GCHQ Intercepted Webcam Images of Millions of Yahoo Users 137
An anonymous reader writes with more chilling news from the Snowden files. Quoting the Guardian: "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. ... The system, eerily reminiscent of the telescreens evoked in George Orwell's 1984, was used for experiments in automated facial recognition, to monitor GCHQ's existing targets, and to discover new targets of interest. Such searches could be used to try to find terror suspects or criminals making use of multiple, anonymous user IDs."
Remember, friends don't video conference with friends unless they're using SIP and TLS.
Hey, GCHQ and NSA ... (Score:5, Funny)
How many fingers am I holding up now?
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hey, GCHQ and NSA ... (Score:5, Funny)
How many fingers am I holding up now?
Don't know about you, but I'm holding up one.
Re:Cue the false outrage from Yahoo (Score:5, Funny)
I find it hard to believe anything the big tech companies say after years of favors from the government.
"We are, um, shocked and outraged by these revelations, and wish to assure our customers that, honestly, we are a bunch of incompetent second-stringers, so we probably can't do too much our current level of security. Also, even if we could, we have a long and ignoble track record of being a bootlicking toadies who give our best customer service with the PRC is hunting down dissidents for Labor Camp Adventure Time, we're actually pretty good at that. So, yeah, try to think of us as 'Google': By AOL, it's give us a nostalgic tinge.
Thank you.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Funny)
That is so fucked up.
So is the footage from your laptop (in the garage?) at 3 AM last Tuesday, citizen. That raccoon, seriously?
Re:Aaaaaand (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Chatroulette Failed (Score:5, Funny)
The document estimates that between 3% and 11% of the Yahoo webcam imagery harvested by GCHQ contains "undesirable nudity".
But what percentage was desirable nudity?
no no, Batman was causing problems (Score:5, Funny)
No, their software kept getting confused from Batman [youtube.com].
(I promise, SFW, not a rickroll, etc. Just a guy with a Batman costume blowing some minds on CR.)
Re:this isn't the only one (Score:4, Funny)
so the punishment for being a perv is that you get to be a voyeur as well?