Webcam can be dangerous
The British spy agency GCHQ intercepted photographs from webcams connected to Yahoo chat programs between 2008 and 2010, according to a new report published on Thursday.
The Guardian reported that millions of Internet users who were “not suspected of wrongdoing” were targeted by GCHQ in cooperation with the U.S.-based National Security Agency under a program called “Optic Nerve.” Under the program, the agency captured one image from a webcam connected to Yahoo’s network every five minutes. The program was given a trial run in 2008 and was still in regular use as late as 2012, according to The Guardian.
Documents show that the agencies collected images from more than 1.8 million Yahoo users around the world within a six-month time frame in 2008. Some images likely depict Internet users in the United Kingdom and the United States; the agency has no way to filter out images belonging to British or American account holders, The Guardian reported.
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Sexually explicit images were among those captured and stored by the agency. A document published by The Guardian on Thursday estimated that between 3 and 11 percent of the images collected by GCHQ contained “undesirable nudity.” The document concedes that there was no way for agents who had access to the database from viewing potentially pornographic images it collected from Yahoo webcams.
It is unclear if GCHQ targeted one-on-one interactions within Yahoo Messenger, the service’s chat room feature, or both. Yahoo shut down its Messenger chat rooms in December 2012.
Yahoo denied having any knowledge that the agency was intercepting the webcam feeds of its users, telling The Guardian that the program violated its users’ privacy on “a whole new level.”
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GCHQ feels differently. The spy agency said in a document cited by The Guardian that “Yahoo webcam is known to be used by GCHQ targets.” An agency spokesperson told The Next Web on Thursday that the collection program “is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework which ensures that our activities are authorized, necessary and proportionate.”
The Guardian based their report on classified intelligence documents leaked to journalists by former government contractor Edward Snowden. The documents published Thursday are just some of the thousands believed to have been taken by Snowden during his time at Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm that works with American intelligence agencies. Snowden is currently believed to be in Moscow after the Russian government granted him temporary asylum.
