There's a war out there, old friend. A world war. And it's not about who's got the most bullets. It's about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think... it's all about the information!
- a line from the 1992 film Sneakers
The United States is currently in a soft war with the likes of China and Russia, one driven largely by information – hiding it, stealing it, leveraging it, manipulating it, framing it. The boundaries have shifted from the battlefield to civil society, from airstrikes to spyware. In this new landscape, lawmakers’ smartphones are a central front, as these devices can be turned into spying instruments by adversaries to gain closely held information that may be used to adversely influence the activities of the government.
I recently explored this threat in an article for GCN. Give it a read to learn more about why smartphone-based eavesdropping against lawmakers is an attractive option for gathering critical intelligence and what can be done to mitigate this risk.
