NSA Wants To Monitor Your Pacemaker

NSA Wants To Monitor Your Pacemaker

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The NSA wants to monitor and collection information from pacemakers and other biomedical devices for national security purposes, The Verge reports. The idea, it appears, is still in its infancy, but is definitely in the Agency’s sights. NSA deputy director Richard Ledgett recently told an audience that the NSA is “looking at it sort of theoretically from a research point of view right now.”

Ledgett indicated that even if the Agency had the ability right now it wouldn’t be main source of information, but “a niche kind of thing … a tool in the toolbox,” he said. Ledgett was clear that that there are easier ways to keep track of spies, criminals, and terrorists than to monitor medical devices, but nonetheless, this is an area of interest for the Agency.

The potential push to medical device monitoring comes as part of a reorientation towards the Internet of Things (IoT) and the mountain of data that will come with it. When asked whether this glut of information would be a boon for the Agency or a pile of digital noise to sift through, Ledgett replied, “Both.”

“As my job is to penetrate other people’s networks, complexity is my friend,” he continued. “The first time you update the software, you introduce vulnerabilities, or variables rather. It’s a good place to be in a penetration point of view.”

Ledgett is not the only intelligence official signaling this shift in direction.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper previously said, according to The Guardian, that in the future “intelligence services might use the [Internet of Things] for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user credentials.”