http://www.news.com.au
US senators say British and US spy
agencies showed a "breathtaking lack of respect" for privacy after
reports they intercepted and stored images from webcams used by millions
of Yahoo users.
Files from Britain's communications spy agency GCHQ leaked by
former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed
how the Optic Nerve program collected still images of webcam chats
regardless of whether individual users were suspects or not, the
Guardian newspaper reported.
In one six-month period in 2008, the
British spy agency collected webcam imagery from more than 1.8 million
Yahoo user accounts around the world, the Guardian said.
The data
collected, which was available to NSA analysts through routine
information sharing, contained a significant amount of sexual content.
"We
are extremely troubled by today's press report that a very large number
of individuals - including law-abiding Americans - may have had private
videos of themselves and their families intercepted and stored without
any suspicion of wrongdoing," Democratic US Senators Ron Wyden, Mark
Udall and Martin Heinrich said in a joint statement.
"If this report is accurate, it would show a breathtaking lack of
respect for the privacy and civil liberties of law-abiding citizens."
Yahoo,
which was apparently chosen because its webcam system was known to be
used by GCHQ targets, expressed outrage at the reported surveillance.
"We
were not aware of nor would we condone this reported activity," a
spokeswoman for the US technology firm told AFP in an email statement.
"This report, if true, represents a whole new level of violation of our users' privacy that is completely unacceptable.
"We
are committed to preserving our users' trust and security and continue
our efforts to expand encryption across all of our services."
Leaked
GCHQ documents from 2008 to 2010 explicitly refer to the surveillance
program, although the Guardian said later information suggested it was
still active in 2012.
The data was used for experiments in
automated facial recognition, as well as to monitor existing GCHQ
targets and discover new ones, the British paper said.
The program
reportedly saved one image every five minutes from a webcam user's
feed, partly to comply with human rights legislation and partly to cut
down the sheer amount of data being collected.
GCHQ analysts were
able to search the metadata, such as location and length of webcam chat,
and they could view the actual images where the username was similar to
a surveillance target.
In a statement to the Guardian, GCHQ said
all of its work was "carried out in accordance with a strict legal and
policy framework which ensures that our activities are authorised,
necessary and proportionate".
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