Webcam images from more than 1.8 million accounts have reportedly been stored, according to a leaked. Yahoo had no knowledge of the agency taking and storing the images, and has described it as ‘a whole new level of violation of our users' privacy.’
The images were collected between 2008 and 2010 in a surveillance operation codenamed as Optic Nerve. Leaked documents revealed that the images are being used to track down organised crime, but at the expensive of the privacy of law-abiding citizens.
The leaked documents read: ‘Face detection has the potential to aid selection of useful images for 'mugshots' or even for face recognition by assessing the angle of the face… The best images are ones where the person is facing the camera with their face upright.’
The news comes as a concern for people who use their webcams for people who indulge in cybersex.
The document read: Unfortunately … it would appear that a surprising number of people use webcam conversations to show intimate parts of their body to the other person.
It continues: ‘Also, the fact that the Yahoo software allows more than one person to view a webcam stream without necessarily sending a reciprocal stream means that it appears sometimes to be used for broadcasting pornography.’
Nick Pickles from Big Brother Watch says GCHQ’s actions are ‘as creepy as it gets.’
He also called it an ‘indiscriminate and intimate intrusion on people’s privacy.’Conservative MP David Davis said that the storing of the images ‘exceeded even the worst Orwellian nightmare.’
He continued: ‘1.8m people were unknowingly filmed in just one six-month period. Filmed in their own homes in an absolute invasion of their privacy. Even in 1984 the citizen was aware that they were being watched.’
‘The technology is insidious in the extreme. GCHQ has legally created a vast database of ‘mug shots’ of mostly innocent people.