WikiLeaks Spy Files claim your phone might be spying on you

THE LATEST batch of files released by WikiLeaks is either an exposé of the "extraordinary privacy threats" to users of everyday products such as iPhones and BlackBerrys or an embarrassing damp squib.

WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange, unveiling what he calls 'The Spy Files', asked the assembled journalists: "Who here has an iPhone, who has a BlackBerry, who uses Gmail? Well you're all screwed.

"The reality is that intelligence operations are selling right now mass surveillance systems for all those products."

The new release includes claims that surveillance companies can use your iPhone, BlackBerry or Windows smartphone to take pictures of you, and harvest data such as your location and recordings of your conversations - even when the phone is in standby mode, The Register reports.

Steven Murdoch of Cambridge Security group, who appeared with Assange, said British companies are among those developing this software.

"We're seeing increasingly wholesale monitoring of entire populations with no suspicion of wrongdoing - the data is being monitored and stored in the hope that it might one day be useful," he said.

But while WikiLeaks might have brought to the public's attention valid concerns about privacy in the fast developing world of mobile technology, not everybody is impressed. Some of the documents released in 'The Spy Files' are brochures from surveillance and security companies that are already available for public download on the companies' websites.

Gawker calls the latest leak "embarrassing", describing it as "a bunch of brochures and manuals they downloaded from public websites", and observing that The Wall Street Journal raised the same issues of privacy in an in-depth report last month, using much of the same information. ·