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GCHQ intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users worldwide

theguardian.com

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Re: GCHQ intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users worldwide

#21

Post by grey-area »

r0h1n wrote: post #15

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…

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.

Re: GCHQ intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users worldwide

#22

Post by zacinbusiness »

route66 wrote: post #17

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,…

Nope. You need to show a males private parts. You know they were having a fap fest over at GHCQ.

Re: GCHQ intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users worldwide

#25

Post by josephlord »

StefanKarpinski wrote: post #19

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.

> 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).

Re: GCHQ intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users worldwide

#27

Post by StefanKarpinski »

josephlord wrote: post #25
StefanKarpinski wrote: post #19

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.

> 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 i…

Obviously, it's not a good thing, but is it really worse than recording all phone call metadata and phone call content?

Re: GCHQ intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users worldwide

#28

Post by user24 »

markyc wrote: post #7

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

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.

Re: GCHQ intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users worldwide

#29

Post by StefanKarpinski »

whyme wrote: post #26

Makes me wonder why stories like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6107478 are so easily killed off on HN.

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

Re: GCHQ intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users worldwide

#30

Post by user24 »

berberous wrote: post #24
user24 wrote: post #3

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

Anyone have any recommendations for a nicer looking manufactured version of this?

Yeah, I would like a nice one-piece aluminium thing instead of a cut-in-half loo roll!
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