We reported recently that the NSA is intercepting online laptop or computer part purchases and installing malware or ‘bugged’ hardware in them before shipping them on to whatever American purchased them.  How would they know whose package to intercept and how?  Amazon apparently is in on the scam.

Andrea Shepard is a free speech activist who works on the development team for the Tor Browser, the NSA-foiling anonymous browser which we’ve told you time and time again to go get.  She ordered a keyboard from Amazon, and it somehow wasn’t shipped from Amazon’s facility in California to Shepard’s home in Seattle.  Instead, Amazon sent it all the way across the country to Dulles, VA, where it ended up being delivered to somewhere in Alexandria, VA after a few days of being bounced around the DC area.  Shepard didn’t receive the keyboard until 24 January—24 hours after it was “delivered” in Alexandria.  You’ll notice that the trip from Alexandria to Seattle isn’t listed, which begs the question: Did Amazon put the wrong shipping manifest on it and just took it upon themselves to fix it once they innocently realized that they erroneously shipped the keyboard to the intelligence mecca of the country?  Or did Andrea Shepard get a hacked computer part? Click the photo to view the shipping info.

PrivacySOS has a very salient point:

If this indeed is evidence of the NSA intercepting a laptop to install spyware on it, it’s yet more proof that, even when the spying is highly targeted and precise, the NSA isn’t necessarily using its powers to only go after terrorists or dangerous criminals. Shepard is neither a criminal nor a terrorist. She’s a developer, an activist, and a free speech supporter.

Is that all it takes to become a victim of the NSA’s targeted spying? Someone should ask Amazon and the NSA what happened here, so we can get to the bottom of this bizarre situation. If in fact the NSA is installing malware on the computers of activists and coders working to protect internet anonymity, the government has a lot of explaining to do. If this is the case, it shows that even highly-targeted surveillance can be wildly abused, if agencies are left to fester in the dark to do whatever they want.

How much longer, folks?