
GCHQ intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users worldwide - callum85
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/gchq-nsa-webcam-images-internet-yahoo
======
StefanKarpinski
This really isn't any worse than the other invasions of privacy that have been
revealed – but it's much easier to point at it as an egregious and visceral
violation of privacy. Even though webcam stills may be the least important (or
useful) spying the US and UK have been doing, this may be some of the best
fodder for arguments to limit such activities. So thank you, UK, for being so
dumb.

~~~
dmix
> Even though webcam stills may be the least important (or useful) spying the
> US and UK

Blackmail. Polticial, economic, and spying-related informant-turning
blackmail.

The CIA's primary business is getting informants and agents all over the
world. Usually via some threat. This is perfect fodder for it.

Using cheating and sex (ie homosexuality in the 50s) against people is one of
the most classic examples of recruiting strategies for intelligence agencies.

~~~
samstave
I'd wager that this is one reason homosexuality has been held as taboo for so
long: it can be weaponized against your enemies for leverage and power.

~~~
w_t_payne
It is no accident that socially conservative ideologies are correlated with
right-wing / authoritarian politics. It is such an age-old instrument of
manipulation and control that I am tempted to believe that it is innate and
ingrained into our biology.

~~~
rhizome
Just to be clear, there is a such thing as leftist authoritarianism, and that
its effects can also be cast as a kind of social conservatism.

~~~
sitkack
As a leftist off of the numberline in Seattle, I can corroborate that thought
terminating groupthink is alive and well across the social spectrum.

------
Lagged2Death
ISTR that in the futuristic dystopia depicted in _V for Vendetta_ , there are
government spy cameras everywhere, including in people's bedrooms.

And it turns out that's not so futuristic. We're already there. The moment it
became technically (Edit: and really, economically) feasible to spy on
people's bedrooms, our governments leapt at the chance.

I wonder what Alan Moore would have to say about that. We didn't have to
experience a crisis of social, governmental, or financial instability. There
was no catalyzing meltdown that lead to this modern embrace of a new "soft"
totalitarianism. This is just the latest chapter in a steady progression of
increasing surveillance that can be traced back at least to the 1960s.

And it's a cinch that something like 51% of the general public will react just
as they have all along: "Well, if it's necessary to keep us safe..."

~~~
efuquen
>We didn't have to experience a crisis of social, governmental, or financial
instability.

September 11th and the London train bombings? No argument against how
disturbing this all is, but don't feel it's accurate to say this increased
surveillance wasn't caused by a crisis. It's all being done in the name of
preventing terrorism, significant acts of which have occurred in the last
decade both on US and UK soil.

So if anything, it's exactly like you stated, a traumatic event(s) has
resulted in government(s) taking unreasonable measures and expanding powers to
embrace a new "soft" totalitarianism.

~~~
user24
The London train bombings were nothing in comparison to the years of IRA
terrorism that London suffered.

The argument that "these are strange times and require a new class of
countermeasures" is exactly the lie they want to sell you.

~~~
DanBC
The UK was doing weird things with privacy back then too.

Special branch wanted an informer on every street. They infiltrated many
political groups and meetings.

Some groups were outlawed - we even prevented news organisations from
broadcasting the voices of some people leadingnto their video being dubbed by
actors.

------
rdl
This is from people actively webchatting, but in general, for passive
collection, I'm a lot more worried about my microphone than my camera. Even
without tape over the lens, my laptop usually just sees my face or a blank
wall, or a closed cover. It's not like I have my webcam aimed and lighted at
my bed or shower or whatever, and in general, the level of compromising
information from text or audio would be higher (sure, naked photos could be
embarrassing, but there's nothing particularly unique about them at the
national-security level).

I haven't heard much call for "physically disable microphone" switches,
though. If anything things have gotten worse with laptops; at least with
desktops it was pretty common to just not have a microphone connected. I
suspect 99% of laptops have a decent microphone built in, no indicator light,
etc.

~~~
oakwhiz
What we need are hardware switches which physically disconnect power and data
from the camera and microphone.

~~~
pera
afaik laptop webcams are usb, and mics are just two wires.. I always wanted to
use the useless bluetooth switch of my laptop to turn-off my cam and mic, it
seems pretty trivial

------
mindstab
Charlie Stross on the topic: [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2014/02/rule-34-...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2014/02/rule-34-meet-kafka.html)

'For starters, it turns out that 3-11% of Yahoo! webcam traffic involves
"undesirable nudity"'

"I am still trying to get my head around the implications that the British
government's equivalent of the NSA probably holds the world's largest
collection of pornographic videos, that the stash is probably contaminated
with seriously illegal material, and their own personnel can in principle be
charged and convicted of a strict liability offence if they try to do their
job. "

~~~
marvin
Not only a large collection of porn. A large collection of kiddie porn. Many
of those webcam users are underage.

------
route66
_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._

So, if you have to hide something, show your private parts. Can we conclude
this?

~~~
user24
Reminds me of this story, the googling of which is now in my search history so
I hope you're grateful.

"A US card cloner forced would-be gang members to take part in group sex
sessions as part of an initiation ceremony designed to weed out undercover
cops, according to a detective."

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/01/smut_initiation_card...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/01/smut_initiation_carder/)

~~~
trhway
Xander Cage: The things I'm gonna do for my country.

------
r0h1n
I hope one of the users wasn't Wendi Murdoch, otherwise (the then) UK Prime
Minister Tony Blair would have a LOT of answering to do [0].

>> The passionate note surfaced amid the flotsam of a shipwrecked marriage. It
was written in broken English by a woman to herself, pouring out her love for
a man called Tony. “Oh, shit, oh, shit,” she wrote. “Whatever why I’m so so
missing Tony. Because he is so so charming and his clothes are so good. He has
such good body and he has really really good legs Butt . . . And he is slim
tall and good skin. Pierce blue eyes which I love. Love his eyes. Also I love
his power on the stage . . . and what else and what else and what else . . . ”

>> The woman was Wendi Deng Murdoch, the Chinese wife of the Australian media
mogul Rupert Murdoch. The note, not revealed until now, could have been one of
the few pieces of evidence in their surprise divorce last year, had the case
come to trial. “Tony” was the former prime minister of Great Britain, Tony
Blair.

[0] [http://www.vanityfair.com/society/2014/03/wendi-deng-note-
to...](http://www.vanityfair.com/society/2014/03/wendi-deng-note-tony-blair)

~~~
grey-area
Imagine for a moment these two had secret chats over yahoo, Skype, text or
email, recorded by GCHQ and passed on to the NSA. Now imagine how much power
this would give anyone in possession of the damning evidence while Blair was
in power and deng still married. This is why we can't trust the gov. or spy
agencies with this sort of widespread surveillance - with it comes tremendous
power which is more damaging to our civil society than the threat of terrorism
ever will be.

------
nicholassmith
Potentially GCHQ could be sat on one of the largest private collections of
indecent images of people underage. The age range is liable to be 14-50, the
article says around 7% were of people doing naughty things on camera, even if
that tails off at the age extremes that's still a worrying thought.

Keeping a creepy eye on your junk, just in case you're a terrorist.

~~~
tomelders
I'll email the met and tip them off right now. Lets see how evenly we enforce
the law in this country.

~~~
nicholassmith
If it's anything other than no reply/boilerplate I'd be incredibly surprised,
one rule for us, another for the security services.

------
UnoriginalGuy
Technically this means that GCHQ likely have the single largest archive of
child porn in the world. It isn't exactly news that people from the ages of
12-17 are using video chat to share erotic images (e.g. SnapChat), and if GCHQ
is storing one snap every five minutes, they likely have billions of nudes of
people below the age of 18.

~~~
skeletonjelly
There was a comment on reddit that they are immune to these laws. Kind of
makes sense? I mean, if the police are investigating child porn, and take the
hard drive, they're not really going to be charged with possessing it. That's
my take at least.

------
sequoia
Wait a sec- is Yahoo Messenger video chat a common means of communication
between terrorists?

"Sidney, get on yahoo we have to discuss the subway bombing. Alright. Is your
webcam on? Come on we have to use the webcams- so much communication is
nonverbal! I just read this story on time.com about the importance of face to
face communication- it was really fascinat-- what? Oh alright back to the
bombing. But first turn your webcam on."

~~~
mcphilip
Well obviously "terrorists" hold up flash cards to their webcam containing all
the insidious plots and plans in written form! And think of the children?
"Terrorist" probably also routinely show each other child porn!!!

Seriously though, is there any channel of communication that the spooks won't
illegally snoop on?

------
fidotron
Snapchat must be target #1 for this program now. Blackmail material served up
on a plate.

People are going to seriously regret using Snapchat in later life.

~~~
JabavuAdams
Or we'll just come to accept that we know what the president elect's vagina
looks like.

The trend seems to be towards people not caring about exposure. You can't
blackmail someone who isn't embarrassed.

"Yeah, I ate a bunch of dicks on Saturday night and posted the photos. What?
Like you've never done that."

~~~
mortenjorck
I know it's tempting to see the younger generation as a sign of larger
cultural shifts, but the Baby Boomers were once a lot like the Millennials,
and one day the Millennials will be a lot like the Baby Boomers.

~~~
philwelch
Considering just how much the sexual revolution reversed itself after HIV
became well-known, Millennials are positively prudish compared to Boomers and
Gen X-ers at the same age.

~~~
pessimizer
Absolutely. The Millenials are like the Silent Generation:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Generation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Generation)

------
Rogerh91
I think every citizen in the Five Eyes network (AUS/NZ/CAN/UK/US) should send
letters to their elected official highlighting how concerned we are on the
issue of privacy. I'm based in Canada, and I'm already drafting an email to my
MP. I just don't think people can sit back at all now.

~~~
Rogerh91
Mr. Garneau,

My name's Roger, and I'm a constituent of your riding. I've had the pleasure
of meeting Margaret, and I want to thank you both and your team for the great
work you do for the riding.

I'm writing because with each passing day, revelations are getting worse and
worse about the surveillance capabilities of security agencies. Just today the
Guardian revealed that the GCHQ, our British allies, collect webcam recordings
en masse, including sexually explicit material shared between two consenting
individuals.

We know the Harper administration is stuck as being part and parcel of Five
Eyes, and that the CESC has conducted spying for the NSA, using Canada's good
name for nefarious purposes.

I write this in the hope that you are aware of this issue, and to inquire as
to what you and your party are doing with this regards, and what active
efforts you will be making in the future to shed awareness about this creeping
invasion on our privacy. As Canadians, we should be protected under Section 8
of the Charter with regards to reasonable expectation of privacy, but I do not
want this to constantly shift because security agencies continually push us
down the slippery slope Senator Church so eloquently warned Americans about
during the Church Committee:

"If this government ever became a tyrant, if a dictator ever took charge in
this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has
given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would
be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in
resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within
the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this
technology.

I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the
capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it
that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within
the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss.
That is the abyss from which there is no return."

Let me know how I can contribute to any efforts with this regards. I hope you
are well, and eagerly await any response you have on this topic.

~~~
pilgrim689
"We know the Harper administration is stuck as being part and parcel of Five
Eyes, and that the CESC has conducted spying for the NSA, using Canada's good
name for nefarious purposes."

Is it just the CSEC or both CSEC and CSIS? Why are we not hearing more about
the NSA-style violations made in Canada? I can't believe that we aren't
participating in all this...

------
zacinbusiness
I wonder what they are doing with all the d _#k pics? Making a database and
cross referencing them with d_ #k pics of known terrorists? To use in
conjunction with full body scanners at airports so they can more easily spot a
potential terrorist just by looking at their junk? Stranger things have
happened.

~~~
higherpurpose
What do you think? Anthony Weiner like situations. It was only news a few days
ago:

[https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-
manipula...](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-
manipulation/)

~~~
zacinbusiness
He should have used the Clinton defense. "Is that a picture of my d&@k? It
depends on what your definition of d&@k is."

~~~
wavefunction
That or "What are you talking about? Mine is humongous and girthy to boot!
(ladies)" _wink wink_

------
acqq
From one of the comments there:

"if someone (...) could explain why the line has always been "the metadata"
when it is obvious that mass interception of content has always been part of
the equation i would be grateful.

i would also be grateful if from now on every article relating to the NSA
scandal will mention that _fact that there is bulk collection of content._

i would also be grateful if from now on every time a public official is
questioned or quoted _the fact that content is collected in bulk is at the
forefront._

every article should contain _the fact that these agencies collect nude webcam
images in bulk from people who are not suspected of any crime._ "

~~~
computer
Let me take a stab at creative government-speak:

No, this is also metadata. They are only taking a screenshot every few
minutes, with as aim to get a clear picture of the face of the person
operating the computer. Just like an email header contains a From-address in
the content that's metadata, a webcam session contains the same metadata in
the form of these screenshots of people's faces.

They're not collecting the data, i.e. the moving webcam video + voice. They
have no idea what's being said. Just metadata.

~~~
user24
My attempt:

NSA: We categorically do not store any content.

subtext: _we_ don't, but GCHQ does and they let us search it.

That's the real insideousness of the whole five eyes thing. If it's illegal in
your country, just get another of the eyes to do it. You can truthfully deny
that you do it, while still reaping the benefits as if you had done it.
Disgusting subversion of controls that are there for good reasons.

------
kartikkumar
"Rather than collecting webcam chats in their entirety, the program saved one
image every five minutes from the users' feeds, partly to comply with human
rights legislation, and also to avoid overloading GCHQ's servers."

Ummm, "comply with human rights legislation" ... what? Are they implying that
they was a human rights watchdog involved that confirmed that their approach
was "legal"? Or, is the more likely case that they assume that their
activities are legal internally -> ergo we're fine to proceed? That phase in
itself is a HUGE red flag to me.

~~~
dTal
As I'm pretty sure there is no "human rights legislation" that states that
indiscriminate capturing of private video streams is bad unless you only
capture an image every 5 minutes, it's likely that technical restrictions are
the _only_ reason for the intermittancy - they even say how nice it would be
if they could capture everything. Oddly, the primary sources we've been shown
don't mention any human rights justification.

~~~
awor
It reminds me of the "disclaimers" you used to see on Mp3 hosting sites back
in the day

------
bsbechtel
Just a thought here....these stories get tons of coverage here on HN (and
rightly so), but at this point pretty much fall on deaf ears for the rest of
our population. Our media is too busy keeping everyone distracted with stories
about how a Coke Ad offended 0.000002% of the population and Russia's leaders
hate gay people. Nothing against the importance or validity of those stories,
but I would hope everyone reading this could agree that this is a bit more of
a priority and a far greater threat to everyone's future than those stories.
If anyone has any ideas or suggestions on how to push this to the forefront of
the mainstream media's agenda again, it would be great to hear them.

~~~
throwwit
I'd be happy if there was more discussion from 'coverage here on HN' that took
a solution based approach to the news. Not trying to be an apologist, but it
seems counterproductive arguing about all/nothing approaches, when it's
obvious governments are not going to condone blindspots.

~~~
bsbechtel
Could you expand on that? I'm not quite sure what you're getting at.

~~~
throwwit
I'm trying to get at how the issue has been in the media for months, and the
most recent technological solutions are to put sticky tape over the camera.
I'm surprised there hasn't been at least some protocol/algorithm proposed
wherein it's compartmentalized structure is amenable to judicial/democratic
process or whatever. Somebody's also gotta come up with something better than
VChip/Trusted Computing, and I don't see how media is going to lead to a
solution for that issue either.

------
jgroome
Think how many Yahoo Chat users are under 18. Now think how many candid photos
of those minors were taken and stored by this government agency.

------
spenvo
\-- Top comment on Reddit [0]:

'This clearly violates both EU and British law.

It's simple: Parliament and the CPS can no longer ignore GCHQ's abuses and the
entirely inadequate 'oversight' regime of the Intelligence and Security
Committee.

Brooks et al. go on trial for allegedly hacking celebrities' voicemail
messages, but Cabinet ministers walk free after approving secret suspicion-
less dragnet recording of millions of webcam chats? This precedent can't
stand. It's time we demand prison sentences for everyone who knew about this
and did nothing to stop it.

Relevant British law is the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, Part II,
Section 32 -- "Authorisation of Intrusive Surveillance":

[http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/section/32](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/section/32)

(2)Neither the Secretary of State nor any senior authorising officer shall
grant an authorisation for the carrying out of intrusive surveillance unless
he believes—

(a)that the authorisation is necessary on grounds falling within subsection
(3); and (b)that the authorised surveillance is proportionate to what is
sought to be achieved by carrying it out.

GCHQ's position was that, "...the general principle applied would be that if
the accuracy of the algorithm was such that it was useful to the analyst (ie,
[if] the number of spurious results was low, then it was likely to be
proportionate)".

But the entire point of requiring 'proportionality' is to exclude activities
which are useful, but too intrusive for the benefits gained. GCHQ's reasoning
that usefulness implies proportionality is clearly false. Time for a few
ministers to see the inside of a courtroom.'

\--

Without being an expert on the law (and ~99.999% of the people reading this
fall into the same bucket) -- I/we can assume that other clauses exist to
'defang'/'neuter' the clauses cited, the ones which were purportedly violated.
And this highlights another BIG issue: a law's true intent is oftentimes
indecipherable or outright deceitful.

Groundbreaking precedents have been set due to laws which were passed on false
pretenses (for ex., look up the genesis story of "eminent domain") - or simply
marketed as something misleading (ex. _Sen. Feinstein 's "FISA Improvements
Act")._ To me, that is the greatest form corruption in a democracy --
lawmaking with surreptitious intent.

While bills have to be massive in some circumstances (and interlinking by
their very nature) -- a standardized list of simple outcomes of said law
should be a requirement, and a bill should be "unit tested" the same way
programs are. Actually, behaviorally tested is a better phrase. We need a tool
for lawyers/lawmakers to help them express the consequences of a bill in a
_definitive_ manner. - Are there such initiatives? (please comment) Shouldn't
we start one? Has the idea been floated and shot down (at EFF/Demand
Progress/etc), and if so why? IMHO it would be worth the investment given the
stakes (understanding the consequences of bills and laws -- even spotting
excess/hidden "pork"). . I would love to read a bill as a series of behavioral
test assertions, wouldn't you! :)

>>> Hopefully the stated concerns don't apply; countless suits are brought
against all suspect parties (esp. high profile targets); and those responsible
are served justice to the maximum extent of the law. As the hum of document
shredders begins on 10 Downing Street - know that THIS is the opportunity to
"make an example out of" the type of people who are responsible for the system
as it exists today. It's our turn for a power play.

[0]
[http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1z33wx/uk_spy_age...](http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1z33wx/uk_spy_agency_intercepted_webcam_images_of/)

~~~
spenvo
DanBC has the better comment (currently below this one) - I'm not qualified to
respond, but it deserves one. Upvote him.

I just wanted to point out that (from their mobile sites) I couldn't find a
single story about this on CNN, FoxNews or MSNBC. (4:36pm CST)

Last time I made a fuss about the media I had Godwin's law and Occam's Razor
cited in replies/counters as why bias in the press is purely organic in
nature. As this story has 1800+ comments on the Guardian, reached the top of
Reddit (before it was removed) and is here at the top of HN, I would say that
the fact that there is barely (or 'no') coverage of this story points to an
invisible hand. To clarify: I didn't say "reporting" I said "coverage."

To not milk what is the most sensational story of the year is against the very
link-baity nature of these companies. While I don't watch cable news - I might
be VERY wrong in that arena, but something tells me I'm not. I can't attempt
to understand the forces at play, but they are there.

In other related (under-covered) news:
[http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/02/24/what-was-fcc-
news...](http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/02/24/what-was-fcc-newsroom-
survey-really-about/)

~~~
pyre
> points to an invisible hand

Or that the average US citizen (the market for those news corps) doesn't give
jack shit about it (not that this is a good thing). Netizens and UK citizens
don't factor into the equation for these companies.

~~~
spenvo
That's the simpler explanation, but Occam's Razor is a thin reed to lean on,
because simpler doesn't equate to correctness. Let's inspect: "the US market
doesn't give jack shit". But how would we know? The media hasn't even tried.

I imagine this would piss me off if I were a Rachael-Maddow-watching soccer
mom. Show anchors are hired for their ability to work up their viewers. Taking
pics of me in my underwear is a softball. Notice rasz_pl's comment below --
any producer worth a damn sees the potential in this scandal. So why is Brian
Williams not leading off with it on the Nightly News as he did with the
snoopware-webcam story from over a year ago? Who the fuck can tell me that?
Open your fucking eyes man, and start asking your own questions.

As for "this only pertains to UK citizens" \- this program wasn't limited to
the UK. In many ways, the UK spying on the US is more sensational.
Furthermore, the NSA and GCHQ have blurred the lines between jurisdictions. As
for "only netizens would care" \-- most people use the Internet. Yahoo is an
everyman portal. This is an egregious invasion of privacy. Who cares if you're
a netizen on this story? The story's content is not to blame either; general
viewership can be enraged about esoteric things too (a great ex. the "bridge
to nowhere" \- just think about it).

The US would care if the baby-boomer/mainstream media tried to cover it, at
all.

~~~
aaren
_The US would care if the baby-boomer /mainstream media tried, at all._

Exactly this. Making people care about an issue is entirely a question of
narrative. They aren't even narrating this story.

------
okasaki
> Yahoo reacted furiously to the webcam interception when approached by the
> Guardian.

That's pretty funny.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PRISM_Collection_Details....](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PRISM_Collection_Details.jpg)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Upstream-
slide.jpg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Upstream-slide.jpg)

~~~
lern_too_spel
Why? PRISM is about selected (targeted) collection of data from users that the
government has a court order for. Every country in the world does this. This
program collects data from traffic passing through the UK regardless of
whether the UK government has any reason to suspect the users whose data is
collected, let alone present those suspicions to a judge. Yahoo has every
reason to be outraged.

~~~
okasaki
I don't think those slides are talking about court order related activities.
After all, all companies must comply with court orders, so why would the NSA
single out the nine as their "current providers"?

~~~
lern_too_spel
As the companies have repeatedly explained and as the government's
declassified documents show, it's because the companies built systems to
automatically send new account data to the government for accounts under
court-ordered surveillance as new IMs, emails, etc. came in. This contrasts
with having an engineer manually send data dumps daily in some format the
government has to figure out how to parse.

~~~
okasaki
I don't believe that's true. Much of the controversy centered around the
(highly xenophobic) fact that the NSA was unable to guarantee that it wasn't
scooping up data belonging to US citizens. If this was only about court
ordered surveillence then surely it could have done so?

And second, I specifically remember that all nine companies immediately denied
the existence of the program. Then it became too big and it was time to
"explain it"? As Bush Jr. would say, fool me once...

~~~
lern_too_spel
You're confusing different programs. PRISM in particular is only court-ordered
surveillance of targeted users. That's what companies like Yahoo! participated
in without knowing the NSA's code name for it.

Limiting collection to non-Americans applies to bulk collection programs like
the email header collection for unencrypted email deliveries crossing national
borders and like this program. Those are programs the companies didn't know
about and are understandably outraged about.

------
ohazi
So up to now I've been operating under the assumption that anything I
transmit/receive over low-bandwidth, unencrypted channels such as email, IM,
sms, etc. are likely intercepted and stored forever dragnet-style.

I was also guessing that higher bandwidth channels such as voice chat, phone
calls, video conversations, etc. were likely intercepted more selectively
because of the difficulty of doing something like that en masse (and in the
case of phone calls, because of laws (ha)).

I'm starting to think that I've just been grossly naive.

~~~
lucb1e
If the internet has the collective capacity to transmit all this data,
intelligence agencies collectively have the capacity to intercept and store
it.

------
bsilvereagle
Wow. It concerns me that the latest Snowden leaks are more privacy invasive
than the first ones. What's next?

~~~
bediger4000
Also, every specific denial by Clapper and his supporters is getting refuted.
I'm interested in who will be revealed to be the victim of some compaign using
the porn-browsing habits, and what corporation(s) will be revealed to have
benefitted and been victimized by economic espionage.

------
mullingitover
The way these disclosures keep building in severity, it almost makes it seem
like Greenwald et al are preparing us for some truly horrific news. Something
along the lines of, "NSA and GCHQ have been using their agencies' resources to
alter the outcome of elections."

~~~
thisiswrong
Why would they need to do that? The mainstream media's role is to make people
politically apathetic and scared of terrorists™.

~~~
mindslight
Even though the outcome won't make a difference for the general population,
the individual parties are still competing against one another for who gets
the power for this term.

------
lucb1e
Everyone is going on about covering your webcam, but what if I actually want
to use it? I get to decide what is being sent over the network, but I still
don't get to decide what the GHCQ/NSA/AIVD see by interception. Another
example is Kinect, which must be turned on and uncovered because otherwise it
is obviously useless. What are we going to do about that?

I'm very much afraid that the real solution is probably a political one, not a
technical one.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _I 'm very much afraid that the real solution is probably a political one,
> not a technical one._

I disagree. You can trust strong enough crypto, at least to some reasonable
extent. You definitely _can 't trust_ politicians saying "nah, we're not
looking at it" (or anything else they might be saying).

~~~
userbinator
> _You can trust strong enough crypto, at least to some reasonable extent._

Only crypto where only _you_ and the one you're communicating with have the
keys; in other words, not the centralised CA model of SSL, nor "secure" boot,
nor any other implementation that relies on trusting some central faceless
entity that will say lots about "protecting your security and privacy" while
doing the exact opposite.

------
danbruc
What the hell is going on in this world? When did everybody loss their minds?
How can you even start to ponder if it might be a good idea to record web
chats from random internet users, even less actually do it? Mankind, I am
disgusted. Seriously disgusted.

~~~
collyw
The thing is, most people you meet on a daily basis are generally good people
(well the ones I meet are). Its the that arseholes seem to aspire to have
power and control over everyone else.

------
gommm
This kind of data would be tremendous treasure trove for future historians :-)
Imagine if we had this kind of data on previous periods, we'd be able to infer
a lot of how people behaved, what their pastime was, better understand the
fashion sense (or lack of it for certain photos apparently)...

More seriously, in a way, I think it's good that this happened because I hope
that it will be a wake up call to the public opinion so that we might avoid
living in a future with no rights to privacy. I'm really grateful that Snowden
made the sacrifices he did to give us those information.

It's amazing to think of the potential of blackmail over politicians these
kind of scheme would give...

~~~
PythonicAlpha
But what view will the historians get from us?

I fear, they will write, that the beginning 21st century was full of perverts!

What do they have from other centuries:

Goethe, Franklin, Hugo, ....

And from ours:

People that strip before the webcam??

------
upofadown
According to this random stackoverflow response, Yahoo video just uses JPEG
2000 compressed frames. If true then Yahoo chat is probably super easy to pick
individual frames from. That's likely why the GCHQ picked it for their
project...

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5257228/do-you-know-
what-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5257228/do-you-know-what-video-
codec-is-used-for-messengers)

There isn't really any new moral here; other than the idea that some
unprotected data is in a sense even more unprotected than other data.

~~~
makomk
If you're only picking frames out at relatively infrequent intervals like GCHQ
were, in most video formats it's relatively easy to find keyframes and save
those - by definition they're not going to depend on any other frames.

------
user24
This is why I have a piece of cardboard hanging over my webcam. That would
have seemed extremely paranoid last year.

~~~
rlwolfcastle
I hope you have unsoldered your microphone also.

~~~
user24
The mic issue is actually more worrying, but as you point out, there aren't
such easy solutions.

~~~
eliasmacpherson
Hacksaw a 1/4 inch jack, insert. Disable what you can at software level,
remove drivers/codecs for recording. Not easy though.

~~~
user24
"iMac has two built-in microphones"

[https://www.apple.com/imac/features/](https://www.apple.com/imac/features/)

So that won't work for me, sadly.

~~~
eliasmacpherson
i'm sure there are some environments that have strict no mic's requirements, i
wonder what they do to disable mic's on the iMac. Perhaps they don't use iMacs
or disable sound in the bios?

------
xster
During TechCrunch Disrupt, Marissa Mayer also prided herself in Yahoo being a
pioneer in fighting back surveillance.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-its-treason-
to-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-its-treason-to-ignore-
the-nsa-2013-9)

------
line-zero
So when are we going to make them stop doing things like this? Why haven't we
already??

~~~
cryoshon
How do you propose?

Political action has been ineffective so far.

~~~
neuralk
Has there been any political action in the UK yet? I'm American and hadn't
heard of any British politicians speaking out against GCHQ.

~~~
cryoshon
I'm not sure.

I know that in the USA the political action has been largely irrelevant and
low profile, though it has weakly galvanized politicians who were anti-NSA
before the leaks were even public knowledge.

------
rl3
_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._

Suddenly, those tinfoil-wearers within the Project Tango thread the other day
don't sound so crazy now.

------
DanielBMarkham
I continue to find it amazing that a "free people" are allowing this kind of
thing. No matter what the revelation, the big machine of internet data
collection keeps on a 'rollin down the tracks. Web companies harvest it, and
government skims what it wants off the top.

It's gotta stop, folks. It's just gotta stop. The scary thing isn't that we
continue to create some dystopian nightmare. The scary thing is that this
continues on and it doesn't matter; that we give up our privacy and anonymity
and become some other species than the one we started off the 21st century
being. (I mean that in a social behavioral sense, not that we grow new limbs
or something) This would be a profound change for the negative, making us more
like a beehive (with the associated single point of failure) that millions of
troupes of hominids with the distributed self-optimizing pattern of
improvement that model supports.

~~~
pirateking
Sounds exactly like the effect of omniscient surveillance on the human species
described in Childhood's End.

------
markyc
i wish i could chose from a wider range of laptops without camera and
microphone

i own an old hp like that and i love it

i never need the camera and when i need to skype i just plug the headphones

~~~
dec0dedab0de
Tape works really well for disabling webcams. Microphones are a bit trickier,
but if you're not against permanent damage shouldn't be too hard.

~~~
olifante
don't forget that any speaker can be reversed to function as a microphone. A
bit more annoying disabling that.

------
touristtam
What's the purpose of founding this kind of spying program? Do they expect to
find Al'Quaida' sbire among the average joe?

~~~
buro9
Facial recognition technology, combined with every camera on earth.

They are laying the foundations for a 24/7 ubiquitous and always-on
surveillance and tracking system.

The ultimately goal might be to use very little resources (humans, drones,
etc) yet achieve a near-omnipotent level of power and influence.

If they are able to conflate many such methods and systems into one sense of
intelligence, then their ability to target their resources effectively is
increased significantly.

Their priority isn't necessarily "you" as an individual, but it's "everyone"
so they can make sure nothing slips through their net.

~~~
touristtam
Sure, but in this end of the world, machine domination, and terminator like
scenario, they still need to convince us to use a webcam and a mic on the
computer.

~~~
buro9
Two things:

1) They grabbed these images just to test their image recognition.

2) Earlier leaks have already shown that cameras and microphones can be
accessed without user knowledge, and earlier defects in products show that the
light does not always come on for cameras.

You're imagining that they will ask for consent. They will not. You are
equipping yourself with a lot of sensors in a network connected device, and to
this they simply say "Thank you". Or would, except they're not going to say
anything.

------
doctorfoo
This terrifies me. This is the first revelation that has actually shocked me.
It goes even beyond what I considered conspiracy theory. And what terrifies me
even more, is my absolutely certainly, as a British citizen, that nothing will
change.

------
jstalin
I hope a cache of these photos leak to the public. Nothing finally gets people
out of their easy chairs like making it personal.

------
bayesianhorse
Don't the Brits have a constitution to protect their civil liberties?

Oh wait, they really don't have a constitution...

~~~
pbhjpbhj
UK has the rule of law, the ECHR (for example).

Would it matter if there were some other document making such things unlawful?
Do you think that if they had the protections of the ECHR but it was called a
constitution that GCHQ wouldn't have taken the same actions?

Lawyers may tell you the UK do have a constitution - I've never really
understood how that's true however.

------
sdfjkl
Related: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-
switch/wp/2013/12/18...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-
switch/wp/2013/12/18/research-shows-how-macbook-webcams-can-spy-on-their-
users-without-warning/)

------
tn13
This is a networked society fighting against government system designed to be
hierarchical and other way round. In my opinion one primary reason for this
that the governance model through Democracy is broken. We need to evolve to
something other than democracy.

------
draugadrotten
Will pay up to 744,000 BTC for this torrent. THXBYE.

------
codezero
This seems to add to my suspicion that the NSA broke or infiltrated XMPP.

~~~
mnordhoff
Secure XMPP communications just run over SSL, yeah? There was a report last
year that XMPP software often configures SSL _really badly_. It's been said
that NSA largely takes advantage of implementation bugs, not mathematical
breakthroughs; the XMPP ecosystem sure gives them the opportunity.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6344972](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6344972)

------
whyme
Makes me wonder why stories like this:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6107478](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6107478)

are so easily killed off on HN.

~~~
StefanKarpinski
Clearly because there's a vast conspiracy by the NSA to target HN readers. Or
because that was a stupid story.

------
hanswesterbeek
GCHQ is Britain's final stand in staying a player that is relevant globally.
It is clear that GCHQ is allowed a lot of leeway because the 'intelligence'
gathered keeps the British relevant in the eyes of (mainly) the NSA, which in
turn secures the British their seat at many a negotiation table.

What is ironic is that GCHQ is doing all this at the expense of the British
people, whose interest they should be serving.

------
PythonicAlpha
This clearly shows (should show) to anybody, that what is done here breaks not
only the law, but destroys the foundations of our (western) democracies.

------
MarcScott
I'd like the Met to investigate and see if any of the images constitute
paedophilia. If so, I see no reason why prosecutions should not follow.

------
Balgair
Obligatory: Call your reps and tell them you do not like this and ask what
they are going to do to fix it:
[http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml](http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml)

Democracy only works if you do.

------
acd
I think its strange when the Government say they want to protect us from
terrorists with the surveillance but in practice they are spying on 300+
german politicians and peoples private web cams.

------
leke
Now after every demonstration you attend, you can get a casual visit from the
police -- after they use software to compare the footage taken from street
cameras, with their web camera database.

------
jmnicolas
What's the goal of this ? Building a biometric faces database ?

------
vrikis
I don't even know what to think anymore...

------
benbojangles
No doubt it is used to discredit a target's reputation. I am ashamed to be
English, someone please help.

------
andyjohnson0
Time to invest in a stick-on sliding webcam cover. Fortunately, terrorists
would never think of such a thing.

------
roxtar
Yahoo didn't encrypt webcam traffic. Why is the outrage only at GCHQ?

------
dpacmittal
Now can we put charges on GCHQ for possession of child pornography?

------
alexeisadeski3
This news makes me feel so safe and protected from terrorists.

------
frenger
Disgusting. A new low. Who the fuck do you think you are, UK & USA? You do not
have the right to intrude the way you do.

~~~
tomelders
It's our governments, it's not us. I'm disgusted too, which is why I'm
reporting them to the police.

~~~
bencollier49
Can you report back on the results? I'd be very interested in finding out how
they respond. I think they _have_ to register a crime and give you a crime
number if you ask for one.

~~~
tomelders
will do, I'm currently looking at how best to report it but I'll post here
when it's done.

------
yiedyie
I am appalled, disgusted, I will read 30 articles and write 5 blog posts about
this obvious that.

Oohh, wait, you're saying... Ukraine, who's Ukraine?

------
glasz
sheeple... we won't change shit by talking shit on here.

------
Cbasedlifeform
GCHQ (and NSA) know what you did last summer. And spring, winter, and fall.

------
etanazir
Satan knows when you are naughty and nice; he's making a list and checking it
twice.

------
fit2rule
I honestly think it was deliberate. What class of Operating System developer
ships their OS releases without 100% CODE COVERAGE? Apple do code coverage
testing, surely? I mean, more than the "-warn-dead-code" args that get flung
around.

I can't understand how this would have gotten released into the wild if they
were doing industry-standard code coverage tests. And .. if they're _not_
doing industrial-strength code-coverage testing on their iOS/OSX release
builds, thats the _real news_ here ..

~~~
garethadams
I think you may have got the wrong story here

~~~
fit2rule
Thanks - I did indeed get the wrong story.

