inessential by Brent Simmons

One Way to Do Surveillance

This idea doesn’t require a hacked Xcode.

Create a shell company that pretends to be a small software development company.

Write an app for your intended audience — for instance, write a Twitter client for Arabic speakers. (Or Farsi. Or French. Or English.)

Add your surveillance framework to the app.

Make it a good app, something lots of people would like to use. Make it free. Spend money on marketing.

Buy lots of hard drives to store all the text, images, and metadata it captures.