The paranoia regarding privacy is more than ever due to recent events such as Microsoft admitting that each and every message on Skype is backed up on server and is constantly monitored. The most notorious among this lot is considered to be the NSA, which has been rumored to be able to access every camera and microphone in the world. But is this true or a hoax used to increase fear and a feeling of being paranoid amongst the people? Let’s find out:
The short and simple answer for this is: yes, they do. The National Security Agency can actually access such core features without the need of anything specific through terms known as back doors (which is something frequently used by hackers when they want to hack a website). The only difference from this back door with the others is that this back door is actually present inside the processor of any electronic device, which all of us are aware is the main reason that any electronic device operates in the first place.
What’s worse is that no one is safe from such attacks. Be it your iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, Windows OS, Macintosh OS and even Linux OS, NSA just has access to the backdoor in each and every Operating System. And the worst part among all of this is that it isn’t some conspiracy within the government or done by some bad people within the government secretly, the NSA actually receives a yes from FBI and other authorities to carry out such actions without telling the general public about it in order to prevent protests. But they did get caught more than a few times, particularly when a high ranking official in the NSA confirmed that they do have access to each and every microphone and camera for ‘security’ purposes.
Chanwoo's Weekly Tech 