Smile, GCHQ is watching you

Even doing sexy things in front of your webcam?
No, not me, don't worry I turned it off.
Yes, worry, that doesn't make a difference, they can turn it on again without the little telltale light! They ARE watching you!

 It used to be that encouraging someone to tape up their webcam to keep the government from watching would sound like the paranoid advice of a conspiracy loon. Well, it might be time to bust out that tinfoil hat. In another discomforting development concerning governmental snooping, the Guardian has revealed that British Intelligence agency GCHQ, in cooperation with our friends at the NSA, have been watching and recording the webcam images of millions upon millions of users of Yahoo’s video chat service.

The program, called Optic Nerve, was started in 2008 and remained active into 2012, according to documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The bulk images include many of a sexual nature, which the documents reveal were hard to keep GCHQ staffers from gawking at. The NSA has restrictions (for what that’s worth) on the kind of data they can gather on American citizens, but the GCHQ has no such restrictions, meaning these images very likely include the private conversations and interactions of British and US citizens.

The program was apparently meant to develop new techniques and algorithms for facial recognition and picking targets. (Targets? Really?) It gathered (gathers?) one image every five minutes, possibly to avoid violating certain privacy statutes, but more likely to keep from crashing GCHQ servers. It’s one more in a long string of uncomfortable realizations about the deeply invasive spying apparatus Western governments are pointing at their own citizens.

The revelations are likely to get worse, and it seems very unlikely that programs like this one are limited to just Yahoo or the UK — since Snowden’s documents only go up to around 2012 at the latest (that’s when he divulged them to reporter Glenn Greenwald), it’s also very possible this program is still up and running. (Duh, like really?)

And if you just bought a new TV set? It might be that a hidden camera is planted somewhere behind your TV screen too, watching you watching it. Throw a whole blanket over it if you don't want to end up in the 'lust' room deep in the bowels of GCHQ.  I wonder what would happen if someone published pictures of a Senator or Parliamentarian's wife or daughters, for instance? Would that even wake the public outrage?

And you must know by now if you live on Earth, that the spy-on-you technology is exponentially growing and someday it might be your refrigerator that notifies the Stasi that you cheated on your rations.

But of course, YOU are not doing anything wrong, then what could it matter?
Sure. Go to the front of the gullible line and be respectful.


Still think Snowden is the bad guy?





*based on Pete Brook's article in Wired.