What the Red Bird Saw: A Story of Surveillance and Resistance in Early 2014

What the Red Bird Saw: A Story of Surveillance and Resistance in Early 2014

January 2014. The popular game "Angry Birds," played on smartphones around the world, was suddenly singled out as a symbol of the surveillance state, an unusual situation. News reports revealed that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and the U.K.'s communications interception agency had been secretly collecting personal information from ordinary users through an advertising mechanism in the smartphone app.

In addition to sensitive information such as current location, age, gender, family structure, hobbies, tastes, and political leanings, the information collected included location information contained in social networking posts and photos, and even contact data. Behind the movements of a finger absorbed in a game, fragments of the user's life were quietly being read.

Rovio, the company that developed the game, denied that it ever provided any information directly to government agencies, but it was not entirely clear what information was passed on to third parties via advertising companies. The world was disturbed by the reality that, unbeknownst to them, "play" had become a "gateway to surveillance."

Two days later, on January 29, the situation took an even more unusual turn. The official website of "Angry Birds" was defaced by someone, and the ironic title "Spying Birds" appeared on the top page. The red birds were not angry. It was watching. And its anger at those who were manipulating its gaze has returned in the form of a return.

The hack was allegedly the work of the Syrian Electronic Army, a group of hackers who support the Syrian government. The group has been active since 2011, launching cyber attacks one after another against news organizations, government agencies, and corporations in the U.S., Europe, and Japan.

The Syrian Electronic Army once hijacked the Twitter accounts of news organizations and sent out false information about an explosion at the White House, temporarily disrupting financial markets. They have also defaced the websites of CNN, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, hacked into the website of the U.S. Marine Corps, illegally accessed a Microsoft service account, and attacked a major company's website in Japan.

Their actions were not aimed solely at destruction. They were intended to expose the intentions and biases behind the information, and to communicate the plight of nations and the reality of war across the digital sea. It was a different kind of warfare, one in which guns were not used, but codes and screens were the weapons.

In early 2014, Angry Birds was no longer just a game. The red bird flew past no longer a tower of enemies, but an invisible wall of information. And those who watched and those who fought were each trying to break down that wall by their own means.

Related information
The details of the NSA and GCHQ's information gathering are based on Snowden's whistleblowing documents.
The information collected includes: location information, age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, ideological tendencies, photo Exif information, social networking posts, and contact information.
Spy functions: Smartphone intelligence tools (power control, audio collection, location tracking, concealment).
January 29, 2014: Official Angry Birds website defaced and renamed "Spying Birds.
Syrian Electronic Army (SEA): active since 2011, carried out numerous hijackings and defacements targeting news organizations and social networking sites.
Typical incidents: April 2013: Associated Press hijacking; August 2013: Vandalism of news organizations; September 2013: Vandalism of U.S. military sites; January 2014: Unauthorized access to Skype; November 2014: Attack on a Japanese company.