the program. 
 
 "The National Security Agency's seizure and surveillance of virtually all of Verizon's phone customers is an astounding assault on the Constitution," said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. "After revelations that the Internal Revenue Service targeted political dissidents and the Department of Justice seized reporters' phone records, it would appear that this administration has now sunk to a new low." 
 
 NSA tracked phone records of millions of Americans 
 
 Paul said he will introduce legislation ensuring that the Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures apply to government search of phone records. 
 
 The surveillance powers are granted under the post-9/11 Patriot Act, which was renewed in 2006 and again in 2011. Republicans who usually don't miss a chance to criticize the administration offered full support. 
 
 "I'm a Verizon customer. I could care less if they're looking at my phone records. ... If you're not getting a call from a terrorist organization, you got nothing to worry about," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. 
 
 The disclosures come at a particularly inopportune time for Obama. His administration already faces questions over the Internal Revenue Service's improper targeting of conservative groups, the seizure of journalists' phone records in an investigation into who leaked information to the media, and the handling of the terrorist attack in Libya that left four Americans dead. 
 
 At a minimum, it's all a distraction as the president tries to tackle big issues like immigration reform and taxes. And it could serve to erode trust in Obama as he tries to advance his second-term agenda and cement his presidential legacy. 
 
 The Verizon order, granted by the secret FISA court on April 25 and good until July 19, requires information on the phone numbers of both parties on a call, as well as call time and duration, and unique identifiers, The Guardian reported. 
 
 It does not authorize snooping into the content of phone calls. But with millions of phone records in hand, the NSA's computers can analyze them for patterns, spot unusual behavior and identify "communities of interest"  networks of people in contact with targets or suspicious phone numbers overseas. 
 
 Once the government has zeroed in on numbers that it believes are tied to terrorism or foreign governments, it can go back to the court with a wiretap request. That allows the government to monitor the calls in real time, record them and store them indefinitely. 
 
 House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said that once the data has been collected, officials still must follow "a court-approved method and a series of checks and balances to even make the query on a particular number." 
 
 The steps are shrouded in government secrecy, which some lawmakers say should change. 
 
 "The American public can't be kept in the dark about the basic architecture of the programs designed to protect them," said Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn. 
 
 Verizon Executive Vice President and General Counsel Randy Milch, in a blog post, said the company can't comment on any such court order. He said Verizon take steps to protect customers' privacy, but must comply with court orders. Verizon listed 121 million customers in its first-quarter earnings report this April. 
 
 The NSA is sensitive to perceptions that it might be spying on Americans. It distributes a brochure that pledges the agency "is unwavering in its respect for U.S. laws and Americans' civil liberties  and its commitment to accountability." 
 
 Emerging from the briefing, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Intelligence committee, said the government must gather intelligence to prevent plots and keep Americans alive. "That's the goal. If we can do it another way, we're looking to do it another way. We'd like to." 
 
 She said Congress is always open to changes, "but that doesn't mean there will be any." ||||| A Closer Look Examining the News 
 
 Sept. 6: This Closer Look has been updated with a response from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. 
 
 ProPublica is today publishing a story in partnership with the Guardian and The New York Times about U.S. and U.K. government efforts to decode enormous amounts of Internet traffic previously thought to have been safe from prying eyes. This story is based on documents provided by Edward Snowden, the former intelligence community employee and contractor. We want to explain why we are taking this step, and why we believe it is in the public interest. 
 
 The story, we believe, is an important one. It shows that the expectations of millions of Internet users regarding the privacy of their electronic communications are mistaken. These expectations guide the practices of private individuals and businesses, most of them innocent of any wrongdoing. The potential for abuse of such extraordinary capabilities for surveillance, including for political purposes, is considerable. The government insists it has put in place checks and balances to limit misuses of this technology. But the question of whether they are effective is far from resolved and is an issue that can only be debated by the people and their elected representatives if the basic facts are revealed. 
 
 It’s certainly true that some number of bad actors (possibly including would-be terrorists) have been exchanging messages through means they assumed to be safe from interception by law enforcement or intelligence agencies. Some of these bad actors may now change their behavior in response to our story. 
 
 In weighing this reality, we have not only taken our own counsel and that of our publishing partners, but have also conferred with the government of the United States, a country whose freedoms give us remarkable opportunities as journalists and citizens. 
 
 Two possible analogies may help to illuminate our thinking here. 
 
 First, a historical event: In 1942, shortly after the World War II Battle of Midway, the Chicago Tribune published an article suggesting, in part, that the U.S. had broken the Japanese naval code (which it had). Nearly all responsible journalists we know would now say that the Tribune’s decision to publish this information was a mistake. But today’s story bears no resemblance to what the Tribune did. For one thing, the U.S. wartime code-breaking was confined to military communications. It did not involve eavesdropping on civilians. 
 
 The second analogy, while admittedly science fiction, seems to us to offer a clearer parallel. Suppose for a moment that the U.S. government had secretly developed and deployed an ability to read individuals’ minds. Such a capability would present the greatest possible invasion of personal privacy. And just as surely, it would be an enormously valuable weapon in the fight against terrorism. 
 
 Continuing with this analogy, some might say that because of its value as an intelligence tool, the existence of the mind-reading program should never be revealed. We do not agree. In our view, such a capability in the hands of the government would pose an overwhelming threat to civil liberties. The capability would not necessarily have to be banned in all circumstances. But we believe it would need to be discussed, and safeguards developed for its use. For that to happen, it would have to be known. 
 
 There are those who, in good faith, believe that we should leave the balance between civil liberty and security entirely to our elected leaders, and to those they place in positions of executive responsibility. Again, we do not agree. The American system, as we understand it, is premised on the idea -- championed by such men as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison -- that government run amok poses the greatest potential threat to the people’s liberty, and that an informed citizenry is the necessary check on this threat. The sort of work ProPublica does -- watchdog journalism -- is a key element in helping the public play this role. 
 
 American history is replete with examples of the dangers of unchecked power operating in secret. Richard Nixon, for instance, was twice elected president of this country. He tried to subvert law enforcement, intelligence and other agencies for political purposes, and was more than willing to violate laws in the process. Such a person could come to power again. We need a system that can withstand such challenges. That system requires public knowledge of the power the government possesses. Today’s story is a step in that direction. 
 
 Update (9/6): Statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence: 
 
 It should hardly be surprising that our intelligence agencies seek ways to counteract our adversaries’ use of encryption. Throughout history, nations have used encryption to protect their secrets, and today, terrorists, cybercriminals, human traffickers and others also use code to hide their activities. Our intelligence community would not be doing its job if we did not try to counter that. 
 
 While the specifics of how our intelligence agencies carry out this cryptanalytic mission have been kept secret, the fact that NSA’s mission includes deciphering enciphered communications is not a secret, and is not news. Indeed, NSA’s public website states that its mission includes leading “the U.S. Government in cryptology … in order to gain a decision advantage for the Nation and our allies.” 
 
 The stories published yesterday, however, reveal specific and classified details about how we conduct this critical intelligence activity. Anything that yesterday’s disclosures add to the ongoing public debate is outweighed by the road map they give to our adversaries about the specific techniques we are using to try to intercept their communications in our attempts to keep America and our allies safe and to provide our leaders with the information they need to make difficult and critical national security decisions. ||||| A vast portion of the CIA’s computer hacking arsenal appeared to have been exposed Tuesday by the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks, which posted thousands of files revealing secret cyber-tools used by the agency to convert cellphones, televisions and other ordinary devices into implements of espionage. 
 
 The trove appeared to lay bare the design and capabilities of some of the U.S. intelligence community’s most closely guarded cyberweapons, a breach that is likely to cause immediate damage to the CIA’s efforts to gather intelligence overseas and place new strain on the U.S. government’s relationship with Silicon Valley giants including Apple and Google. 
 
 WikiLeaks, which claimed to have gotten the files from a current or former CIA contractor, touted the trove as comparable in scale and significance to the collection of National Security Agency documents exposed by former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden. 
 
 But while the Snowden files revealed massive surveillance programs that gathered data on millions of Americans, the CIA documents posted so far by WikiLeaks appear mainly to unmask hacking methods that many experts already assumed the agency had developed. 
 
 U.S. intelligence officials and experts said details contained in the newly released documents suggest that they are legitimate, although that could not be independently verified, raising new worries about the U.S. government’s ability to safeguard its secrets in an era of cascading leaks of classified data. 
 
 (Reuters) 
 
 The files mention pieces of malware with names like “Assassin” and “Medusa” that seem drawn from a spy film, describing tools that the CIA uses to steal data from iPhones, seize control of Microsoft-powered computers or even make Internet-connected Samsung television sets secretly function as microphones. 
 
 The release of so many sensitive files appeared to catch the CIA, the White House and other government entities off-guard. A CIA spokesman would say only that “we do not comment on the authenticity of purported intelligence documents.” 
 
 In a statement, WikiLeaks indicated that the initial stockpile it put online was part of a broader collection of nearly 9,000 files that would be posted over time describing code developed in secret by the CIA to steal data from a range of targets. WikiLeaks said it redacted lists of CIA surveillance targets, though it said they included targets and machines in Latin America, Europe and the United States. 
 
 The release was described as a huge loss to the CIA by security experts and former U.S. intelligence officials. “It looks like really the backbone of their network exploitation kit,” said a former hacker who worked for the National Security Agency and, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the subject. 
 
 The breach could undermine the CIA’s ability to carry out key parts of its mission, from targeting the Islamic State and other terrorist networks to penetrating the computer defenses of sophisticated cyber-adversaries including Russia, China and Iran, former officials and tech specialists said. 
 
 “Any exposure of these tools is going to cause grave if not irreparable damage to the ability of our intelligence agencies to conduct our mission,” a former senior U.S. intelligence official said. 
 
 If legitimate, the release represents the latest major breach of sensitive U.S. government data to be put on global display in humiliating fashion by WikiLeaks, which came to prominence in 2010 with the exposure of thousands of classified U.S. diplomatic cables and military files. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has engaged in an escalating feud with the United States while taking refuge at the Ecuadoran Embassy in London from Swedish sexual assault allegations. 
 
 WikiLeaks’ latest assault on U.S. secrets may pose an early, potentially awkward security issue for President Trump, who has repeatedly praised WikiLeaks and disparaged the CIA. 
 
 Trump declared “I love WikiLeaks” last October during a campaign rally when he read from a trove of stolen emails about his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, that had been posted to the organization's website. 
 
 White House press secretary Sean Spicer declined to comment when asked about the CIA breach during a news briefing Tuesday. 
 
 [Why the CIA is using your TVs, smartphones and cars for spying] 
 
 WikiLeaks indicated that it obtained the files from a current or former CIA contractor, saying that “the archive appears to have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive.” 
 
 But the counterintelligence investigation underway at the CIA is also likely to search for clues to whether Russia had any role in the theft of the agency’s digital arsenal. U.S. intelligence officials allege that WikiLeaks has ties to Russian intelligence services. The website posted thousands of emails stolen from Democratic Party computer networks during the 2016 presidential campaign, files that U.S. intelligence agencies concluded were obtained and turned over to WikiLeaks as part of a cyber-campaign orchestrated by the Kremlin. 
 
 Experts and former intelligence officials said the latest files appear to be authentic in part because they refer to code names and capabilities known to have been developed by the CIA’s cyber-branch. 
 
 “At first glance,” the data release “is probably legitimate or contains a lot of legitimate stuff, which means somebody managed to extract a lot of data from a classified CIA system and is willing to let the world know that,” said Nicholas Weaver, a computer security researcher at the University of California at Berkeley. 
 
 Faking a large quantity of data is difficult but not impossible, he noted. Weaver said he knows of one case of WikiLeaks deliberately neglecting to include a document in a data release and one case of WikiLeaks deliberately mislabeling stolen data, “but no cases yet of deliberately fraudulent information.” 
 
 [WikiLeaks releases thousands of documents about Clinton and internal deliberations] 
 
 WikiLeaks said the trove comprised tools — including malware, viruses, trojans and weaponized “zero day” exploits — developed by a CIA entity known as the Engineering Development Group, part of a sprawling cyber-directorate created in recent years as the agency shifted resources and attention to online espionage. 
 
 WikiLeaks labeled the trove “Vault 7” and said that it contains several hundred million lines of code, many of which are designed to exploit vulnerabilities in everyday consumer devices. 
 
 In a statement, WikiLeaks said the files enable the agency to bypass popular encryption-enabled applications — including WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram — used by millions of people to safeguard their communications. 
 
 But experts said that rather than defeating the encryption of those applications, the CIA’s methods rely on exploiting vulnerabilities in the devices on which they are installed, a method referred to as “hacking the endpoint.” 
 
 [Why understanding cyberspace is key to defending against digital attacks] 
 
 WikiLeaks said that the files were created between 2013 and 2016 and that it would publish only a portion of the archive — redacting some sensitive samples of code — “until a consensus emerges on the technical and political nature of the CIA’s program.” 
 
 The organization did not clarify what achieving such a consensus would entail, but for now it appeared to be withholding fully formed pieces of ready-made code that could be used by other intelligence services or even novice hackers. 
 
 Still, the data release alarmed cybersecurity experts, who said the files contain snippets of code that could enable adversaries to replicate CIA capabilities or identify and root out CIA “implants” currently in place. 
 
 “This is explosive,” said Jake Williams, founder of Rendition InfoSec, a cybersecurity firm. The material highlights specific anti-virus products that can be defeated, going further than a release of NSA hacking tools last year, he said. The CIA hackers, according to WikiLeaks, even “discussed what the NSA’s . . . hackers did wrong and how the CIA’s malware makers could avoid similar exposure.” 
 
 Hackers who worked at the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations unit said the CIA’s library of tools looked comparable. The implants — software that enables hackers to remotely control a compromised device — are “very, very complex” and “at least on par with the NSA,” said one former TAO hacker. 
 
 Beyond hacking weapons, the files also purportedly reveal information about the organization of the CIA’s cyber-directorate and indicate that the agency uses the U.S. Consulate in Frankfurt, Germany, as a hacking hub for operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. 
 
 Though primarily thought of as an agency that recruits spies, the CIA has taken on a larger role in electronic espionage over the past decade. In 2015 the agency created the Directorate of Digital Innovation, a division that puts cyber-work on equal footing with long-standing directorates devoted to conventional spying and analysis. 
 
 The CIA’s focus is more narrow and targeted than that of the NSA, which is responsible for sweeping up electronic communications on a large scale around the globe. By contrast, CIA efforts mainly focus on “close in” operations in which the agency at times relies on individuals carrying thumb drives or other devices to implant code on computer systems not connected to the Internet. 
 
 One of the most intriguing tools described in the files, called “Weeping Angel,” can apparently be used to put certain television sets into a fake “off” mode while activating a microphone that enables the CIA to capture any conversations in the surrounding space. 
 
 Ashkan Soltani and Julie Tate contributed to this report. 
 
 Read more: 
 
 How the CIA deceives its own workforce about operations 
 
 NSA contractor charged with stealing top secret data 
 
 How hard is it to get an intelligence wiretap? Pretty hard. 
 
 This pretty blond doll could be spying on your family
– It's being called the CIA's "Snowden moment"—and it reveals secrets that paranoid time-travelers from the 1950s would find completely unsurprising, including suggestions that the agency has been spying on people through their TVs. The CIA is scrambling to deal with the fallout from WikiLeaks' release Tuesday of a vast trove of data on the agency's hacking tools. A former senior intelligence official tells the Washington Post that the leak, which experts believe is genuine, could "cause grave if not irreparable damage to the ability of our intelligence agencies to conduct our mission." A roundup of coverage: One hack, code-named Weeping Angel, allows spies to capture audio and possibly video from Samsung smart TVs that appear to be turned off. Wired has a guide to telling whether your TV has been hacked. PC World reports that the WikiLeaks release included snippets of code that antivirus vendors can now use to determine whether hacking attempts originated at the CIA. MIT Technology Review describes the leaked information, including news that the CIA has found vulnerabilities in iOS and Android, as "sinister" but not "particularly Earth-shattering" from a technological point of view. Business Insider examines some of WikiLeaks' claims and finds that there's no evidence that the CIA was able to crack the encryption of apps like Signal and WhatsApp. Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, tells the New York Times he's disturbed by signs that the government knew about vulnerabilities in electronic devices and kept them quiet to make spying easier. "Those vulnerabilities will be exploited not just by our security agencies, but by hackers and governments around the world," Wizner says. "Patching security holes immediately, not stockpiling them, is the best way to make everyone's digital life safer." Forbes spoke to security experts from several companies about the leak. They said the information about the CIA's technological capabilities is unsurprising, but that it should serve as a reminder to people that they cannot fully trust the security of their devices. "People need to wake up to the fact that they need to take responsibility for maintaining the privacy of their information and make no assumptions," says Ajay Arora, CEO of Vera. "At the end of the day, no one has your best interests in mind but you—people can't even trust their own government anymore. This is the tragic new normal we have to all unfortunately accept." Companies including Google, Samsung, and WhatsApp declined to comment, the Washington Post reports. Apple released a statement saying the issues disclosed in the leak were patched in a recent update and that they "always urge customers to download the latest iOS to make sure they have the most recent security update." "Imagine a world where the actual CIA spends its time figuring out how to spy on you through your TV. That's today," tweeted Edward Snowden, though he added that while it may not feel like it, end-to-end encryption has actually made computer security a lot better than it used to be.