Is Angry Birds Spying On You? Leaked NSA Documents Reveal Government Collected Data From Smartphone Apps

The National Security Agency, notorious for tapping into the Internet and phone records of Americans everywhere, may have used popular smart phone apps like Angry Birds to do so, The New York Times reported Monday.

When a player opens up the game Angry Birds on their smart phone, intelligence officials may have tapped into the game to collect information like the user's location, age and sex.

Part of an initiative called "the mobile surge," the NSA along with Britain's Government Communication Headquarters worked together to collect geographic data, data in photographs, address books, identification codes and other personal information embedded in smartphone apps, the Times reported.

The initiative targeted certain "leaky apps" like Google Maps, Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn and Twitter, the Times reported.

The information was leaked as part of another wave of secret government documents provided by former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden. The documents were also obtained by The Guardian.

According to the documents, the initiative used some of the earliest smartphones apps that were available back in 2007. One NSA worker used the term "Golden Nugget" to describe the wealth of information stored in iPhones and Androids, the Times reported.

The documents do not specify how many were affected by the smartphone surveillance. But according to one 2010 British document, they have collected so many "cookies" that they can't store them all.

"The are gathered in bulk, and are currently our single largest type of events," the document said, according to the Times.

The NSA has asserted that it closely monitored the online activities of Americans to thwart terrorists.

"The N.S.A. does not profile everyday Americans as it carries out its foreign intelligence mission," the NSA told the Times. "Because some data of U.S. persons my at times be incidentally collected in N.S.A.'s lawful foreign intelligence mission, privacy protections for U.S. persons exist across the entire process."