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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGCHQ spied on millions of Yahoo video chats, harvested sexual images of chatters, compared itself to
A stunning new Snowden leak reveals that the UK spy agency GCHQ harvested images and text from millions of Yahoo video chats, including chats in which one or both of the participants was British or American. Between 3 and 11 percent of the chats they intercepted were sexual in nature, and revealing images of thousands of people were captured and displayed to spies. The programme, called OPTIC NERVE, focused on people whose usernames were similar to those of suspects, and ran from at least 2008 until at least 2010. The leak reveals that GCHQ intended to expand the programme to Xbox 360 Kinect cameras and "fairly normal webcam traffic." The programme was part of a facial recognition research effort that GCHQ compared to "Tom Cruise in Minority Report." 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. Beyond webcams and consoles, GCHQ and the NSA looked at building more detailed and accurate facial recognition tools, such as iris recognition cameras "think Tom Cruise in Minority Report", one presentation noted.
Sexually explicit webcam material proved to be a particular problem for GCHQ, as one document delicately put it: "Unfortunately it would appear that a surprising number of people use webcam conversations to show intimate parts of their body to the other person. Also, the fact that the Yahoo software allows more than one person to view a webcam stream without necessarily sending a reciprocal stream means that it appears sometimes to be used for broadcasting pornography."
The document estimates that between 3% and 11% of the Yahoo webcam imagery harvested by GCHQ contains "undesirable nudity". Discussing efforts to make the interface "safer to use", it noted that current "naïve" pornography detectors assessed the amount of flesh in any given shot, and so attracted lots of false positives by incorrectly tagging shots of people's faces as pornography.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/gchq-nsa-webcam-images-internet-yahoo
http://boingboing.net/2014/02/27/gchq-spied-on-millions-of-yaho.html#more-289820
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)to deal with some inconvenient citizen.
These are the tactics and behavior of a totalitarian state.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024573395
Orrex
(63,263 posts)You totally stole that from this DUer.
Oh, wait...
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)I forgot the line about totalitarianism in one of those...and that's the take-home message when governments behave in this way.
Orrex
(63,263 posts)I think I only noticed because I followed your link to that other thread and had an unexpected deja vu moment.
BelgianMadCow
(5,379 posts)this is way beyond acceptable. I'd like to hear their defense of this kind of program.
kpete
(72,041 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)BelgianMadCow
(5,379 posts)yet did, only to see the same tired names. People are entitled to their opinions, but it's getting either rather weird or rather obvious. So I guess that's good - surely us deeply concerned with surveillance aren't the only ones to notice.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)bobduca
(1,763 posts)The NSA defenders are shameless.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Doing that type of work is also incompatible with human decency and a functional conscience.
Marr
(20,317 posts)For others... I dunno. When they're transferred, I suppose.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)Good thing there isn't a US branch of GCHQ.
Up next:
"You know the NSA must be doing this too!!"
"Then why didn't Snowden leak that?"
"Well, you know they must be!"
questionseverything
(9,666 posts)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.
and
Optic Nerve was based on collecting information from GCHQ's huge network of internet cable taps, which was then processed and fed into systems provided by the NSA. Webcam information was fed into NSA's XKeyscore search tool, and NSA research was used to build the tool which identified Yahoo's webcam traffic.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)Especially since the referenced software isn't for collecting such 'chats'.
XKeyscore is basically an indexer, like Google. The "NSA research" would presumably be a network protocol analyzer. It would tell GCHQ that it's a video stream instead of an HTTP transfer.
It's not like they stuffed the information into "NSA Pornfinder 3000".
questionseverything
(9,666 posts)these are still pics taken at 5 minute intervals
jeff47
(26,549 posts)Cali_Democrat
(30,439 posts)This is certainly a sticky situation...
qwertyq
(47 posts)just because the documents came from Snowden?
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)If and when a Republican becomes POTUS then DU will once again be virtually 100% against this sort of spying.
And of course Free Republic will once again be 100% for this sort of spying.
Cali_Democrat
(30,439 posts)Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)Cali_Democrat
(30,439 posts)Cali_Democrat
(30,439 posts)I said it's sticky....
questionseverything
(9,666 posts)Optic Nerve was based on collecting information from GCHQ's huge network of internet cable taps, which was then processed and fed into systems provided by the NSA. Webcam information was fed into NSA's XKeyscore search tool, and NSA research was used to build the tool which identified Yahoo's webcam traffic.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024569182
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4569374
The relationship between those who are constantly watched and tracked and those who watch and track them is the relationship between masters and slaves.
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Fawke Em
(11,366 posts)sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)agencies peeking into your bedroom and 'collecting and storing your data'?
This should be a women's rights issue. If some creep was caught peeking in your window you could call the police. But when the government does it, when sickos in these agencies are doing it, who do you call?
And I wonder, how many Politicians' 'meta data' with 'sexual content' did they collect.'
ANYONE who tries to defend any of this, the threat this is to democracy, has to be one of them I have concluded at this point. No one can claim not to see the enormous harm these egregious violations of human rights has and will do.
deathrind
(1,786 posts)Post nothing on the Internet that you want kept private.
mindwalker_i
(4,407 posts)DestroyEverything
(1 post)Yahoo was not aware of the reported activity. This report, if true, represents a whole new level of violation of our users privacy that is completely unacceptable, Yahoo stated, adding that it is committed to preserving its users trust and security and will continue its efforts to expand encryption across all services.
See more at http://goo.gl/bmyEMM
Yahoo is very angry about the situation, it seems. They will encrypt all future communication, which they should have done already.