Is the Government looking at your private parts?

Oh myyy. It appears the governments of the US and UK are collecting images of whatever you do on your webcam:

http://www.zdnet.com/big-brother-really-is-watching-you-7000026716/#ftag=RSS14dc6a9

If you don't want to read the whole thing, here's the money shot:

"Between 2008 and 2010, Britain's GCHQ, in cooperation with the U.S. National Security Agency, ran the "Optic Nerve" program which covertly intercepted and collected webcam imagery from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts globally. According to comScore data, Yahoo Messenger had 4.3 million unique users in January 2014. The agencies were running the program for automatic facial recognition experiments, to monitor existing suspects and to "discover new targets of interest" for the intelligence organizations.

Images were taken as often as once every five minutes, a limit issued to avoid overloading GCHQ systems, as well as to "partly comply" with human rights legislation.

As much as between 3 percent and 11 percent of the snapped imagery was considered "explicit."

I love the term "partly comply" applied to human rights. That's akin to someone saying they "partly comply" with drug laws by only smoking crack but not using meth.

I have never posted a political rant on Major Geeks - until now. What consenting adults do with their webcams is their own business. If the US and the UK want to "test facial recognition" there are plenty of ways to do so using public area cameras like those in government buildings and shopping centers.

I hope the courts in both countries step in soon and put a stop to this. The whole premise of it seems more like a plan hatched between Russia and North Korea.

 

Oh now that is just silly talk. Gubment is your friend. :-D

 

Duct tape is silver,
Silence is golden,
And a lil' black tape goes a long way...

 

Thank you for your leniency. For what it's worth, I did give it some thought before posting. My decision to do so was based on three factors: It is a tech related story, it comes from a seemingly reputable website and - if nothing else - it should serve as a "heads up" to people that what they show on their webcam (dirty or clean) is not necessarily confidential.

 

I kind of always assumed that something said or done on a webcam, unless one used in secure military applications, was equally fair game as anything else I might put on the internet. While I'm not a fan of government (or anyone else) peeking into what I do, the very nature of the internet says that someone probably is. If you don't want someone to see it, don't put it out there to be seen. I realize that's pretty simplistic, but it's true. If you don't post the picture, no one can share it...same applies to video.

 

I have always been paranoid about web cams built into computers. I always tape up the one at work, my boss always looks at me like I am crazy. :-D

 

My plan is to bore the NSA to death by leaving my webcam on 24/7, focused on the chair where both of my cats sleep. :-D

 

Hmm, but are they sleeping, or plotting your demise? :-D

 

They're cats...do you really need to ask? LOL

 

Never had a cat. Maxwell is on the couch plotting his next nap, while sleeping. Hmm, or is he plotting? :-D

 

That depends. If I get home from work on time and feed them accordingly, it's sleep. Anything over 10 minutes late and plots are hatched. :-D

 

I had a web cam, but, it gave me the creeps. I too am paranoid. The web cam is gathering dust in my technology graveyard.

 

I have wondered, if someone haxed my webcam, would they really die of boredom? :-D

 

I :heart catnaps...

 

I have a DVD collectors set of all of you.. well, ok, some I burned as I thought them to be truly too much for the human eyes.

 

I thought the story's were saying that the gov. was takng screen shots?
so that means, shots of what My webcam sees or shots of what my monitor is seeing?

what can the webcam really see?
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_8Cg2ol6gOds/TCQYVjggg9I/AAAAAAAAAXw/h7YscxO-uCA/s1600/new+haircut+collage+2.bmp

 

I reckon it depends on what your web cam is pointed at. :-D