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 take it you're not a very big Xbox One fan, then?
GCHQ intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users worldwide
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Re: GCHQ intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users worldwide
#52I 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.
What do you think? Anthony Weiner like situations. It was only news a few days ago: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipula...
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."
Re: GCHQ intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users worldwide
#53I 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-cov…
I think you may have got the wrong story here
Re: GCHQ intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users worldwide
#54ISTR 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..."
Re: GCHQ intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users worldwide
#55Snapchat 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.
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.
Re: GCHQ intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users worldwide
#56The 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,…
Statistically speaking, it is now very probable that the GCHQ has collected a huge collection of materials classified as "pornography" (as in, naked people showing themselves on webcams to each other, believing that this is a private session; apparently this is a thing). Again, statistically speaking, a significant percentage of this is likely to be classified as "child pornography" (as in, teenagers doing the above). Therefore, does it follow that GCHQ thinks of the children, and not in a good way?
Re: GCHQ intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users worldwide
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, because for political purposes, a compromising photo has far better blackmail value than other data.
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.
Can't you get a tabloid to print it and give the source a cover story?
Re: GCHQ intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users worldwide
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, because for political purposes, a compromising photo has far better blackmail value than other data.
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.
Well, if a security service decides it needs to blackmail someone, they're hardly going to send them a letter on official letterhead. In this case I imagine they'd pretend to be something like a small hacking group, infiltrating individual webcams arbitrarily/opportunistically. Something like that.
Re: GCHQ intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users worldwide
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
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.
Re: GCHQ intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users worldwide
#60The 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,…
Statistically speaking, it is now very probable that the GCHQ has collected a huge collection of materials classified as "pornography" (as in, naked people showing themselves on webcams to each other, believing that this is a private session; apparently this is a thing). Again, statistically speaking, a significant percentage of this is likely to be classified as "child pornography" (as in, teenagers doing the above)…
It's just data that can be used for blackmailing, trashing, etc.