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GCHQ hacking webcams

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  GCHQ hacking webcams Hils <hils@saynotospam.net> - 2014-02-27 18:09 +0000
    Re: GCHQ hacking webcams RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-02-28 15:38 +0000
      Re: GCHQ hacking webcams Hils <hils@saynotospam.net> - 2014-03-01 17:39 +0000
        Re: GCHQ hacking webcams Aragorn <thorongil@telenet.be.invalid> - 2014-03-01 19:06 +0100

#1048 — GCHQ hacking webcams

"Britain's surveillance agency GCHQ, with aid from the US National
Security Agency, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of
internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, secret documents reveal.

GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 explicitly state that a
surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected still images of
Yahoo webcam chats in bulk and saved them to agency databases,
regardless of whether individual users were an intelligence target or not.

In one six-month period in 2008 alone, the agency collected webcam
imagery – including substantial quantities of sexually explicit
communications – from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts
globally. [...]"

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/gchq-nsa-webcam-images-internet-yahoo

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#1100

On Thu, 27 Feb 2014 18:09:17 +0000
Hils <hils@saynotospam.net> wrote:

> GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 explicitly state that a
> surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected still images of
> Yahoo webcam chats in bulk and saved them to agency databases,
> regardless of whether individual users were an intelligence target or not.
> 
> In one six-month period in 2008 alone, the agency collected webcam
> imagery – including substantial quantities of sexually explicit
> communications – from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts
> globally. [...]"


This is pretty awful, so I'm glad it's getting picked up by the
mainstream press (it was on freaking Yahoo the other day, how much more
mainstream can it go?)  The world being what it is, I assume the
American government is probably doing the same and just hasn't gotten
busted yet?  I mean, what are the odds the NSA hasn't also been
watching you like a ceiling cat?

I'm imagining this is like a weirdo version of chatroulette where it's
just you, the other interlocutor, and some creepy government perv
watching you do nasty things.  How sexy.  Remember when some people
made an issue out of putting black tape over their web cam, and
everyone laughed at them for being paranoid maniacs?  Who's laughing
now, folks?

One more reason to buy a desktop and monitor - doesn't come with an
integrated webcam, unlike some laptops (most laptops?).

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#1123

On 2014-02-28 15:38, RS Wood wrote:
> I'm imagining this is like a weirdo version of chatroulette where it's
> just you, the other interlocutor, and some creepy government perv
> watching you do nasty things.  How sexy.  Remember when some people
> made an issue out of putting black tape over their web cam, and
> everyone laughed at them for being paranoid maniacs?  Who's laughing
> now, folks?

Ethically it's no different from upskirt cameras and the like, but as
it's being done by agents of the oligarchy, they get away with it. I
wonder if the spooks are building a library of compromising pictures for
later use if they want to discredit potential political opponents.

> One more reason to buy a desktop and monitor - doesn't come with an
> integrated webcam, unlike some laptops (most laptops?).

I run Debian, and the webcam on my laptop is of very poor quality. Next
time I take it on the train, I may stick some bright red opaque tape
over the camera as a kind of mission statement. :-)

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#1125

On Saturday 01 March 2014 18:39, Hils conveyed the following to 
comp.misc...

> On 2014-02-28 15:38, RS Wood wrote:
>
>> I'm imagining this is like a weirdo version of chatroulette where
>> it's just you, the other interlocutor, and some creepy government
>> perv watching you do nasty things.  How sexy.  Remember when some
>> people made an issue out of putting black tape over their web cam,
>> and everyone laughed at them for being paranoid maniacs?  Who's
>> laughing now, folks?
> 
> Ethically it's no different from upskirt cameras and the like, but as
> it's being done by agents of the oligarchy, they get away with it. I
> wonder if the spooks are building a library of compromising pictures
> for later use if they want to discredit potential political opponents.

I don't know whether the GCHQ are doing that, but the NSA certainly are, 
and that's a given.  The NSA use backdoors in Microsoft Windows to put 
objectionable pornography onto the computers of suspected dissidents of 
the oligarchy.  

Considering the similarities in lack of ethics between both alphabet 
soup agencies, I would imagine that the GCHQ might possibly be doing the 
same thing.

-- 
= Aragorn =

         http://www.linuxcounter.net - registrant #223157

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