Juan Cole: Peeping Toms of the Intel World: Recording Bulk Private Yahoo Webcam Chats

[eridani]

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/peeping_toms_intel_world_recording_bulk_private_yahoo_webcam_chats_20140303

In the same way that pedophiles are attracted to professions where they come into frequent contact with children, peeping Toms surely are attracted into electronic surveillance work.

That seems to me the only explanation for the US National Security Agency and British intelligence’s Optic Nerve program, just revealed by The Guardian from the Snowden files. The analysts sneaked into millions of people’s private webcam conversations without a warrant and appropriated them, that is, actually downloaded and stored still images from them. If a private hacker did that to even one person and was caught, that hacker would be tossed in a prison cell for life and the key would be thrown away.

Up to 11% of the video they spied on and captured was lovers engaged in nudity and long-distance video intimacy with one another. Although the agencies are said to have attempted to limit employees’ access to this enormous government-funded porn movie industry, we know from the Snowden case that even relatively low-level contractors could get access to millions of such records.

British intelligence officers came to the Guardian’s office late last summer and smashed hard drives suspected of containing the Snowden files, in a fruitless attempt to prevent this sort of massive spying on innocent people from becoming public knowledge.

[MisterP]

1. heck, Warhol created whole clubs so he could watch! KnR