GCHQ store webcam images of Yahoo users in bulk

[Itse]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...internet-yahoo

There's been regular updates on all the stuff that GCHQ (British intelligence) and NSA have been doing, but I think this might be of a little more general interest than some of the other stuff.

[Britain's surveillance agency GCHQ, with aid from the US National Security Agency, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, secret documents reveal.

GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 explicitly state that a surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected still images of Yahoo webcam chats in bulk and saved them to agency databases, regardless of whether individual users were an intelligence target or not.

GCHQ does not have the technical means to make sure no images of UK or US citizens are collected and stored by the system, and there are no restrictions under UK law to prevent Americans' images being accessed by British analysts without an individual warrant.The documents also chronicle GCHQ's sustained struggle to keep the large store of sexually explicit imagery collected by Optic Nerve away from the eyes of its staff, though there is little discussion about the privacy implications of storing this material in the first place.

Based on all the other stuff and the NSA/GCHQ:s general approach, there's no reason to think that it's just Yahoo, or just video images even. Spying on phone cameras is very probable too.

Oh and of course console cameras.

While the documents do not detail efforts as widescale as those against Yahoo users, one presentation discusses with interest the potential and capabilities of the Xbox 360's Kinect camera, saying it generated "fairly normal webcam traffic" and was being evaluated as part of a wider program.

Buy an XBOX, bring the Big Brother to your living room?