that the vulnerabilities amounted to back doors, and in any case were removed once the company had been alerted. Vodafone also denied significant elements of the Bloomberg story. It is unlikely that all the vulnerabilities have been resolved, however, and although there is no firm evidence that any equipment sent data back to the Chinese government, as alleged, it would be safe to assume so.
In 2013, long before Trump became president, Snowden’s disclosures proved that the US government has deals to pipe data directly from major technology firms, including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook and Apple. Its spooks can peruse your emails, see your search queries, view your browsing history, trawl through your photos and read the documents you share. It can track your mobile devices anywhere, at any time, even when location services are switched off.
Of course, outside the Five Eyes, everyone is fair game. Use an Android phone? The NSA has your number. Use an iPhone instead? The NSA owns you. Have a computer running Windows? The NSA is all over it like a virus. Have a computer running anything else? Don’t assume anything is beyond the NSA’s capabilities.
Private information can be abused to blackmail anyone into doing anything.
Europe is developing its own vision of the internet, which is causing significant friction with the US-based internet. Some US sites simply will not display content to European visitors, for fear of violating some EU copyright or privacy directive or another. China has long developed its internet independently, even creating domestic versions of popular social media, chat and microblogging platforms.