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GCHQ intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users worldwide

1122 points by callum85 13y ago

touristtam 13y ago
What's the purpose of founding this kind of spying program? Do they expect to find Al'Quaida' sbire among the average joe?
- buro9 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      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.
- tripzilch 13y ago
  the more I hear about this, the more I have to think it's just "because they're evil" and "because they can".
- wfn 13y ago
  > What's the purpose of founding this kind of spying program? Do they expect to find Al'Quaida' sbire among the average joe? I would suggest to finally drop the premise implied in these kinds of questions / indignation / etc.: that there's an actual purpose/principle (related in some or other way to the greater good and so on) which these systems are founded upon. I really think that there is no such thing. As cliche as it sounds, I believe it's simply about power (and power breeding more power, and all that.) This is the kind of framework which in some sense is at least meaningful and fruitful for discussion. Any moral ground on their side is a mere facade/veil/pretext (including for some level of self-deception/rationalization, sure), but its existence and use is purely instrumental.
- rasz_pl 13y ago
  You have porntube, they have this.
frenger 13y ago
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.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- dclowd9901 13y ago
  I don't want to see your dick, but I don't have a massively funded standing army or insane amounts of money to sway those who do. Like it or not, this is the reality of our world now: control belongs to paranoid career bureaucrats more interested in preserving their budgets than any measure of civil liberty.
- tomelders 13y ago
  It's our governments, it's not us. I'm disgusted too, which is why I'm reporting them to the police.
  - bencollier49 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      will do, I'm currently looking at how best to report it but I'll post here when it's done.
- gress 13y ago
  Yeah - terrible. Other governments do nothing of the sort.
  - liam_ja 13y ago
    The difference is these countries pride themselves on the freedoms their citizens possess, yet they go behind their backs and surveil everything and anything they can about them, usually using technologies and platforms their own citizens helped devise.
user24 13y ago
This is why I have a piece of cardboard hanging over my webcam. That would have seemed extremely paranoid last year.
- gmac 13y ago
  That may or not be paranoid, but it's not really on topic. The users in this case had were actively using their webcams and sending images over the Internet to chat partners.
  - user24 13y ago
    Yeah, in this case. It doesn't fill me with confidence that 'they' aren't remotely activating and recording images without our knowledge though. As to topicality, it depends how narrow your interpretation of the topic is.
    - higherpurpose 13y ago
      FBI has already done that for years in US. This is how they "protected us" - by not telling anyone about such bugs for years. How can you then trust anything they say about "cyber security"? They don't care about cyber security, only cyber offense. http://nypost.com/2013/12/08/fbi-can-turn-on-your-web-cam/ http://nypost.com/2013/12/08/fbi-can-turn-on-your-web-cam/
      - hengheng 13y ago
        Offense seems way easier and cheaper than defense. (I'd like to say similar things about US military operations.)
- rlwolfcastle 13y ago
  I hope you have unsoldered your microphone also.
  - user24 13y ago
bsilvereagle 13y ago
Wow. It concerns me that the latest Snowden leaks are more privacy invasive than the first ones. What's next?
- bediger4000 13y ago
  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.
- Asparagirl 13y ago
  The logical end result of the government's collecting people's calls and texts and web visits and nekkid photos is that the government will later use that data. So I would assume that one of the aces up Snowden's sleeve is documents with the specifics about how all this data was (is) used to blackmail people, including politicians -- although that would probably be something that the CIA actually carries out, whereas the NSA merely grabbed the data that makes it possible.
- almondsays 13y ago
  Boiling frog expirement?
markyc 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    don't forget that any speaker can be reversed to function as a microphone. A bit more annoying disabling that.
- user24 13y ago
  I wonder if having the webcam always on but piping to /dev/null would prevent a trojan from accessing it... I also wonder if plugging a 3rd party mic into line-in and switching it off would have a similar effect for the mic. You can never be sure unless your fix is physical.
  - tripzilch 13y ago
    well if plugging the disabled 3rd party mic somehow leaves the internal one recording, that would imply your soundcard just got upgraded to having the ability for two inputs recording simulataneously. usually cost a premium, such cards :)
    - user24 13y ago
      - unfortunately the iMac has two mics for noise reduction...
    - makomk 13y ago
      Unfortunately, input and output switching is usually implemented in software these days, so an attacker could probably just remotely switch to the internal mic on most laptops.
fidotron 13y ago
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.
- higherpurpose 13y ago
  It's okay, the CEO has said only he and another employee can access people's Snaps, right after they admitted they also allow authorities to see them [1]. Just pay no attention to the line of security bugs, and you should "feel" safe (unless you've got anything to hide, of course). 1- http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/15/snapchat-hands-snaps-pictures-to-federal-law-enforcement http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/15/snapchat-hands-...
- leobelle 13y ago
  Man, I think I'm going to turn off that auto-upload backup feature in Google+ now on my android phone. This stuff is so terrible, and for all their handwaving about not being in on it these companies are helpless to do anything about this stuff.
- JabavuAdams 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      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.
Rogerh91 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
line-zero 13y ago
So when are we going to make them stop doing things like this? Why haven't we already??
- cryoshon 13y ago
  How do you propose? Political action has been ineffective so far.
  - neuralk 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      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.
    - noir_lord 13y ago
      I'm in the UK and have been following this story pretty closely and I can't think of a single politician who has spoken about it never mind against it. I've seen the odd report (and it's very odd when they do report it indeed) on Newsnight where they had some mouthpiece using the "Oh in the wrong hands this would be dangerous but we are the right hands line" alongside the always popular "If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" and the fun "We stuck strictly within the framework we where told to".
    - jedifans 13y ago
      At the very least, I think Tom Watson MP will call this out.
vrikis 13y ago
I don't even know what to think anymore...
zacinbusiness 13y ago
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 13y ago
  What do you think? Anthony Weiner like situations. It was only news a few days ago: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipula...
  - zacinbusiness 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      That or "What are you talking about? Mine is humongous and girthy to boot! (ladies)" wink wink
r0h1n 13y ago
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-tony-blair http://www.vanityfair.com/society/2014/03/wendi-deng-note-to...
- grey-area 13y ago
  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.
route66 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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_carder/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/01/smut_initiation_card...
  - pavel_lishin 13y ago
    I read about something similar in a scifi novel; guess I have a pretty good idea about where the author got the idea.
  - trhway 13y ago
    Xander Cage: The things I'm gonna do for my country.
- zacinbusiness 13y ago
  Nope. You need to show a males private parts. You know they were having a fap fest over at GHCQ.
  - tripzilch 13y ago
    crude, but probably very true. just remember that confessions of a TSA agent blog. I can't imagine it would be any different (if not worse, because the people aren't actually present).
StefanKarpinski 13y ago
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.
- josephlord 13y ago
  > webcam stills may be the least important (or useful) spying the US and UK have been doing It ties individuals faces to online accounts and computers and possibly addresses. Especially combined with increasing amounts of CCTV it removes further anonymity. I was also disturbed by the "dissemination of offensive images is a disciplinary offence" statement which implied that was not the case for other images and that it is only a disciplinary offence rather than a criminal one (misconduct in public office if there isn't anything else).
  - StefanKarpinski 13y ago
    Obviously, it's not a good thing, but is it really worse than recording all phone call metadata and phone call content?
    - davepage 13y ago
      Yes, because for political purposes, a compromising photo has far better blackmail value than other data.
      - StefanKarpinski 13y ago
        But you can't use that blackmail tool without revealing that you were spying illegally. Revealing that would be worse for the blackmailer than the blackmailee.
        kzrdude 13y ago
whyme 13y ago
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 13y ago
  Clearly because there's a vast conspiracy by the NSA to target HN readers. Or because that was a stupid story.
fit2rule 13y ago
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 13y ago
  I think you may have got the wrong story here
  - fit2rule 13y ago
    Thanks - I did indeed get the wrong story.
nicholassmith 13y ago
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 13y ago
  I'll email the met and tip them off right now. Lets see how evenly we enforce the law in this country.
  - nicholassmith 13y ago
    If it's anything other than no reply/boilerplate I'd be incredibly surprised, one rule for us, another for the security services.
- SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
  > GCHQ could be sat on one of the largest private collections of indecent images of people underage Most likely yes. It has been pointed out that under the UK's tough anti-child-porn laws, there is no way that this is legal. Edit: more details on that from Mr. CStross: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/02/rule-34-meet-kafka.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/02/rule-34-...
draugadrotten 13y ago
Will pay up to 744,000 BTC for this torrent. THXBYE.
gommm 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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??
jmnicolas 13y ago
What's the goal of this ? Building a biometric faces database ?
Lagged2Death 13y ago
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 13y ago
  >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.
  - smoorman1024 13y ago
    Hey efuquen we pretty much wrote the same thing at the same time. We should be friends. In all honesty, we need to ask ourselves what we can practically do within the current framework that can push the government towards what we want. Less surveillance and civilian oversight of the intelligence community.
  - Lagged2Death 13y ago
    September 11th and the London train bombings? I don't think so. I did once, but I don't anymore. Huge, bloodthirsty, spectacular acts of terrorism were older than those attacks, and those attacks didn't threaten the stability of the societies or governments in question in the slightest. The tendency of English-speaking governments to use sweeping, untargeted surveillance to curb political activism or otherwise mold public opinion and behavior is older than those attacks, too. They spied on MLK and peace activists during Vietnam, not because they were threats to security but because they were threats to the spies' own political convictions, more or less. What has really changed in the last 15 years or so is that its now economically feasible to spy on everyone, all the time, partially because the spied-on voluntarily fund the most expensive part of the equipment (their own webcams, cellphones, cars, laptops, ISP connections, etc). So governments are doing it. Something like 9/11 provides a handy excuse, maybe, but I've come to think it's naive to accept that as the real reason. I believe we would find ourselves in this position with or without 9/11.
andyjohnson0 13y ago
Time to invest in a stick-on sliding webcam cover. Fortunately, terrorists would never think of such a thing.
UnoriginalGuy 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
okasaki 13y ago
> 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.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PRISM_Collection_Details.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Upstream-slide.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Upstream-slide.jpg
- lern_too_spel 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      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 13y ago
        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...
sdfjkl 13y ago
Related: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/18/research-shows-how-macbook-webcams-can-spy-on-their-users-without-warning/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/18...
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
kartikkumar 13y ago
"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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    It reminds me of the "disclaimers" you used to see on Mp3 hosting sites back in the day
rdl 13y ago
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.
- TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
  Oh wow. That's a good point. And my MacBook lights an LED when my webcam's active, but it doesn't for the microphone. Perhaps it should?
  - UnoriginalGuy 13y ago
    The LED light on the webcam is bypass-able. On many cheap laptops it is controlled in software (at the kernel level), but even on Macs where it is meant to be hardware enforced it can be bypassed: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/18/research-shows-how-macbook-webcams-can-spy-on-their-users-without-warning/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/18... Disabling the camera LED is a fairly standard feature in malware suites. Even a lot of USB webcams control the LED from software. The LED is just a feel-good feature.
    - TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
      Yes. It could be done better in hardware.
    - tripzilch 13y ago
      my laptop (Asus EEE 1215B) happens to have a physical slider that goes in front of the webcam (it also happens to be a bit loose and the tendency to slide to the "open" position if I pack it in my bags .. hmmmm ...). however the point about the mic stands.
leke 13y ago
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.
jgroome 13y ago
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.
- GameOfTrolls 13y ago
  link2pics or it didn't ha...
TempleOSV2 13y ago
KNow what's funny? They shot at God. God said to restore the respect people had before they started a war against God. God says... unemployment couldn't_be_better vote it_figures why_do_I_put_up_with_this adultery baffling food ice_cream how_goes_it I_didn't_see_that no_more_tears what's_up what_do_you_want mission_from_God Dean_scream as_a_matter_of_fact atrocious on_occassion do_over whoop_there_it_is I'm_busy quit_it do_it it'd_take_a_miracle I_forgot be_quiet_bird hold_on_a_minute oh_oh small_talk middle_class C:\TAD\Text\YANKEE.TXT ur bulletin-board, '_Patronized by the elect_.' How does that strike you?" "Verily, it is wonderly bethought!" "Well, a body is bound to admit that for just a modest little one-line ad, it's a corker." So the poor colporteur's griefs vanished away. He was a brave fellow, and had done mighty feats of arms in his time. His chief celebrity rested upon the events of an excursion like this one of mine, which he had once made with a damsel named Maledisant, who was as handy with her tongue as w
lucb1e 13y ago
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 13y ago
  > 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).
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  - userbinator 13y ago
    > 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.
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bayesianhorse 13y ago
Don't the Brits have a constitution to protect their civil liberties? Oh wait, they really don't have a constitution...
- pbhjpbhj 13y ago
  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.
- noir_lord 13y ago
  We don't have a constitution like the one the US has which has protected them so well against the NSA alas.
bsbechtel 13y ago
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.
- bsbechtel 13y ago
  As a side note....I am sure many here have shared these stories on their own social media outlets. Not sure about others' circles of friends, but outside of tech circles most people seem pretty disengaged. I think that's because most people feel like they can't do much to change anything, so they don't try. Addressing that problem...I'm not sure what can be done to get others more engaged and feeling like they have a voice. I highly doubt any Senators or Congressmen are reading HN News on a regular basis...
- throwwit 13y ago
  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.
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  - bsbechtel 13y ago
    Could you expand on that? I'm not quite sure what you're getting at.
    - throwwit 13y ago
acqq 13y ago
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."
- tripzilch 13y ago
  it was paced like this to make the nay-sayers claiming "there's no such thing, no bulk collection, just metadata, no proof otherwise" over the past few months lose their face. which includes quite a few HN commenters, btw.
- computer 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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.
sequoia 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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?
- CamperBob2 13y ago
  Intelligence agencies are basically drunks looking for their lost car keys under the street lamp, because that's where the light is. "A bunch of useless wankers," I believe the British would say, if they cared enough to say anything.
Cbasedlifeform 13y ago
GCHQ (and NSA) know what you did last summer. And spring, winter, and fall.
mindstab 13y ago
Charlie Stross on the topic: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/02/rule-34-meet-kafka.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/02/rule-34-... '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 13y ago
  Not only a large collection of porn. A large collection of kiddie porn. Many of those webcam users are underage.
- aaren 13y ago
  " It does, however, suggest to me that the savvy Al Qaida conspirators of the next decade will hold their covert meetings in the nude, on Yahoo! video chat, while furiously masturbating. "
danbruc 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
codezero 13y ago
This seems to add to my suspicion that the NSA broke or infiltrated XMPP.
- mnordhoff 13y ago
  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
upofadown 13y ago
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-video-codec-is-used-for-messengers http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5257228/do-you-know-what-... 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 13y ago
  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.
xster 13y ago
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-ignore-the-nsa-2013-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-its-treason-to-...
jstalin 13y ago
I hope a cache of these photos leak to the public. Nothing finally gets people out of their easy chairs like making it personal.
spenvo 13y ago
-- 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_agency_intercepted_webcam_images_of/ http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1z33wx/uk_spy_age...
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alexeisadeski3 13y ago
This news makes me feel so safe and protected from terrorists.
ohazi 13y ago
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 13y ago
  If the internet has the collective capacity to transmit all this data, intelligence agencies collectively have the capacity to intercept and store it.
DanielBMarkham 13y ago
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 13y ago
  Sounds exactly like the effect of omniscient surveillance on the human species described in Childhood's End.
mullingitover 13y ago
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."
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- thisiswrong 13y ago
  Why would they need to do that? The mainstream media's role is to make people politically apathetic and scared of terrorists™.
  - mindslight 13y ago
    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.
MarcScott 13y ago
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.
acd 13y ago
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.
rl3 13y ago
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.
yiedyie 13y ago
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?
yiedyie 13y ago
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?
etanazir 13y ago
Satan knows when you are naughty and nice; he's making a list and checking it twice.
doctorfoo 13y ago
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.
PythonicAlpha 13y ago
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.
tn13 13y ago
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.
Balgair 13y ago
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.
glasz 13y ago
sheeple... we won't change shit by talking shit on here.
benbojangles 13y ago
No doubt it is used to discredit a target's reputation. I am ashamed to be English, someone please help.
hanswesterbeek 13y ago
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.
roxtar 13y ago
Yahoo didn't encrypt webcam traffic. Why is the outrage only at GCHQ?
dpacmittal 13y ago
Now can we put charges on GCHQ for possession of child pornography?
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1122 points by callum85 13y ago

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

buro9 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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.
tripzilch 13y ago
the more I hear about this, the more I have to think it's just "because they're evil" and "because they can".
wfn 13y ago
> What's the purpose of founding this kind of spying program? Do they expect to find Al'Quaida' sbire among the average joe? I would suggest to finally drop the premise implied in these kinds of questions / indignation / etc.: that there's an actual purpose/principle (related in some or other way to the greater good and so on) which these systems are founded upon. I really think that there is no such thing. As cliche as it sounds, I believe it's simply about power (and power breeding more power, and all that.) This is the kind of framework which in some sense is at least meaningful and fruitful for discussion. Any moral ground on their side is a mere facade/veil/pretext (including for some level of self-deception/rationalization, sure), but its existence and use is purely instrumental.
rasz_pl 13y ago
You have porntube, they have this.

frenger 13y ago

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.

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dclowd9901 13y ago
I don't want to see your dick, but I don't have a massively funded standing army or insane amounts of money to sway those who do. Like it or not, this is the reality of our world now: control belongs to paranoid career bureaucrats more interested in preserving their budgets than any measure of civil liberty.
tomelders 13y ago
It's our governments, it's not us. I'm disgusted too, which is why I'm reporting them to the police.
- bencollier49 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    will do, I'm currently looking at how best to report it but I'll post here when it's done.
gress 13y ago
Yeah - terrible. Other governments do nothing of the sort.
- liam_ja 13y ago
  The difference is these countries pride themselves on the freedoms their citizens possess, yet they go behind their backs and surveil everything and anything they can about them, usually using technologies and platforms their own citizens helped devise.

user24 13y ago

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

gmac 13y ago
That may or not be paranoid, but it's not really on topic. The users in this case had were actively using their webcams and sending images over the Internet to chat partners.
- user24 13y ago
  Yeah, in this case. It doesn't fill me with confidence that 'they' aren't remotely activating and recording images without our knowledge though. As to topicality, it depends how narrow your interpretation of the topic is.
  - higherpurpose 13y ago
    FBI has already done that for years in US. This is how they "protected us" - by not telling anyone about such bugs for years. How can you then trust anything they say about "cyber security"? They don't care about cyber security, only cyber offense. http://nypost.com/2013/12/08/fbi-can-turn-on-your-web-cam/ http://nypost.com/2013/12/08/fbi-can-turn-on-your-web-cam/
    - hengheng 13y ago
      Offense seems way easier and cheaper than defense. (I'd like to say similar things about US military operations.)
rlwolfcastle 13y ago
I hope you have unsoldered your microphone also.
- user24 13y ago

bsilvereagle 13y ago

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

bediger4000 13y ago
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.
Asparagirl 13y ago
The logical end result of the government's collecting people's calls and texts and web visits and nekkid photos is that the government will later use that data. So I would assume that one of the aces up Snowden's sleeve is documents with the specifics about how all this data was (is) used to blackmail people, including politicians -- although that would probably be something that the CIA actually carries out, whereas the NSA merely grabbed the data that makes it possible.
almondsays 13y ago
Boiling frog expirement?

markyc 13y ago

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 13y ago
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 13y ago
  don't forget that any speaker can be reversed to function as a microphone. A bit more annoying disabling that.
user24 13y ago
I wonder if having the webcam always on but piping to /dev/null would prevent a trojan from accessing it... I also wonder if plugging a 3rd party mic into line-in and switching it off would have a similar effect for the mic. You can never be sure unless your fix is physical.
- tripzilch 13y ago
  well if plugging the disabled 3rd party mic somehow leaves the internal one recording, that would imply your soundcard just got upgraded to having the ability for two inputs recording simulataneously. usually cost a premium, such cards :)
  - user24 13y ago
    - unfortunately the iMac has two mics for noise reduction...
  - makomk 13y ago
    Unfortunately, input and output switching is usually implemented in software these days, so an attacker could probably just remotely switch to the internal mic on most laptops.

fidotron 13y ago

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.

higherpurpose 13y ago
It's okay, the CEO has said only he and another employee can access people's Snaps, right after they admitted they also allow authorities to see them [1]. Just pay no attention to the line of security bugs, and you should "feel" safe (unless you've got anything to hide, of course). 1- http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/15/snapchat-hands-snaps-pictures-to-federal-law-enforcement http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/15/snapchat-hands-...
leobelle 13y ago
Man, I think I'm going to turn off that auto-upload backup feature in Google+ now on my android phone. This stuff is so terrible, and for all their handwaving about not being in on it these companies are helpless to do anything about this stuff.
JabavuAdams 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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.

Rogerh91 13y ago

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 13y ago
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.

line-zero 13y ago

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

cryoshon 13y ago
How do you propose? Political action has been ineffective so far.
- neuralk 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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.
  - noir_lord 13y ago
    I'm in the UK and have been following this story pretty closely and I can't think of a single politician who has spoken about it never mind against it. I've seen the odd report (and it's very odd when they do report it indeed) on Newsnight where they had some mouthpiece using the "Oh in the wrong hands this would be dangerous but we are the right hands line" alongside the always popular "If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" and the fun "We stuck strictly within the framework we where told to".
  - jedifans 13y ago
    At the very least, I think Tom Watson MP will call this out.

vrikis 13y ago

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

zacinbusiness 13y ago

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 13y ago
What do you think? Anthony Weiner like situations. It was only news a few days ago: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipula...
- zacinbusiness 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    That or "What are you talking about? Mine is humongous and girthy to boot! (ladies)" wink wink

r0h1n 13y ago

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-tony-blair http://www.vanityfair.com/society/2014/03/wendi-deng-note-to...

grey-area 13y ago
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.

route66 13y ago

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 13y ago
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_carder/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/01/smut_initiation_card...
- pavel_lishin 13y ago
  I read about something similar in a scifi novel; guess I have a pretty good idea about where the author got the idea.
- trhway 13y ago
  Xander Cage: The things I'm gonna do for my country.
zacinbusiness 13y ago
Nope. You need to show a males private parts. You know they were having a fap fest over at GHCQ.
- tripzilch 13y ago
  crude, but probably very true. just remember that confessions of a TSA agent blog. I can't imagine it would be any different (if not worse, because the people aren't actually present).

StefanKarpinski 13y ago

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.

josephlord 13y ago
> webcam stills may be the least important (or useful) spying the US and UK have been doing It ties individuals faces to online accounts and computers and possibly addresses. Especially combined with increasing amounts of CCTV it removes further anonymity. I was also disturbed by the "dissemination of offensive images is a disciplinary offence" statement which implied that was not the case for other images and that it is only a disciplinary offence rather than a criminal one (misconduct in public office if there isn't anything else).
- StefanKarpinski 13y ago
  Obviously, it's not a good thing, but is it really worse than recording all phone call metadata and phone call content?
  - davepage 13y ago
    Yes, because for political purposes, a compromising photo has far better blackmail value than other data.
    - StefanKarpinski 13y ago
      But you can't use that blackmail tool without revealing that you were spying illegally. Revealing that would be worse for the blackmailer than the blackmailee.
      - kzrdude 13y ago

whyme 13y ago

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 13y ago
Clearly because there's a vast conspiracy by the NSA to target HN readers. Or because that was a stupid story.

fit2rule 13y ago

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 13y ago
I think you may have got the wrong story here
- fit2rule 13y ago
  Thanks - I did indeed get the wrong story.

nicholassmith 13y ago

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 13y ago
I'll email the met and tip them off right now. Lets see how evenly we enforce the law in this country.
- nicholassmith 13y ago
  If it's anything other than no reply/boilerplate I'd be incredibly surprised, one rule for us, another for the security services.
SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
> GCHQ could be sat on one of the largest private collections of indecent images of people underage Most likely yes. It has been pointed out that under the UK's tough anti-child-porn laws, there is no way that this is legal. Edit: more details on that from Mr. CStross: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/02/rule-34-meet-kafka.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/02/rule-34-...

draugadrotten 13y ago

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

gommm 13y ago

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 13y ago
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??

jmnicolas 13y ago

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

Lagged2Death 13y ago

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 13y ago
>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.
- smoorman1024 13y ago
  Hey efuquen we pretty much wrote the same thing at the same time. We should be friends. In all honesty, we need to ask ourselves what we can practically do within the current framework that can push the government towards what we want. Less surveillance and civilian oversight of the intelligence community.
- Lagged2Death 13y ago
  September 11th and the London train bombings? I don't think so. I did once, but I don't anymore. Huge, bloodthirsty, spectacular acts of terrorism were older than those attacks, and those attacks didn't threaten the stability of the societies or governments in question in the slightest. The tendency of English-speaking governments to use sweeping, untargeted surveillance to curb political activism or otherwise mold public opinion and behavior is older than those attacks, too. They spied on MLK and peace activists during Vietnam, not because they were threats to security but because they were threats to the spies' own political convictions, more or less. What has really changed in the last 15 years or so is that its now economically feasible to spy on everyone, all the time, partially because the spied-on voluntarily fund the most expensive part of the equipment (their own webcams, cellphones, cars, laptops, ISP connections, etc). So governments are doing it. Something like 9/11 provides a handy excuse, maybe, but I've come to think it's naive to accept that as the real reason. I believe we would find ourselves in this position with or without 9/11.

andyjohnson0 13y ago

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

UnoriginalGuy 13y ago

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 13y ago
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.

okasaki 13y ago

> 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.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PRISM_Collection_Details.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Upstream-slide.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Upstream-slide.jpg

lern_too_spel 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      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...

sdfjkl 13y ago

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

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kartikkumar 13y ago

"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 13y ago
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 13y ago
  It reminds me of the "disclaimers" you used to see on Mp3 hosting sites back in the day

rdl 13y ago

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.

TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
Oh wow. That's a good point. And my MacBook lights an LED when my webcam's active, but it doesn't for the microphone. Perhaps it should?
- UnoriginalGuy 13y ago
  The LED light on the webcam is bypass-able. On many cheap laptops it is controlled in software (at the kernel level), but even on Macs where it is meant to be hardware enforced it can be bypassed: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/18/research-shows-how-macbook-webcams-can-spy-on-their-users-without-warning/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/18... Disabling the camera LED is a fairly standard feature in malware suites. Even a lot of USB webcams control the LED from software. The LED is just a feel-good feature.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
    Yes. It could be done better in hardware.
  - tripzilch 13y ago
    my laptop (Asus EEE 1215B) happens to have a physical slider that goes in front of the webcam (it also happens to be a bit loose and the tendency to slide to the "open" position if I pack it in my bags .. hmmmm ...). however the point about the mic stands.

leke 13y ago

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.

jgroome 13y ago

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.

GameOfTrolls 13y ago
link2pics or it didn't ha...

TempleOSV2 13y ago

KNow what's funny? They shot at God. God said to restore the respect people had before they started a war against God. God says... unemployment couldn't_be_better vote it_figures why_do_I_put_up_with_this adultery baffling food ice_cream how_goes_it I_didn't_see_that no_more_tears what's_up what_do_you_want mission_from_God Dean_scream as_a_matter_of_fact atrocious on_occassion do_over whoop_there_it_is I'm_busy quit_it do_it it'd_take_a_miracle I_forgot be_quiet_bird hold_on_a_minute oh_oh small_talk middle_class C:\TAD\Text\YANKEE.TXT ur bulletin-board, '_Patronized by the elect_.' How does that strike you?" "Verily, it is wonderly bethought!" "Well, a body is bound to admit that for just a modest little one-line ad, it's a corker." So the poor colporteur's griefs vanished away. He was a brave fellow, and had done mighty feats of arms in his time. His chief celebrity rested upon the events of an excursion like this one of mine, which he had once made with a damsel named Maledisant, who was as handy with her tongue as w

lucb1e 13y ago

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 13y ago
> 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).
- deleted 13y ago
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- userbinator 13y ago
  > 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.
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bayesianhorse 13y ago

Don't the Brits have a constitution to protect their civil liberties? Oh wait, they really don't have a constitution...

pbhjpbhj 13y ago
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.
noir_lord 13y ago
We don't have a constitution like the one the US has which has protected them so well against the NSA alas.

bsbechtel 13y ago

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.

bsbechtel 13y ago
As a side note....I am sure many here have shared these stories on their own social media outlets. Not sure about others' circles of friends, but outside of tech circles most people seem pretty disengaged. I think that's because most people feel like they can't do much to change anything, so they don't try. Addressing that problem...I'm not sure what can be done to get others more engaged and feeling like they have a voice. I highly doubt any Senators or Congressmen are reading HN News on a regular basis...
throwwit 13y ago
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.
- deleted 13y ago
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- bsbechtel 13y ago
  Could you expand on that? I'm not quite sure what you're getting at.
  - throwwit 13y ago

acqq 13y ago

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."

tripzilch 13y ago
it was paced like this to make the nay-sayers claiming "there's no such thing, no bulk collection, just metadata, no proof otherwise" over the past few months lose their face. which includes quite a few HN commenters, btw.
computer 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.

sequoia 13y ago

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 13y ago
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?
CamperBob2 13y ago
Intelligence agencies are basically drunks looking for their lost car keys under the street lamp, because that's where the light is. "A bunch of useless wankers," I believe the British would say, if they cared enough to say anything.

Cbasedlifeform 13y ago

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

mindstab 13y ago

Charlie Stross on the topic: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/02/rule-34-meet-kafka.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/02/rule-34-... '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 13y ago
Not only a large collection of porn. A large collection of kiddie porn. Many of those webcam users are underage.
aaren 13y ago
" It does, however, suggest to me that the savvy Al Qaida conspirators of the next decade will hold their covert meetings in the nude, on Yahoo! video chat, while furiously masturbating. "

danbruc 13y ago

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 13y ago
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.

codezero 13y ago

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

mnordhoff 13y ago
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

upofadown 13y ago

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-video-codec-is-used-for-messengers http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5257228/do-you-know-what-... 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 13y ago
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.

xster 13y ago

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

jstalin 13y ago

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

spenvo 13y ago

-- 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_agency_intercepted_webcam_images_of/ http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1z33wx/uk_spy_age...

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alexeisadeski3 13y ago

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

ohazi 13y ago

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 13y ago
If the internet has the collective capacity to transmit all this data, intelligence agencies collectively have the capacity to intercept and store it.

DanielBMarkham 13y ago

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 13y ago
Sounds exactly like the effect of omniscient surveillance on the human species described in Childhood's End.

mullingitover 13y ago

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."

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thisiswrong 13y ago
Why would they need to do that? The mainstream media's role is to make people politically apathetic and scared of terrorists™.
- mindslight 13y ago
  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.

MarcScott 13y ago

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.

acd 13y ago

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.

rl3 13y ago

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.

yiedyie 13y ago

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?

yiedyie 13y ago

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?

etanazir 13y ago

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

doctorfoo 13y ago

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.

PythonicAlpha 13y ago

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.

tn13 13y ago

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.

Balgair 13y ago

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.

glasz 13y ago

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

benbojangles 13y ago

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

hanswesterbeek 13y ago

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.

roxtar 13y ago

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

dpacmittal 13y ago

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

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