HMM: FaceApp Went Viral. Now the FBI Is Calling It a ‘Potential Counterintelligence Threat.’

“A warning to share with your family & friends: This year when millions were downloading FaceApp, I asked the FBI if the app was safe,” Schumer tweeted Monday afternoon. “Well, the FBI just responded. And they told me any app or product developed in Russia like FaceApp is a potential counterintelligence threat.”

Schumer’s tweet accompanied a letter from the FBI in which it didn’t necessarily call FaceApp a counterintelligence threat, but did say that, like all other Russian apps, it could pose problems.

“Russia’s intelligence services maintain robust cyber exploitation capabilities as evidenced by, for example, Russia’s surveillance system, the System of Operative Search Measures, which allows the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) to obtain telephonic and online communications via direct communication to Internet service providers (ISP),” the FBI wrote. “In other words, the FSB can remotely access all communications and servers on Russian networks without making a request to ISPs.”

That’s a potential problem for anyone in Russia, let alone an app developer. The FBI noted in the letter to Sen. Schumer that the company “removes most of its photos from its servers 48 hours after submission.” The agency also said that it stores, “according to FaceApp,” its data in the United States, Singapore, Ireland, and Australia. But as long as someone is in Russia, where anything from user credentials to cloud servers to their own traffic, can be intercepted, anything can happen.

Cold War II has all kinds of parameters we could hardly even have imagined during the first go-’round.