To me, this is the scariest part though not that surprising: "That metadata includes which version of the operating system, browser and Java software a

To me, this is the scariest part though not that surprising: "That metadata includes which version of the operating system, browser and Java software are being used on millions of devices around the world, information that U.S. spy agencies could use to infiltrate those computers or phones and spy on their users." A database that contains the specific versions of installed software for millions of computers world-wide is a very powerful tool. For any given target--if their machine is in the database--compromising their system is a trivial matter! It's a "what exploit would you like to use today?" situation. Assuming they gather this information from Internet backbones--I'm OK with that. Good for them for skimming data off the public Internet and shame on the software that makes it too easy. On the other hand, if they're obtaining this data from the likes of Microsoft (or McAfeee or any other incredibly popular vendor with an item in everyone's systray) that is an incredibly scary proposition. No target stands a snowball's chance in hell at not being (trivially) compromised. It's one of those situations where, "you'd better not use that company's products!" I can't even imagine the sheer destruction that could occur if such information fell into the wrong hands. Imagine if some "fuck the world" anarchist hacker got his hands on a database that contained precisely the information he needed to, say, compromise (and just plain erase; 'rm -rf *') just about every banking computer that happened to be listed. It would be like, ARMAGEDDON.